For a suspended, airless moment, they both just hang there, all that haughty confidence suddenly shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. Beckett feels something leap within her, a rottweiler slipping its chain, and then she twists her arm sharply, feels bone break under her aching fingers. The other woman drops with a yelp, crashes to the floor, brings the little table and all her surgical equipment down with her. The scalpel drops harmlessly to the table.
Distantly, she feels her grin fade as she sits up, but she's caught fast by the ties around her other wrist, around her belly, her ankles, and she draws her knees up, kicks her feet free. Desperately, she yanks the gag out of her mouth, throws it away from her, sucks in a breath.
By now the other woman's moving on the floor, screeching something that sounds like "Bitch." Beckett ignores her, bucks her hips, hears the tearing of velcrow as the band around her stomach rips apart. She grunts, sits up, grabs for the scalpel as her other arm pulls automatically against the restraint. Still trapped.
Shit shit shit
"I'm going to fucking kill you," Nieman snarls, throwing herself on top of her. The force sends them both rolling off the table, and Beckett lands hard on her knees on the floor as the scalpel skids away. She bites back a cry, cracks her teeth together, searches the concrete for anything she can reach. Her head spins.
I'm not going to die here There's no way in hell
I'm going to...
She hangs there, her arm twisting uselessly against the table as the other woman screams and clutches her wrist, rolls over from where she landed on it, all her cool control blown to dust. Beckett scrambles for a knife, saws through the thing holding her arm, her entire world zeroing down to the threads as they fray away under the stainless steel. Her stomach seems to swim between her teeth, float on her tongue. And then, suddenly, all at once, she's free.
Heat burns through her chest, sings in her throat, cracks a grin across her face that may've seemed psychotic in a saner moment.
She turns to her prey. The doctor stares at her in fear, still clutching her wrist, a milk snake against a raging mongoose. The other woman pounces on her again, but Beckett catches her hard in the stomach with her knee, grabs a handful of her hair and rips her head back as she smashes the other woman to the floor beside her. She slams her head into the concrete, again and again until the strength seems to leave her arms. Heavily, Beckett stumbles to her feet, stands at full height, reeling as her world spins around her. Her knees and fingers ache, the concrete is cold under her feet, and all those plastic walls seem to turn like the inside of fucking tilt-a-wheel. Some thought connects.
The drugs it's the drugs goddammit but this fog
Distantly, she notices Leiman pushing herself up, and she reaches down, grabs her by the collar, yanks her to her feet.
She wants to say something to her, but her head is spinning, her thoughts caught in cobwebs. A hundred fragmented images pop into her head— Tyson on that bridge; the dead doubles of her friends on those morgue tables; blood, hot and wet, hers; those brief moments of consciousness in the back of that ambulance.
(A long time ago, a lifetime, a forever)
She throws the serial killer against her desk, advances on her as she smashes against tables and chairs. Before she can fall to the floor she grabs her by the arm, sends her flying face-first into the wall.
And then for some reason she looks down.
The knife is there, right beside her, the scalpel Leiman had planned to stab her with. She finds herself reaching for it without thinking about it, driven by something hot and black in the pit of her stomach, oozing up her throat like oil, like something poisonous.
"He'll kill you," Leiman whispers as Beckett straightens, looks at her. The other woman is collapsing into herself, holding her wrist, shaking, glaring at her with a hatred that Beckett can almost remember not believing in (a long time ago...). "I bet he's already killed your fucking lover. Jerry wanted him to watch you die, but..."
In a breath the distance is closed, and the knife goes in. Blood, hot and wet, streams over her fingers, pools in her hand. She doesn't remember even making the decision to move.
"You have no idea who I am," Beckett hears herself say as she pulls out the scalpel, sends it back into the woman's chest, deep, deep, deep.
Where I was shot so long ago not that long ago that bullet burned through my heart
Blood dribbles down her hands, something hot and metallic singes the air between them, and she finds herself staring into her eyes as the other woman gurgles blood, falters, slides off the little blade, falls away from her. She only feels relief. Nothing but relief, an endless pool of still water. How many people has she watched die now? How many people has she killed?
Castle's not dead Tyson didn't answer the phone because he's in custody because they figured out where he was and hauled his ass in and they're probably on their way here now
(Or he's dead too)
The thought is just as relieving, soothes the red and the black swirling in her vision down to a toneless, thoughtless grey. She watches the other woman twitch on the floor, struggling to breathe, choking, sputtering. Even under the pale blue light she can see all the blood. Everywhere.
She doesn't move, just stands as if carved there as the adrenaline ebbs away. Distantly, she can feel the pounding in her knees, her fingers throbbing, can feel how cold the air is on her hand as the blood cools there. She thinks of a thousand incongruous moments, feels utterly divorced from the fear she'd felt on that table, that she'd felt in those few hours of consciousness they'd granted her before shoving more needles into her, forcing her back under into a heavy darkness.
How long have I been here?
How long have I been gone?
The world spins and bobs around her, colors melt and swim. It suddenly occurs to her that the other woman has stopped breathing.
She's dead
I killed her
Blood drips from the scalpel, lands at her feet. She stares at the dead woman.
And breathes.