A/N: Well, as much as I'd like to think that I've changed as far as doing and completing my work in a timely manner before the last possible minute, I definitely have not. Had a sick day today, and got to write out a lot of this, which I've wanted to write all month for the Rare Fanfic Contest over on YYHFanfiction's tumblr. The topic I'm exploring is Post-Barrier Removal, taking place several years after the barrier was lifted and demons were allowed to live in Human World.

Not sure if I'll post more chapters later or not, but for now, let's call this a one-shot. This is a spin-off fic for my main fic, On Dating a Demon. I wanted to give some insight into Isla's character and what she's gone through in the last year, as this takes place around July/August the year before Ashley is in Tokyo, a year before the current story line in ODAD. So at this point, Ashley is technically still in college at Cambridge.

As a warning, as I feel this story is dark enough that it deserves one, I have taken inspiration from the Handmaid's Tale in writing most of this fic. It gets dark in this, and I have used Christianity as a way to get others to believe what the main villain wants people to believe.

Content warnings of: forcible conversion by way of religion and pain, as well as murder.

Puncture Wounds

The Way We Love

"These are the only two options you have."

"And if I refuse?"

He chuckled. "My dear, you are in no position to refuse. If you disobey in any way we will kill those whom you love. Your… pet-" Isla cringed at the degrading term "-has already been paid a visit. He understands the consequences of his actions as well."

She tried not to panic; tried not to let it show on her face.

The meeting had been simple enough. The performance review was innocent enough. But the three men who had come in from a side door and surrounded the table were not the supervisors that Isla had known should be in the room. And then the lock had clicked into both doors so that they couldn't be disturbed. There was no escape. No hope to run. She was stuck in this room with these three men who looked at her like she was prey, who all had the same dual rapiers tattooed on their left forearms. She recognized the symbol immediately, especially since they weren't trying to hide it like the businessmen she often saw on the train. And since they weren't trying to hide it, the phrase that was equally tattooed between the rapiers was easily visible, and Isla had tucked the phrase away in her memory to Google when she got home. For now, she only recognized morte in the phrase, and that alone sent shivers up her spine.

But at the mention of the other person who'd been paid a "visit" by these strangers, Isla's stomach dropped. Arnold.

She tried to hide her discomfort and put on a hauty air. It was easy. She'd been born with resting bitch face, and for the first time in her life she was glad for it. "My company will notice my absence."

The man named Razor, as Isla called him by the finger tattoos spelling "RAZOR" across his knuckles, sat directly across from her, and as she spoke, he laughed, tears springing from the corners of his eyes. He did not fit the normal bill of this group. The same group who'd started attacking demons and spewing, "Keep Humanity Human" at every turn. They'd been the major anti-demon group that had sprung up and had stayed the largest even in the last five years, swallowing the other groups with ease. They were the ones who attacked demons and left them mutilated on the streets, the ones who set embassy's on fire, the ones who destroyed the lives of humans and demons who loved each other. Razor's head was shaved and bald, with enough piercings in his nose, lip, and eyebrows that he was sure to set off metal detectors any time he tried to fly. Tattoos streamed down his arms and chest, which were easily visible with the black wife beater he wore. He was intimidating and daunting in a way that stirred that primal instinct for her to run as far from him as possible.

But the doors were locked. So she stayed seated.

The other two men looked normal enough. The usual look to the Guardians that she'd become familiar with over the years: business dress with a tie, slicked back hair. Although these… gentlemen… had left their suit jackets someplace else and had opted for rolling up their sleeves, possibly as an intimidation tactic, possibly so she would know exactly whom she was dealing with.

They needn't worry. She was well aware, and the pit at the bottom of her stomach wouldn't let her forget it.

Razor was still laughing. The other two men let him laugh, smiles cracking at their own lips as if there was some terrible joke she had missed.

Razor didn't let her stay confused for long. "My dear girl. Your company is the one who hired us to fix you."

Isla didn't call Arnold after work, which as soon as her "review" let out, she immediately feigned sick to her supervisor and ran home, dodging the questions her family's housekeeper, Sonya, posed as she slipped in through the kitchen.

Of course, Arnold had tried calling her nineteen times by ten thirty in the morning. Probably to warn her of what - or who - was coming. But she couldn't call him back, and it killed her.

She now had the entire day alone, but the first thing she did was sit at her computer and type out the phrase she'd seen tattooed on the Guardians' forearms. "Vita in morte."

Morte was easy enough to understand; it was similar enough to the language she'd grown up hearing and loving and learning from her grandmother that she understood that meaning well enough. And if that was any clue, she could probably guess at vita as well.

Even though she'd had an idea about the meaning of the second word, Google Translate's answer still made her stomach clench and drop, for what felt like the fiftieth time that day.

Life in death.

Razor's instructions had been simple enough, especially with the address he'd left for her: don't go to work; come to the facility. Facility. As if she was being hospitalized, over whom she loved. The second set of instructions had been weirder: Bring your bible and a lock.

Still, Razor's threat had been real enough: We'll kill those who you love, and she wasn't about to test the validity of that threat.

So she'd gone to the facility first thing Tuesday morning, telling no one about where she was going. Her parents assumed she was going to work. There was no reason to suspect anything different.

The facility was similar to Christian-reinforced rehabilitation clinics she'd volunteered at back in college for drug addicts. Immediately greeting her were the words, "Seek the Light of God."

Her first impressions didn't even hold a candle to the nightmares past the double hospital doors inside.

The receptionist inside the doors greeted Isla with a smile, even as Isla didn't trust the woman with a smile in return, and showed Isla where she could store her things and change her clothes.

The locker room was small. Quickly she put her things in her locker and changed into the white linens they gave her to wear. Taking only her bible, Isla followed the receptionist past the double hospital doors and into the facility itself. The room the lady took her to was large and had tall ceilings. A large cross had been hung on one wall and beneath it was a stage. In front of the stage sat rows tables covered in white tablecloths, and behind the tables, chairs had been set up in a circle, every chair occupied by another person in the same white linens she wore, clutching their own bibles as they read as a group from the scripture.

The reading stopped abruptly. The leader of the reading looked up with a smile. It would have seemed kind if not for the setting they found themselves in. "Ah! We have been joined by another of God's children! Children, say hello."

The "children" were not children at all, but adults of every age who looked up from their bibles, as if this was the first cool drink of water they had had in weeks, and all said the same, "Hello, child of God."

The Leader began reciting from Mark 10:13, "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God," as the receptionist lady took a chair from the corner and inserted it into the circle. A chill rose the hairs on the back of Isla's neck and arms, the wrongness of this place falling over her like a tidal wave. "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."

"Blessed be the Word," the other adults said.

The Leader invited Isla to sit, and they began. Being forced to use her own bible to read from was a special sort of nightmare in and of itself. She had always been a Christian, a Protestant, even at the harmless teasing of her abuela and tios growing up, and her grandmother had been the one to gift her her bible when she turned fifteen. It had been her constant companion since, along with the cross her father had given her at twenty. Simple and gold, but it gave her comfort nonetheless.

As she read, her thoughts wandered to Arnold - where he was, and how he was doing. She had to find a way to see him again. She couldn't let Razor win.

At those thoughts however, pain began in her hands, in the muscles, and worked its way up her arms slowly, until the only thing she could think about was the pain, and trying to keep up in reading her bible at the pace of the others.

The morning's Readings lasted a lifetime, and by lunch, they moved to sit at the tables near the front of the room. Lunch was a different beast. Whereas Isla had been hoping for a break, it was more of the same: prayer before eating, and then eating in complete silence as the Leader read more from the bible. Guardians walked the aisles between the tables, forcing anyone with wandering eyes to look only at their food, by way of shoving their heads toward their plates.

After lunch was another Reading session, and then they lined them up at the tables again, this time without allowing them to sit. Isla stood, in hesitant silence, as they brought out a man dressed in the same white linens to the center stage. A rope dropped from a trap door above and immediately his hands and wrists were tied to the rope so that he could stand comfortably with his hands raised above him.

Another Guardian dressed in white joined him on the stage, as Guardians circled the tables around Isla and the others.

Her breath caught as the Guardian on stage began beating the man.

Over and over and over and over-

His cries for mercy rang out over his silent onlookers, watching only because the Guardians around forced them to keep watching. Isla turned away immediately - her first mistake, because a Guardian immediately swarmed her and forced her chin up to keep watching. As she closed her eyes, a hand applied pressure around her forearm; enough to get her attention and keep watching, else the pain would continue.

The Leader read over a microphone in the corner. "But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, "In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires." These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

"But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

"Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

"To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen!"

Razor stood next to her locker, arms crossed over his chest, and feet crossed at the ankles as she warily approached. She wanted to run, yes, but she also needed to get her clothing and belongings in order to get the hell out of this nightmarish place.

"My dear," he began. "Have you been well?"

Isla nearly snarled. "I think you know the answer to that better than myself." Spinning the lock's code, she continued, "What do you want?"

He grinned, cockily, and pushed himself off the wall of lockers and leaned in close. Even leaning over her the way he was, he was at least six foot, probably taller, and Isla became very aware of the danger that rolled off of his body. Leaning over her the way he was, and having closed the distance between them, he could very easily harm her. She'd never been athletic or strong, and he could very easily take advantage of her. The other ladies who had entered the locker room after her avoided eye contact with her, very carefully minding their own business.

"Just wanted to remind you of our deal." Like it was a deal. With that, a light pain streaked through her mind, right above her right ear. A moment later, an image formed in her mind - not her own, as at the edges it had a faint lilac color - of Arnold crumpling to the ground, and then of her father as he drove in his car, and then her brother as he greeted his fiance, Sophia. Razor's voice followed the images, as disgustingly smooth as velvet, but as she looked at him, he did not move his mouth. "Remember: Discuss this with anyone and we will kill those whom you love."

The man who was beaten showed up unharmed at Reading the following day. No one else seemed even mildly concerned by the lack of bruises or wounds on his body, but Isla had seen his blood. There was no way to make that sort of miraculous recovery without being healed.

The next two days followed the same pattern: Readings in the morning, followed by Mealtime in the afternoon, and then a second set of Readings in the afternoon. Pain peppered any thoughts she had outside of what they were doing, and by the third day she'd had enough and thrown her beloved bible at the Leader, hitting him squarely on the shoulder. "God would never want this for us! He loves us unfailingly and this isn't the way!"

The others had stilled. A pin could have dropped and everyone in that room could have heard it.

The Leader merely smiled, as if in apology. "Penance," he said quietly, like a promise.

Hands grabbed her from behind and pulled her away from the group. Isla thrashed, fighting, trying to get away at the hands that held her, and too soon she was thrown into a concrete room, the light from a flickering bulb above the only light she knew.

The pain started small: in her hands, in the joints between her fingers, and deep in the muscles tissue itself. Slowly, it spread outward: up her arms, down into her torso and legs. It was everywhere. Burning. Searing. Without end.

Isla tried to breathe, tried to focus her mind on the cross she wore every day around her neck. Tried to remember her prayers she'd learned since the time that she was a small child.

As she whispered the Lord's prayer to help her mind quiet and focus on anything else besides the anguish, the pain receded.

It could have been minutes or hours before the doors burst open again. Two Guardians came in and bound her wrists and wrapped cloth around her mouth. She fought with them, twisting her head this way and that until she felt the immediate and blinding flash of a taser working its way through her body as she dropped to the concrete.

"Get up, bitch," one of the Guardians ground out, hauling her up by her arm, and dragging her through the hallways, even as she stumbled to keep up.

They didn't take her to a public viewing as the man who had been beaten two days before. No, they took her to a small room with two chairs, both bolted to the floor as far as she could tell, and the other already occupied: Razor.

A chill ran up her spine as panic gripped her lungs and ice ran in her veins.

The same primal instinct to run as before nearly overtook her, and she fought with the Guardians that held her, but they were too strong and forced her to sit in the chair opposite Razor. Binding her hands and feet to the chair, she could not move. There was no hope to get away.

"It's funny we keep meeting like this," he said in his charming way.

Isla prayed to God - or whomever was left at this point - that this person across from her would not stumble upon her abilities as he entered her mind again, because what else would he be doing here, if not to implant more non-memories into her brain?

If he discovered that she has psychic abilities she was certain she would die. All over the news for the last six months it had become apparent that Guardians had begun targeting humans with abilities parallel to their demon counterparts. If her secret was found out, it would be the end.

He smirked across from her. "Do you know why you're here?"

Isla remained quiet - not by choice, but by fear.

"You spoke out of turn. You rebelled against your Leader. You must remember, Isla: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

The images that Razor had implanted in her mind were their own kind of torture: not the physical kind, but the kind that leaves scars that revisit in the middle of the night. He never found her ability, and she made a vow to herself that she would do nothing to endanger herself ever again.

He came to her window that night, like a Romeo and Juliet metaphor, and called to her, so sweetly. He knew she heard him, and that she couldn't say no. Not to Arnold. Never to him.

She slipped out the back door and into the alley between the houses to his waiting arms. It had felt like an eternity since she'd last let herself melt into his embrace. No one was around now, except the chirps of the night, and she let herself relax.

Arnold stuck out like a sore thumb. When they were together it was obvious that they were of different species, or different races - whatever the scientific term was. He was a demon, and she was a human and it was a stark contrast between them.

Isla, all her life, had been considered tall. She was taller than most of her friends, and her mother, and had black hair and brown eyes. Her skin tone reflected her heritage, and although she had her ability, she was undoubtedly human.

Arnold was different. Standing at six foot five, nearly an entire foot above Isla, that wasn't the most abnormal thing about his appearance. He was large in a way that matched his height - where he was tall, he was also wide and thick with muscle. His skin, blue like midnight, matched nearly perfectly with his hair, which he pulled from his face in a tail down his neck. Golden eyes closed as he embraced her. If looking closely, one would notice his cheekbones, the way they were defined, and his brow slightly lower than most, and small canines just barely peeked from his lower lip.

Together, it was obvious they were physically different, and it was why they'd kept their relationship a secret. The Guardians didn't take kindly to seeing demons and humans together, especially in love. And she did love him. Unequivocally. And he'd said the same to her. They understood each other like the way two instruments fall into harmony together. Or the way that protons and electrons are exactly the same but opposite, and attract each other because of it. Where she was quick to her temper, he was even and calm. Oppositely, he often acted on his emotions in decisions, while she often acted only after very precise and thought-out rationing and examining a situation from every angle. Where he was artistic and loved everything with the arts: music, visual, culinary, and so on, she was scientific and logical.

He enveloped her in every way: his large arms circling her and holding her to him, and his scent, gentle and reassuring like the smell of rain as it hit the earth, they were so him and it broke her heart.

Pulling away, tears were already streaming down her face at what she was having to do. But she couldn't risk it. Not after what she'd already faced in the facility, and after what Razor promised would happen if they continued to see each other. She had to protect him and herself, even if he didn't understand. Surely he would understand, though.

The words died on her tongue as she took him in, however. "What happened to you?" the words were barely a whisper as she reached a hand up to lightly touch his face.

Bruises, dark and ominous, covered half of his face and arms. One eye was nearly welled shut. His bottom lip was cracked and healed, but it was obvious it had bled. Scrapes and wounds covered his arms. Surely there would be more beneath his button-up, but as was usual with Arnold, he kept that fully buttoned and the sleeves rolled up.

"I've received worse," he replied, his voice deep, as his hand reached up to press hers to his face. "I heard they paid you a visit as well."

The tears started again, fresh and raw, as a wound opened inside her chest. "I can't see you anymore." They tore at her, shattering her. As she cried, his kind eyes crinkled in a sad sort of smile.

"They threatened you, didn't they?" She nodded, openly sobbing. And they've hurt me, she couldn't say. Were they listening at that moment? "We can protect you, you know." He wasn't angry, he wasn't emotional, he was calm and sturdy in a way she could never be, and she wanted to stay with him, so badly. But how could she? When other lives were on the line?

The reminder of what he was a part of was like a beacon in the night. The Legion - the other side of the demon-human silent war that had been raging for what felt like eons. She didn't know much about them except that they did not stand for the Guardian injustice and would often launch retaliatory attacks against the Guardians for their crimes against demons. Arnold had joined to find his brother, and had stayed when he saw how the world was crumbling between humans and demons. And Isla couldn't fault him; not for standing up for what he believed in, and fighting for his right to exist. Still, accepting help from the Legion seemed dubious and a bad idea all-around.

She hesitated just long enough that the point was driven home long before she said anything. He nuzzled his face into her hair, taking in her scent, and feeling her against him one last time. "You know where to find me if you change your mind. This is temporary, remember that."

"I don't know for how long," she tilted her face up to his, desperate to believe it would be temporary and she would see him again soon.

"We'll work on it," he replied as he kissed her.

"So where have you been, huh?" Alice asked around her bite of food that they'd gotten from one of the street vendors. It was just a short walk away from the office, but a much-needed walk. Isla had been desperate to leave and get some air - get away from these people who'd condemned her to that… place. It had been a week now, but it felt like an eternity. They sat on a bench just feet away from the edge of the Westminster bridge, where they normally sat at lunch at least once a week.

Alice reminded Isla a lot of Ashley - her bubbly personality and ability to make friends with everyone - Isla had never had that talent. But Alice was also slightly crazy, Isla had deduced, after the first two months in knowing the woman. A few years older than Isla herself, Alice had short-cut hair, always wore something colorful and loud beneath her lab coat, and would always start her own "science experiments" when her supervisor wasn't watching her. Her fiance, Louis, had passed from cancer a year prior, just as Isla had been getting to know her. Isla, having lost Tori, her cousin and best friend, to cancer five years previously, was able to understand in a way that no one else ever could, and they had bonded over it. "Jackie is saying you've had a sick grandmother or something, but I don't believe it," Alice continued.

Alice… didn't believe it? She kept talking, but Isla didn't catch everything. "-but the bags under your eyes suggest otherwise-" she caught as she reached out and clutched Alice's arm like a vise, which immediately took the other girl back, and her talking stuttered to a halt.

"Don't believe it," Isla hissed, trying to convey exactly what she needed without giving too much away. She needed an escape. Maybe if Alice told the right people, Isla could get out of this waking nightmare. Razor and his lackeys were nowhere near where they sat, as far as Isla could tell, which she'd been scanning the crowd as they sat, just in case that asshole came out of the woodwork like the roach he was. "Don't believe it. It's not that, it's-" the words died on her tongue as something wet hit her thigh. Looking down, some of her food had slipped from the plate she held, and landed straight in her lap.

Groaning, she stood. "I want to finish this," she said, setting her pate down next to Alice and heading over to the food vendor to get napkins, which she'd forgotten upon getting her food.

"Okay," Alice lifted her hands in surrender as Isla sauntered away.

Her back was only turned for a moment when she heard her name called by Alice. Turning, she immediately saw the older woman had stood, and pointed over to the edge of the bridge. "Do you see that?" Isla followed Alice's pointed finger, but nothing out of the ordinary caught her attention.

"It's Louis!" The awe and surprise and disbelief that colored her voice was heartbreaking, and Isla didn't want to be the one to tell her that she was imagining things, but that's exactly what this was. No one could bring the dead back to life.

But as she looked back at where her friend stood - or rather, had stood - her stomach dropped. Alice was already closing the distance between the bench they'd come to sit at and the railing of the bridge.

"Alice?" Isla called out, careful not to spook the girl.

"It's him! It's really him!" Alice cried, tears streaming down her face. No one else had noticed the odd behavior yet, and while Isla was wary of attracting unwanted attention if this episode was actually nothing, Isla was several feet from being able to reach her friend.

Even as she ran into the bridge's wall that kept pedestrians from falling into the Thames below, she immediately started to climb it.

Isla's stomach dropped and she dropped what she was holding to sprint towards the bridge's wall.

Time slowed. Sound stopped. She must have yelled, "Get her! She's going over!" Because a few other pedestrians saw what was happening and tried to grab at Alice, but the girl evaded their attempts and stepped off the bridge. As if she was expecting solid ground on the other side.

Isla never heard the sound of Alice hitting the water, but she reached the side of the bridge right as Alice's body bobbed to the surface, unmoving.

Sound came back slowly. Sirens wailed. Someone had wrapped their arms around her and was pulling her away from the bridge. Someone else spoke on their phone. A face came into view, right in front of her, trying to get her to focus on the face. Isla couldn't feel. Couldn't think. Alice. Sweet, eccentric, Alice. Dead. Gone. In an instant.

Isla finally found the energy to bring her eyes to meet the face in front of her, but another's caught her attention just past the woman trying to console her.

Cold enveloped her body, as if she'd been the one to fall into the Thames. Razor's wicked smile and dark eyes greeted her in his promise as he lifted a hand to wave.