Author's Note: Hey, all! I'm finally back; spring semester has been a bitch in more ways than one, but I'm on break now, so hopefully I'll be able to put up a substantial portion of this.
This is a Jess chapter, and you all know that neither of us own anything.
Emilia wailed as each hit met its mark, though she bit her fist to stifle her cries until she thought her knuckles would bleed. Her tears, which had first been silent, now swelled into frightened sobs, and she indeed felt herself to be the child that her husband accused her of being; she was helpless, defenseless, powerless as he held her fast, cuffed and clouted. In shame she clamped her hands firmly over her mouth, hoping to strangle the shrieks in her throat, but still they rose and came forth, insuppressible and unable to be stemmed. She crumbled to the ground.
And now the lion's wife cowered, making her no lioness, but a mere lamb. Courage broken and bravery dashed, Emilia lay on the floor in sobs of horror and terror alike, inconsolable in her distressed state and unclear in her senses. O... O...! That she had only heeded the portent of the door!
Did she bleed? Had she bruised? Something broken? She wondered this to herself, faintly, as in a dream; she did so out of instinct-but she did not know-she did not care to know-she felt almost entirely numb, save for the aching of her heart. Her breath would only come in throbbing gasps that smarted her lungs with frigid air, and the sobs would not ebb, no matter what strangulations she subjected herself to.
Only a coward strikes his own wife! Only a coward, a base, roguish coward strikes his wife! The words rushed and flashed and burned inside Emilia's aching skull, but her breathlessness and relentless cries gave her no leave to vocalize them. By and by, her fever seemed to leave her even as she gasped for air.
...It is only the displeasing wife, the ill-mannered shrew, who is struck.