Watch the white flesh behind the night
Slowly stitched together, I'll make it right
When you're raised up, into the sky
In our arms tonight we're alive

Resurrection, by Calabrese

Squinting up at the night sky, a young man felt the electricity coursing through the air. A tingle was sent up his spine, hair raising on his head and arms as he shivered. It was a cold night, a pervasive chill in the air. Something was happening tonight. Something big. Or at least, that's what he felt; and he liked to think that he had a good intuition.

He hurried into shelter, his home underneath a decrepit and abandoned house just on the outskirts of the village. As soon as he had made it inside the rain started…

He kept his composure well, but he still felt in his bones that there was a change coming. A big one. He didn't like it one bit. Change never got him anything good. He scowled to himself and replaced the square wood plank that covered the opening to his makeshift home.

Thunder cracked and she ran for her life. She ran so fast that her legs threatened to fall off. She felt the shoddy work of her father failing her, electricity coursing through the bolts sticking out of her body. Panting, breathing so hard her lungs were on fire, she slipped in a puddle of mud.

Picking herself up from the spill, she pushed on, dreadfully aware of her pursuers. Angry people, fire, knives and shotguns and a whole assortment of other deadly instruments meant specifically to kill her.

"I didn't… I didn't mean to do it," she mumbled to herself. "I didn't mean to do it!" she repeated in a harsh scream. "Please stop! I didn't… I can't…" She nearly fell again. She wanted to cry, but she didn't have the time.

She managed to break line of sight with the crowd, going off the beaten path and around the village outskirts in an attempt to find someplace safe. She just needed to breath, needed one moment to collect her thoughts. And that's when she saw the bit of light peeking out of a hole leading to the crawlspace under the house closest to her.

She moved for it without a second thought, throwing the board inward.

After a couple of seconds, she took a breath and scrambled to replace the wood. When it was firmly in place she breathed a sigh, shifting until she was sitting in the most flattering way possible in a skirt. Even with all of the mud and grime covering her thighs, arms and face, she was able to relax.

Until she heard movement.

In a split second she turned and pushed herself back up against the wall, ready to kick herself out through the hole at a moment's notice. The only thing that kept her from doing so was the fact that she didn't see much of anyone in the makeshift room with her.

It was actually quite a nice place to be, she thought. There were a few rugs and blankets scattered over the ground, a nice and comfortable place to sleep she figured. There were a couple of cheap looking lanterns scattered around as well, illuminating the space almost entirely. And it was surprisingly clean, not a single spider web or anything. A bit humid, but not above a level that wasn't expected.

She felt water trickle in from behind her. She pressed down into the earth with her fingers, lifting them up for muddy water to drip down onto her thigh.

A bit of a flooding problem. Though it didn't seem to reach further in. She scanned the crawlspace, suddenly realizing just how cramped it was. And further realizing that she had made it to safety somehow. She didn't hear a thing outside in any direction.

She allowed herself to loosen up, her entire body going slack as she was hit by a wave of exhaustion. She yawned, closed her eyes, and slowly but surely passed out. Or at least, she would have, had she not heard the same sound of movement.

Sure that it wasn't just her mind playing tricks on her she immediately moved to leave.

"Wait, don't leave!" she heard a soft, calming voice speak out. It froze her in place. Several moments passed, and when she finally turned around she jumped up and hit her head on the ceiling.

He was much closer than she had anticipated.

"Ouch! Hey, don't scare me like that," she complained, rubbing at the now sore bump on her head. "That really smarts…" She eyed the boy curiously, the fact that he had willingly came closer to her of his own accord amazed her. It was something that no one had done but her father and that sweet… little girl...

Her gaze was instantly cast downward at the thought of her and the incident that had started this whole mess. If she hadn't have left the castle and been a good girl, she wouldn't have been chased. She never would have…

"Are you okay?" the boy asked. "You don't look too good…" And that was true enough. She was covered in mud and probably coming undone all over the place.

"Not really, no. I'm not okay at all," she admitted. "Everything hurts, and I haven't been here too long but I'm fairly sure that's not normal. That's not normal is it?" The boy shook his head, confirming her worst fears. "You're not scared of me? The last person who saw me tried to hurt me. And then a bunch of other meanies tried to too." She shyly began fiddling with her hair, not too familiar with how exactly conversation is held. But the boy's reactions were promising.

"Well, why should I be afraid of you? You're not trying to hurt me." He grabbed a dirty rag and placed a bucket outside of the crawlspace. "Besides, I haven't really talked to someone near my own age in a while. Most people in town just kind of ignore me."

"Oh, I see." She watched as the boy grabbed the bucket from outside and dipped the rag in the collected rainwater. "What's your name?" He dunked his hand completely into the bucket and paused.

"It-it's Lie. Lie Ren." He turned his head away completely as he grabbed her arm gently and began washing away the mud.

"Okay… M-my father called me Nora. So I'm pretty sure that's my name," she laughed out awkwardly. Ren raised an eyebrow.

"You aren't from around here are you? You talk differently. Not that that's a bad thi-..." He looked down at her arm and froze in shock. Washing the mud away, her skin was pale and almost blue, but what got to him the most was that her hand was literally sewn onto her body. Stitched? Whatever. He shook his head, almost unbelieving.

"You could say that… Please don't scream." Something in her voice made him look up at her face. Caked in dirt and almost sickly pale. But her eyes were of the most beautiful color, they were strikingly vibrant. But they were terribly sad. There was grief, heartache there that he couldn't possibly understand. Even with all that he had lived through. And it looked like it had amassed in the matter of a day or two.

"What are you?" he asked. But there was no disgust, no malice. It was just a question. It still made her expression turn somber.

"A human. I'm… like you. Or at least I want to be human. I just wasn't made like you." She gasped out in surprise when he started cleaning her arm off again. "I'm sorry. I'll leave just as soon as I'm able, I promise-"

"No, please. Stay as long as you need to. I wouldn't mind the company. It gets kind of lonely around here for me. No one really likes an orphan, you know." He scrubbed hard enough to get every bit of dirt off of her, but gently enough around her stitching. Even with him being gentle, though, he could still feel how loose it had all become.

"I, oh. You don't want me to leave? I see… What's an orphan? My father taught me a lot of words but I'm still not that smart," she laughed out nervously.

"It means that I don't have any parents. They both died when I was young, and we were so poor that I just had to go to the orphanage. That's where orphans go to live, I guess. But it was horrible, so I left." He switched arms, stopping every so often to wash off the rag or collect more rainwater.

"...I see." She kept silent and let him finish up. When he put the finishing touches on her face he gave her the rag to clean the rest of herself, and despite their best efforts by the end of it all she was still a mess.

"The rain is stopping, I'm sure you'll be wanting to go back to the castle." Ren adjusted the level of light on his lanterns, conserving what little oil he had left. "Your father is probably worried sick." Silence was all that he was met with. His head snapped to her, just to make sure that she was alright. "Nora?"

For a moment all that could be heard was the rain hitting the mud outside, but when she opened her mouth her words came out wobbly and almost too soft. "I don't want to go back, there isn't anything there for me. Not anymore. They… they chased me back there. I heard him screaming, something about me not being a monster. And then there was blood, and fire, and-and-and then it all happened so fast, and the next thing I know I'm being chased through the wood-" She choked up. It surprised her into silence. She had never once found it so hard to speak. "What is this feeling? I don't like it…"

Ren moved close to her, and without saying a word pulled her into a hug. She choked again, and then sobbed. But after that she made not a sound, and there were tears on his shoulder. So many tears that they soaked the fabric. "I understand," he said. And somehow she knew he did.

For nearly an hour they sat in silence, listening to the rain fall softer and softer until it eventually stopped. And when it stopped, so did Nora's tears.

Ren grabbed her hand and lifted up, inspecting the loose stitch work carefully. Her wrist, her shoulder, her neck… even a finger on her left hand. There was some under her right knee, and he was sure both of her ankles were like her wrists.

Nora placed a hand over her wrist, whining softly. "Everything hurts."

"Well, if you're going to go falling apart, you're going to need someone to keep you all patched up. So, why don't we stick together from now on? We'll leave town. Together. Go somewhere else where we won't be bothered. And I'll always keep you together." He placed his free hand on top of hers. Her skin was soft, despite everything.

"But where would we go? I don't really know how things work…" She held her eyes intently on his hand, holding in just how wonderful the simple contact felt.

"I'll teach you," he said, squeezing her hand gently. "Everything I know and everything you want to know. I promise."

She only really had to think about it for a few seconds, but she couldn't quite get the words out. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say it enthusiastically. But, well… all that would come out was "Boop."

"Boop?" Ren asked, totally confused.

"Boop," Nora replied, placing her finger on his nose.

Author's Notes: Oh boy, bring on that hurt/comfort. The idea was cute to me... But this is just sad and tragic. Took a day and a half to get out properly and even now it feels a bit off. I apologize for the, er, flood of she's and he's. I kind of couldn't figure out how to get their names in without it feeling unnatural early on.

I love the early Frankenstein movies, Bride of Frankenstein is one of my favorites when it comes time to watch something atmospheric for October.

In entirely unrelated news, I'm playing through all the DmC games and I've noticed a huge jump in difficulty on the third one exactly. Getting through the second game was a slog and a half… I got my eyes set on that glorious fifth.