"She's a beautiful badass,
an angel raising hell,
a force that can't be stopped.
She is you."
R.H. Sin
The pain to her abdomen pulls Lexi out of the memory and her eyes jolt open. There's light trying to peek through the boarded-up windows, so she knows she's been out of it since last night.
"Wakey, wakey," Thomas snarls to her, then takes his knife to slice across her left arm, close to the same location as the previous cut he'd made.
Lexi refuses to scream, not letting him get that satisfaction. She winces from the pain but holds her gaze on him steady.
"That make you feel tough?" she questions him, "Hurting women, is that how you get your rocks off?"
"You need to know your place," he continues, "But first, let's get to the underlying reason you think you're better than a man."
"Look Dr. Phil," Lexi begins, "You're wasting your time."
"Am I?" he circles her menacingly, "It's always the same with your type. You've been hurt, torn down, broken in so many ways you can't count. All by a man in your life, whether it was your father, brother, boyfriend, or husband."
She wishes she could blame all her broken pieces on a man. It would be so much easier.
Lexi clinches her teeth together as he continues, "So which one was it? Daddy didn't love you enough as a child?"
Being hurt by the one person in the world who's supposed to protect you was far worse.
She doesn't answer him, and he continues, "Maybe your boyfriend liked to smack you around when you didn't behave?"
He runs his thumb across her bottom lip and Lexi grabs it between her teeth, biting so hard it makes her jaw hurt and she can taste the iron in his blood.
Thomas lands another hard punch to her head.
"Are you sure about this?" Sam questioned as he watched Lexi slip her hands into the gloves.
"You sound a little scared Sammy," she smirked back at him and clapped the gloves in front of her face.
She wore black capri leggings with a bright pink tank top and she bounded out onto the sparring mat and bounced from one barefoot to the other. Sam had on a red tank top and black athletic pants and he shook his head as he followed her onto the mat.
Lexi had taken the time to gather gloves and a mat and insisted they all start sparring occasionally to stay in shape and ready if they did have to get hands on in a fight.
He let her get a few hits in and blocked a few more, not really giving his all and she could tell.
"Come on Sam," she sounded annoyed, "You have to fight back."
"I'm not hitting you Lex," he replied.
"Have it your way," the dark-haired girl said and before he realized what was happening, she had kicked the backside of his right knee.
Once his knee was bent from the force of the impact, she used his right thigh as leverage and planted her right foot on it and boosted herself up. She grabbed his shoulders in each hand and lifted herself the rest of the way and before he could catch his balance, she had wrapped her legs around his neck and thrown herself backwards, causing them both to hit the mat hard with their backs.
"Shit," he regained his breath, but she clenched her thighs tighter around his neck and he gasped for air for a moment before frantically tapping her leg.
Lexi let him go and bounced back up to her feet, "Pinned ya!"
He stood up and smirked a little, "Stronger than you look shorty."
"Let's go sasquatch," she clapped the gloves together again.
He tried to pin her, but again she moved quickly and flipped him to his back and had him in an arm bar. She raised her hips higher off the mat, bending his arm against it's will. Sam tapped the side of her head with the hand she had stretched out.
"Pinned ya again," she smirked as he sat up and pulled the gloves from his hands.
"Nice try Simba," Dean called out from where he stood. He had been there leaned against the wall for the whole show, neither one had noticed.
"You wanna go tough guy?" she asked Dean as she gave Sam a hand to help him to his feet.
"I'm good thanks," he replies with a smirk.
"She was a storm.
Not the kind you run from,
but the kind you chase."
R.H. Sin