You are locked within my heart

You and me, you and me

By the second beer, Stephen had stopped watching the instant replay in his mind of Nick's hand patting his thigh and had started imagining undressing the woman next to him.

He was no lightweight; he wasn't really drunk yet. But still, his mind wandered to the curves of her body.

She smiled at him, and seductively stood, swaying her hips and turning to grin at him, an invitation. He attempted to focus on this, but his mind inadvertently wandered to Nick, to Nick's gentle yet callused fingers brushing his cheek.

He considered sleeping with this woman, just to get it out of his system, but the guilt sent him out into the night, on an absent-minded walk through the forest.

Stephen knew it was a bad idea; anomalies and such, but some intuition sent him wandering among the trees.

He was about to turn and head back when he found the corpse.

It was another Gorgonopsid, lying on a knot of tree roots, a knife buried hilt deep into its left eye.

Cautiously, Stephen stepped toward it, but it was clearly very dead. His head was spinning. Was there another anomaly? It was the knife that stilled him. Who managed to kill a Gorgonopsid with nothing but a knife, and a very short one at that? But there was a trail of blood across the forest floor. Stephen swept a finger through it and pressed it to his tongue. Human blood.

So he followed it.

What he found shocked him.

A black-haired young woman lay beneath a tree, bleeding from many wounds and frightfully still. She was very thin, and dressed all in black, her leather boots slick and shining with red, red blood.

Slowly, he stepped towards her, although he could make out no sign of life. But when his foot came down hard on a leaf, and she moved, very slightly. He froze as her chest heaved once, and he made a move to get to her, to help her, to do something, but her right hand came into view. In it, she clutched another knife.

Anomaly came to consciousness at the sound. Someone was walking across the leaves: they crunched softly. Wincing, she pulled out her knife, and manage to open her eyes, a slit.

There was a boy, oh, a beautiful boy in front of her, and she had seen beauty but never like this. Her own people were beautiful but this boy, oh, this boy—this man—he looked at her with a gentle compassion in his blue eyes, mixed with shock, as he saw her awaken.

"Stay away." The girl's voice was garbled, and her eyelids were so low that they were nearly closed, but the knife, light glimmering along the thread of its blade, was clearly not a joke. Although, her hand was shaking, and even with the knife, Stephen was fairly confident that he could win a fight with someone nearly unconscious with blood loss.

"You need help," Stephen said softly, making his way closer and closer.

The girl shook her head, blearily. "No."

"You're dying."

"Dead anyway," she rasped, and then, sheathing the knife, flipped herself over and doggedly struggled to drag herself away.

"No; let me help you, all right?" He moved closer, and she yanked herself along.

"The only favor you could do me is to put me out of my misery," she snarled in response, and then moaned slightly, clenching her hand and gritting her teeth, finally fully opening those eyes.

They were silver, a soft, soft silver so pale it was nearly transparent. The color of an anomaly, he realized abruptly.

"Please," he said, and touched her shoulder. "Let me help."

She glared for a moment, and then the life slid out of her. "Alright."

Gently, he pulled her closer, awkwardly sweeping his hands beneath her and lifting her, curled against his chest. "I'm Stephen," he said, an afterthought. "Stephen Hart."

Anomaly wasn't sure what to tell this boy, this Stephen Stephen Hart. A human name, quick. Anomaly is just not normal. Something came to her then, and she opened her mouth, her voice a weak croak.

"My name's Andie."

Stephen nodded and adjusted her in his arms before making his way towards the edge of the trees. "I'll take you to the hospital, okay?"

She shook her head and jerked slightly. "No hospital."

"But—"

"No!" At this she twisted in his arms, and he shifted his grip on her body.

"Okay, okay. At least let me take you to the ARC."

Her eyes narrowed. "ARC?"

"Um . . . it's where I work. We have a medic."

"No."

"You're bleeding."

She leaned away, towards the darkness. "I have medical supplies in my bag." Now that he looked, he could see a backpack nestled beneath the tree roots, which he heaved over one shoulder and moved to carry Andie around the dead Gorgonopsid. She made a soft sound, and Stephen reached out to pull the knife out of the Gorgonopsid's eye with a wet squelch. Gingerly he handed it to Andie, who took it with a slurred murmur of thanks in a voice that was, to his horror, growing weaker.

Suddenly terrified, Stephen sped up, nearly sprinting until he reached his car, the passenger seat of which he carefully put Andie, before he rushed around to the driver's seat and gunned the engine before he's even gotten his seatbelt on.

A rusty sound escaped Andie, one he feared at first was a death rattle, but quickly revealed itself to be a laugh as she looked up at him with a weak, wavering smile.

"What?"

She shook her head blearily. "I'm getting blood on your seats."

Unexpectedly, a smile jerked at Stephen's mouth. "Fuck the seats."

Her head lolled back against the headrest, and Stephen's stomach lurched. "Andie, Andie stay awake!"

One eye opened a slit. "Don't worry Stephen Hart. I have no intention of dying on your watch."

"You better not."

His apartment building came into view, and praising some unknown deity, he plucked Andie up and rushed inside, fumbling with his keys and swearing when he nearly dropped them. But somehow, he got Andie inside.

Her bag clunked to the floor, forgotten, as Stephen banged into the kitchen and dumped her down on the table, doing his best to be gentle, although panic quickened his movements. Why are you so freaked out? He asked himself as he bustled around. All you know about her is that she can kill a Gorgonopsid.

But still, that didn't keep him from ripping open packages of disinfectant, from soaking towels and cleaning out her wounds, from delicately bandaging her injuries and coaxing swallows of water down her throat. Under his ministrations, she slowly began to respond, to be able to tie her own bandages and help him get her clothes off. But when he moved to slide her pants down, her hand clamped viselike onto his wrist.

"Look, you need to just let me—" Andie shoved at him, and he was about to let out a sound of protest when he saw the fear, stark and frantic, in her eyes. He gentled his voice. "I'm just going to look at your wounds, okay? I won't . . ." Won't what?

She stared at him, warily, before slumping and pulling her pants down over her body, revealing her lacerated legs. The cuts were relatively small, although the worst of them was a series of parallel gashes that slashed across her ankle, scissoring through skin and muscle. But what surprised him were the cuts on her inner thigh—frighteningly deliberate markings, too straight and even to have been made by anything but a knife. Most were symbols he didn't recognize, but beneath them; a pair of initials, ones that made his blood run hot: H.C. Helen Cutter.

"How did you get these?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I had an unfortunate sexual encounter," she said quietly.

The blood pounding in Stephen's ears made it hard to think. "Would it perhaps have been with a woman who calls herself Helen?"

Andie's mouth twitched at the corner. "You are shockingly well-informed, my dear Stephen Hart. Have you experience with her?"

"Yes," Stephen said curtly, and daubed peroxide on her cuts. "She did this to you?"

Andie's mouth went flat. "I knew she wanted something, and I told her I didn't have it." She trembled. "It turns out I did have something she wanted."

Stephen touched her arm, looked into those eerie silver eyes. "I'm sorry."

She smiled wryly. "I'm used to people using me, Stephen. It doesn't matter anymore."

"Of course it matters, she hurt—"

Andie leaned forward and covered his mouth. Her skin was warm, feverishly so. It almost seemed to burn him. "It doesn't matter."

She held his gaze for a moment, those eyes glistening in the dim light. And then she jerked away, and that moment was over. "Well. I appreciate the help, but I should probably get going." She made a move as if to stand, and then almost immediately started to crumple.

Stephen grabbed her before she hit the floor. "You can't go like this. Stay the night." She watched him through narrowed eyes.

"Fine. I'll sleep on the couch."

Stephen shook his head. "You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the couch."

Something strange flickered in her eyes then. But, "Thank you, Stephen," was all she said.