If there was one thing Lili was sure of, it was that she was going to be in trouble.
The New York City streets were far from devoid of light this late at night, but that did not mean that they were illuminated enough to make them safe for a teenage girl wandering by herself. To make matters worse, she had lost her phone at the movie theatre and with it any ability to look up directions to get home or call her brother Vash to tell him she was going to be okay. If she did end up making it home alive, he was going to kill her himself for being so reckless.
Why didn't I just let my friends walk me home? This is hopeless, Lili thought in frustration as she rounded the fifteenth corner onto another empty and unfamiliar street. She wasn't usually one to get lost, but when she did she got really lost. Looking around, she realized with a sinking feeling that she had wandered into a neighborhood that was not only unfamiliar, but also appeared to be rather unsafe. Boarded windows and broken glass were common features on the buildings around her, and she could hear distant shouting emanating from one of the few occupied apartments nearby. Lili shuddered and began walking faster, her mind racing to try to figure out how to get back to a main road.
Focused as she was on street signs and trying to navigate, Lili failed to notice the sounds around her until far too late. The scuffle of footsteps and dull thuds of blows to soft flesh fell on deaf ears until she turned the corner and directly into the altercation that was the source of the sound. Lili was jolted out of her determined concentration with a frightened squeak as she realized the gravity of the scene before her, and she stumbled backwards in a desperate attempt to get away.
A man with longish brown hair was standing with his back to the wall of a clearly abandoned building, his entire posture emanating the terror that was clearly etched into his tanned face. Beside him, a slight blond form lay crumpled on the ground. Lili's heart dropped as she realized that it was soaked in blood. Positioned with her arm pressed against the brown-haired man's chest was the assailant, dressed in all black and clutching a bloody blade in each fist. Beyond the terror that was gripping her heart, Lili distantly registered that she was eerily beautiful in the faint illumination of the city night, which cast shadows across her pale, angular face and made her ash-blonde hair shine. However, that only served to make her even more frightened.
In her haste to back away before being noticed, Lili tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and fell hard on her rear, yelping in pain as she paid for breaking her fall with skinned palms. The woman's head turned, and Lili went cold as she realized that her cold blue eyes were locked on her face. I'm going to die, she realized with a detached sense of panic, shock rushing in to freeze whatever deeper response she might have to the new knowledge.
The woman's head turned back to her captive for a moment as she brought the knife in her free hand to his neck and buried it in the soft flesh there. Blood sprayed, and she allowed his limp form to slide out of her grasp as he died, wiping the dark liquid from her skin with her sleeve. Lili began to tremble violently as the woman spun to stare down at her, an unreadable expression on her blood-smeared face.
"P-pl-please don't kill me," Lili begged. Tears were running down her face, but she barely registered their presence as she looked beseechingly up at the woman above her. "Pl-please, I j-just want to go home to my b-brother."
The woman's eyebrows shot up. "Your brother?" she asked in a heavily accented voice. Lili nodded frantically, hoping that the woman's expression meant she might have mercy.
"Yes, m-my brother. He's my only family, you see," Lili explained in a shaky voice.
"I also have a brother, and what you just saw could cause a lot of problems for him," the woman told Lili, her gaze hardening. Lili's heart sank. The woman, noticing Lili's darkening expression, smiled grimly. "But since I understand that you wish not to worry your brother, I will spare you for now." For now? Lili thought, her eyes widening. What?
"But right now you're coming with me," the woman informed her. Before Lili could start to protest, the woman had raised her knife and struck Lili hard on the temple with the hilt. Pain exploded in her head, and she crumpled into unconscious darkness.
Lili woke up to a world of blue.
It took her a few moments in her groggy state to realize that it was not a twilight sky that was filling her vision, rather a stern pair of purple-blue eyes. Lili recoiled as she realized that she was lying on her back and the woman from before was leaning very close to her face. She tried to scramble backwards, only to find that her limbs were being held rather firmly in place by a pair of strong, feminine hands. The hands that had held the bloody knife last night, the hands that had killed a man right before her eyes. Tears of fright welled up in Lili's eyes, and she began to shake violently in terror.
"Who are you?" Lili asked timidly, turning her head to avoid the woman's icy gaze. As her view shifted, she realized she had no idea where she was. The room around her was plain, with grey stone walls and dimly lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Under her back was a plain, uncomfortable cot. "Where am I?"
The woman studied her for a few moments, her face unreadable. "We are in my brother's home. This is where we keep our prisoners before disposal."
"Disposal?" Lili squeaked. The woman surprised her by giving a slight chuckle.
"Well, usually we dispose of them. You're just here until we figure out what to do with you."
"What to do with me?" Lili didn't like the sound of that.
"Don't look so scared. My brother wouldn't kill someone like you, especially knowing you're some poor sap's little sister. He's cruel, but not heartless." The woman gave her what Lili was sure was an attempt at a reassuring look.
"That doesn't make me feel any better," Lili admitted through her tears.
"Well I brought you in, and I don't kill people who don't deserve it, so I'll make sure you don't die. If I say no one else fucks with you, no one else fucks with you, got it?" Lili stared up at the woman with open skepticism, her terrified sobbing giving way to a muffled whimpering.
"Those men in the alley? Did they deserve it?"
The woman looked at her sharply. "I just said I don't kill people who don't deserve it didn't I?" she demanded. Lili shrank away from her and resumed her trembling. The woman gave an impatient sigh, but her face softened as she continued speaking. "Those men betrayed my brother. They promised to stay in our organization for life and they were trying to leave. In this business, you don't get to just break promises like that."
Lili was tempted to ask what "this business" was, but thought better of it. The less she knew, the better if she wanted to get out of this place alive and never have to deal with it again.
The woman, apparently sensing that she was not going to get any response out of her captive, released Lili's arms and straightened into a standing position. Lili remained carefully still, keenly aware of how dangerous her captor was.
"I'm going to go talk to my brother," the woman told her, her face daring Lili to question her. Lili nodded dumbly, unable to think of a proper response. Apparently this was acceptable to the woman, who turned on her heel and made her way out of the room with a swish of black fabric and long blond hair. Lili stared at the door as it clicked shut behind the woman, unsure of what to make of what she had just experienced. The woman had been far less, well, crazy and evil than she had expected, for all that she had Lili locked up in a cell. Beyond that, Lili was pretty sure she had seen a bow tied in the woman's hair as she had left the room. What kind of murderer wore bows in her hair?
Belatedly she realized that she no longer was weighed down by the oppressive fear that had consumed her when she had first awoken. For some reason, speaking to the woman had made her feel better, and she wasn't sure why.
Lili gave a frustrated groan and beat her fist into the mattress below her. She wanted to go home and for things to make sense again.
Lili had no idea how long it was that she lay alone in the room, only that by the time the woman returned she found herself excited for the company, even if the company was a murderer. For a social butterfly like herself, endless solitude was one of the worst tortures the woman and her brother's "business" could have inflicted on her.
"You're back!" Lili cried excitedly as the woman entered the room, sitting up in bed and giving a forced bright smile in greeting. She had decided, in the seemingly endless time she'd had to think, that acting as normal as possible was probably the best way to cope with all this. After all, if they had captured her to keep her silent, they were certainly not going to release her if she constantly was acting traumatized. In the real world, such things would draw questions, and the last thing she wanted was to appear like she was going to draw questions.
"That I am. I have food for you," the woman replied, offering Lili the tray she was carrying as she sat down beside her. Lili gave a large — and this time genuine — smile as she reached out for the meal, ecstatic to learn that they were not planning on starving her. "I'm sorry if it's not a lot, but our cook is kind of lazy and yells a lot if we ask to make extra food." Lili looked up from the tray, which she had placed in her lap, and studied the woman's face carefully. Had the weird murderer woman just apologized for her for not feeding her properly?
This place is weird, Lili thought, dropping her gaze before the woman could begin to find it odd. "Thank you," she murmured before picking up a roll of bread and taking a delicate bite. She could feel the woman's eyes on her as she ate, and she squirmed a little under her gaze.
"Am I allowed to know where I am?" Lili asked through a mouthful of food, covering her mouth with her hand out of habit. I'm so silly, she thought to herself as she noticed the unconscious movement. Covering my mouth so as not to offend a murderess.
The woman shook her head, tossing her ashy blond tresses back and forth. Lili frowned, and tried again. "Am I allowed to know what you're going to do with me yet?" When the woman did not answer, Lili looked up and caught her eye. Sympathy shone in those dusky orbs, but she still shook her head no. Lili's heart twisted a little as she saw that, both confused and touched by the care she saw in the woman's gaze. What did the murderer care about her?
"Do I get to know your name?" Lili pressed, doing her best to give her best pleading look. It had worked on Vash numerous times, and after seeing the kindness in the woman's eyes she had a feeling it might work on her as well.
The woman paused, conflict obvious on her face, and Lili held her breath. She wanted to know something, anything about this situation and this woman, and she allowed her desire to play itself out across her face. She hated being kept in the dark. She could only hope now that her expressions were convincing enough.
"Natalya," the woman answered finally, her voice hesitant in a way Lili would have never expected to hear from a killer. Natalya, Lili mused, allowing the sounds of the name wash over her like warm water. It was a sweet name, yet another thing she would not have expected from such a seemingly hardened woman.
"It's beautiful," Lili breathed, and it was true. Much like her realization in the alley as she had stared up Natalya as she finished a kill, the notion of beauty occurred to her so suddenly that she had to take a moment to recover from it. Both name and woman were stunning, enchanting even, in a way that was foreign to Lili, and even though she knew she should still fear Natalya, she could not bring herself to be.
Natalya blushed, and Lili could have sworn her cheeks were the shade of rose petals. "And what is yours, then?" she asked, ducking her head to hide her face behind a veil of silvery hair. "Your name, that is."
Lili knew that sharing the information was not a good idea. Such things as logic and reasoning, however, had departed her as she had been struck by the irrational loveliness before her, and she found herself speaking without fully giving her body permission to do so.
"Lili. Lili Zwingli."
Natalya's head shot up. "Zwingli?" she demanded, any trace of her previous embarrassment vanished from her face. Lili, taken aback by the sudden change, could only nod. Natalya's expression went carefully blank, and she stood quickly, leaving Lili sitting stunned and confused on the cot.
"I'll be back, Lili. I think I know what we can do with you."