The Night After
It was dark when she woke up. Warm and cozy, with the air full and thick like she'd pulled the covers over her head again while she slept. She always loved waking up in the middle of the night, knowing that she had hours before she needed to wake up and she could drift back to her dreams.
She sighed and shifted a little to find the most comfortable spot to do that. But the bed felt cramped and something heavy was laying across her stomach, restricting movement. Waking farther, she struggled to free her arms from the closeness that didn't feel as comforting now.
Something was wrong, a whisper deep in her head told her. Something was so very wrong.
She couldn't breathe. She wasn't breathing. Her chest hurt when she tried to. Whatever was across her wouldn't budge. It held like iron, trapping arms and body together. Her back was against something equally as solid and there wasn't room or a good angle to try kicking. Her breathless, pained yells died in the muffling close darkness.
She went mad for a time.
Awake again, or at least aware. She didn't think she'd have fallen asleep, but there seemed to be a gap of time from her panic attack to now. Something, sleep or exhaustion, had dulled the terror and now she felt almost numb.
She still wasn't breathing, but she didn't want to think about it again.
Slowly, she started trying to make sense of where she was. It wasn't her bed with the hollow where she always slept that reminded her that it needed to be flipped, always to late for anything to be done about it. The air about her face was close, but nothing was touching her upturned face. A small space? That felt right.
She'd never been bothered by that, skinning through urban mazes with the other children, outdistancing everyone but the older boys. She was small and limber and had been angry at her chest when it had grown so large that it had ended that era for her. After that, the boys didn't see her as a small, dirty tomboy who could be trusted with all of the secret hiding places. Suddenly, she was a girl who didn't have the first clue how to act like one and wasn't sure if she really wanted to.
The darkness was complete and no light was filtering in, but somehow she could see dim shapes. It was... an arm pinning her? There was a brightness to the arm, like it was clad in a white shirt. That was when she noticed that she was dressed in what looked and felt like another dress shirt, very oversized. Her legs were bare, and she didn't think she still wearing any underwear. She stretched her toes out as far as she could, but still couldn't feel the sides of the space she was in.
The owner of the arm was the immovable object behind her. Pushing her head back and up, there was a chin just above her head and her back was being held to the rest of the dress shirt which covered a very non-squishy chest. Male, then, but stronger then she thought possible. Nothing she did made any part of him she could reach move. Her fingers could only feel the soft wool of trousers and the outline of lean hips in them.
She'd never slept with anyone before, so why did she feel so... safe now? Well, safe when she wasn't fending off non-thinking bouts of terror at exactly why she was here and what had happened!
Try to remember. Her head was jammed with cotton wool when she tried to think of last night.
They were called in, her team, to deal with problems in a tiny village. She couldn't seem to find the name of it in the morass of her memories. People were being attacked... by who? And then her team was dead, everyone was dead.
But they weren't staying dead. They were shambling after her, hungry mouths gaping wide as they reached out. These were the ones who had a pet name for her, who treated her, the new girl, like a kid sister. They were a hope of a new family to replace the one that was dead, but now they were so much worse then dead.
I can't shoot you, I just can't, please don't make me...
She ran.
Then there was the man in flowing red, with eyes glowing like stars who talked to her. But he wasn't human either, just another scary thing. She shot at him, but his mad laughter followed her when she ran again.
A church, that should be safe. She could rest there for a moment or so and decide what she could do now that she was on her own.
But it wasn't safe, and she was going to die now, the priest was going to bite her, make her like the rest of her troop. There they were, watching from the pews, staring at her hungrily.
Then he was there again, in his billowing red, and his dark, rolling voice, cursing the monster that held her, telling him he was garbage. The priest laughed at him, and ordered her troops to fire on him.
All the bloody pieces, falling to the ground, all red like his clothes. She felt a pang of something like loss, but he was only another monster, wasn't he?
The darkness pooled and formed and the dark laughter was back, the madness in it deeper now.
She was grabbed closer, hearing the dull snap of at least one of her ribs giving way, but she was too numb to feel the pain. She was a hostage, something she hated the very idea of. Why her? She didn't want to be the damsel in distress. As long as she could remember, she always wanted to be the hero, like her dad. At least he was long dead, and would never know she'd failed.
But the rich voice was talking to her now, asking if she wanted to live, if she wanted to come with him. Her mouth was so dry, she couldn't speak, could hardly understand what he wanted her to say. He demanded that she answer him. He'll kill the one that was using her, that had killed her new family. Oh, say yes, what else is there?
Then she closed her eyes, and felt the punch in her chest. She was already numb, and there wasn't pain in this yet, it was just too big. The stone floor almost felt soft as she slammed into it. The skittering thought ran through her brain that at least she didn't have to worry about the broken rib. She almost laughed, almost as insane as the one who shot her.
She couldn't draw a breath and it bubbled in her throat, an odd sucking feeling when she tried. She was being lifted up, and arms were around her, holding her. At least she wasn't alone, even if she couldn't have someone who cared. Her eyes opened, and she looked into his eyes, as bloody as what was gushing out of the ruin of her chest.
He grinned like a maniac. "This is the part where you're supposed to close your eyes." And miss the last moments of her life? She stared at him until his grin widened and he lowered his head to her neck. Something that wasn't pain, because she still couldn't feel any, stabbed at her throat. There was a sensation of falling into velvety darkness and his voice followed her, every word a caress to her battered, weary soul. The meaning of them was gone, but they'd wrapped her in comfort even more then the blanket he found and tucked around her before picking her up like a toy.
They were leaving that place, that was all she cared about. All the wreckage of her life, all her friends, all of it gone and she was glad she didn't have to deal with any of it yet. There were bright lights, and jumbled voices and a stern woman with long pale blonde hair who wanted her gone, who was angry about something. But he kept her tucked in his arms safely, and when he asked her to agree with him, she nodded her head like a puppet. She'd have done anything he asked her at that point, as long as it didn't mean he'd put her down.
After that... after that, she did drift off to him talking to her, letting the honeyed sounds wrap around the blank space where her thoughts should have been. Nothing after that, until she'd woken up here.
The arm shifted around her a little bit, and the body behind her moved.
"Ah, you're awake already, Police Girl. Good." The dark velvet of his voice filled the small area, echoing deep inside her.
