This is another for-funsies piece, because I had an idea and had to run with it. Hope you enjoy!
"See those pretty numbers, Kirsty?" Frank was smiling, but it didn't look like a fun smile. "Those tell you how long you're going to live. Isn't that something?" Kirsty rubbed her arm, trying not to look Frank in the eye. The numbers were so small, barely an inch wide along her wrist, and she didn't like that he'd seen them. Your mark was supposed to be secret, something you only shared with the people you trusted the most. Not even her dad had seen it, and Frank had only noticed because she'd forgotten her watch.
"It's something," she answered, pulling on her watch. It was a cheap thing, but it did its job. "I have plenty of time left, then." Thousands upon thousands of hours, the seconds ticking away before her eyes. Sometimes she watched them, mesmerized, in the middle of the night.
"You're lucky, Kirsty." She didn't like Frank, didn't like the little chuckle he made as he sucked in on his cigarette that he wasn't supposed to have. Kirsty hated his visits. She pulled her backpack on.
"I need to go to school, Uncle," she said, and left the kitchen without waiting for him to say anything else.
She'd never really done the math; Kirsty didn't want to know how far away she was until she got there. It was the last day of high school and she was watching the seconds fall away under her watch, not listening to the teacher because the teacher had never really listened to her.
Some students had shown off their marks. Not everyone had numbers; some had shapes, distinct or not, or they had phrases or words or a scramble of letters. One person had a name; one girl had asked Kirsty, because Kirsty didn't tell secrets, if it was normal for two names to appear. Kirsty had admitted she didn't know, but she didn't know if any of the marks were normal anyway, and that seemed to reassure that girl enough. Kirsty hoped she'd turn out okay, she was nice. She certainly wasn't going to mention one of the names had been a girl's, too.
Steve asked about her mark, but he backed off when she told him no, she wanted to keep that to herself. He'd seemed disappointed, but how was she supposed to explain that she had a clock counting the hours of her life, and counting down, not up?
Kirsty was going to die young. She'd never done the math, but she had watched the clock long enough to know that it was almost up.
Kirsty's father had a mark shaped like a strange blob, almost a flower, and sometimes it changed shape.
"It gets a new petal every time I fall in love," he'd said when he showed it to her - there were a few, some small and faded, some new. Three were the darkest against his skin - "your mother, she's that one, and that's Julia."
"What about the third one?" She asked, fidgeting with her watch just a little.
"That one's you, Kirsty, the moment I first held you in my arms." He kissed her forehead, and she smiled a little.
Kirsty's watch was confiscated when she was admitted to the hospital, so she'd tied a bandage around it. That bastard knew, she thought of Frank, he knew it was going to be him. She had barely glimpsed the number of hours when they took the watch, and hadn't looked at it again, but it made her stomach flip.
It was less than 48. She shook, not wanting to see the number, not wanting to think about it. She'd known - she'd almost always known - that she was going to die young; but now she could feel Death's sweet kiss on her cheek, waiting for her, and she cried.
She wasn't ready.
The box opened and they appeared. Kirsty had pleaded, narrowly escaping with her skin intact, and she found herself on her hands and knees in the cold and empty hospital room. She struggled to breathe, struggled to stop crying, when she looked at her wrist almost out of habit.
00:00:00. Six unblinking eyes staring back at her. She was alive, and she suddenly felt extremely guilty; had she cheated, somehow? Was she supposed to die, or be taken away? Her eyes watered as she stared at the number, trying to think about what had happened, trying to understand. She squeezed her eyes shut, took in a breath, and opened them.
No change.
The number didn't budge. Not when she confronted Frank; not when the Cenobites confronted her; not when the house burned down and Steve abandoned her at the hospital. Maybe I was supposed to die, she thought as she sat in her hospital room. Maybe she should have gone with them; maybe she'd made a mistake.
Was I supposed to die?
She forgot the number, but she couldn't really forget. Even as she searched the labyrinth, even as she searched for Tiffany, she couldn't wash it from her mind.
Channard was at her heels. It felt like her whole world was coming down, an avalanche an inch behind her, and she had run out of time days before. She pushed on only because she didn't know what else she could do, because she hadn't planned past the minutes running out.
Those six zeroes waited patiently - waited for what?
This is it, Kirsty thought as the doctor approached, this is really the end. She urged Tiffany to run, to safety, and run she did; Kirsty was left behind, and she accepted that. Her father was not here, she had no answers, only the baffled look of the Cenobite prince whose world she'd just torn down. She saw those black eyes on her, and closed her own; there was nowhere to run, no loving arms to protect her now.
She heard a cry and opened her eyes; chains in the doctor's skin and the felled Cenobites, but the one remaining - the leader - stood.
Kirsty knelt before the man on the ground, the blood on her face dripping onto his pale cheek. Salt stung her eyes as she touched his face - once adorned with such perfectly-gridded pins, now bare. She lowered herself to sit beside him, fighting back a sob even as the tears spilled.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, "it shouldn't have been you." She sobbed and covered her face; her tears smudged the blood and washed it away at her wrist. She looked at him again through her fingers, so cold and so still. Weakly, almost ashamed, she reached forward and took the hand at his side, kissed it. The leather gripping his thumb had come loose, and slipped off.
"Please," she whispered to no one, to Leviathan, to anyone who would listen, "please let him live. Please." She brought his hand to her cheek and kissed it again, opening her eyes. On his wrist, once hidden by the leather, was his mark smudged in blood. She felt a pang of guilt for seeing something so private - and then it moved. Kirsty frowned, swallowing, and wiped the blood from his wrist to see it more clearly.
00:00:01.
He drew in a breath.
I know, I know, I already did a soulmate AU story. I couldn't resist, I just really like the concept and I REALLY have a lot of feelings about the end of Hellbound.
Going to work on the next chapter of TPatC soon. Have a great week, everybody!
