Chapter. 2: Split their stems and watch them bleed.
"Why would I go anywhere else, if you're here?"
The honeyed eyes on hers are filled with starlight, and a kindness so innocent and genuine she could lose herself in them for an eternity. Filled with an emotion so fathomless that she feels she could drown. As vast as the velvet skies above them. Endless. It set her belly alight and made her heart stutter. Her pale hand lapsed to grip hers, their fingers lacing, holding for a second and squeezing shyly.
"I think... I mean, I hope... we're more than just friends. And, I want...To be together... as girlfriends."
The lips that touched hers were dry and chapped, soft and shy. The kiss shared as delicate as the brush of a butterfly wing. She sighed softly through her nose as the moment of sweet intimacy ended, pale lashes fluttering open and smokey green widening in confusion. The golden gaze of star fire had faded, replaced instead with moons of aquamarine and freckled constellations.
"You've no idea how much I've missed you, Vi…"
A sharp gasp of breath skims over Violet's lips and her eyes snap open, glazed with confusion and exhaustion. Her body hurls Violet to her feet, chest heaving, lungs battling the suffocating sensation of her heart throbbing against the cage of her ribs. With conflicting voices, Clementine's genuine warmth and Minnie's stiff affection, still ringing in her ears Violet's pupils dilate in her panic and the weak light that spills through the bars of her cell as she tries and fails to focus on anything in front of her.
Anything else but the images that her treacherous and muddled mind insists on showing her.
Anything but Clementine smiling lovingly at her. Wide, expectant eyes that fell to her lips, watched in delight the flicker of pink of Violet's tongue touching the barely parted seam to her mouth as she collected the lingering taste of their kiss. Anything but the softening of the strange expression that had shadowed Minnie's features as she had tended to the wounded blonde. Anything but the soft words Clementine breathed to her with a fondness that was so achingly familiar in a voice so strangely new. Anything but that brief moment Minnie, her Minnie, had shone through the raider facade and the delicate brush of lips barely skimming her temple in a kiss that Violet distinctly recalls leaning into.
Anything.
Anything but guilt has taken a strangle hold upon her throat. A palpable pressure that crushes down and makes every breath that she pulls into her lungs a struggle. Anything but the self loathing that twists its gnarled fingers into her mind, drawing forth even more images to storm her thoughts. Images that twist and bleed into each other in a confusing kaleidoscope of stars and stinging smoke. Of warming smiles and screams of battle. One twist, a shift in perspective, and the memories staining each other churn into a chaotic, intimate dance of truths and fictions. Fraying threads that tangle into a noose-man's knot of blame and doubt, tightening around her neck.
Her fingers crawl into her hair, tangle around the dirty blonde locks and pull. Grounding herself just barely enough with the sting and burn of her torn up scalp for her lids to fight back the tears scorching in the corners of her eyes and the anguished scream tearing at her throat.
Anything… please!
The sudden, chilling clash of steel on steel rents the air around her ears. Swallowing the thunderous roar of her internalized torture with bullets of agony that ricochet painfully inside her skull and tongues of misery that lance behind her cracked eyelids. From between the bars protrudes a dulled, cruel muzzle of a gun heavily stained with a muddied red that could easily been either aged blood or rust.
For a moment, Violet simply stares into the deadly void thrust toward her. Bewitched and ensnared by the grinning maw that she is keenly aware could end her in an instant should the raider behind the glock have an itchy trigger finger. Helpless to do much more than watch and wait, the moment drags on agonizingly slowly for a dozen throbs of her heart. Eventually, the weapon is drawn back and holstered at the mercenary's hip and dark, dangerous eyes observe the imprisoned teen as she swallows thickly at the saliva that fled her mouth and gathered in her throat.
Lilly simply twitched an eyebrow in a wordless assessment of her prisoner. Now that the girl was more lucid and clearly more aware of her situation, if the hardening of pale green eyes and the tensing of her undernourished frame were any indication, her suitability as a new candidate for the Delta's military division would be more evident. And Minerva's possible lies to try and save her former girlfriend more obvious.
The woman shifts her stance from one of military stiffness and dominance into one of casual lounging. Bracing her right arm to the bars to cushion her brow as she leans against the barred door, her left hand stuffed deeply in her jacket pocket. While the rigidity of her body had eased, the cold tinge to her smirk remained. "Finally on your feet I see."
Violet bristles under the woman's smug tone and cold eyes. Her skin crawls and blood itches, as though insects swarm beneath her flesh, and her rebellious teenage nature insists that she sit, simply to spite the woman and her assumed authority. But the strange feeling that the woman stirs up in her continues to churn around in Violet's belly. Curbing her disobedience but not her tongue or her smirk as she notes the shadow of discomfort that shifts across Lilly's face. A subtle ripple of flesh tightening the woman's lips and the twitch beneath her eye as she discretely rolls the stiffness from her right shoulder.
The shoulder that Violet had loosed an arrow into two weeks prior.
Lilly's own gaze sweeps over the captive teenager in the cell, her pained smirk spreading wider as she draws her hand from her left pocket. Lilly had caught the minute curve that twitches at the corners of Violet's mouth and follows the satisfied flicker in the girl's gaze as it settled on her injured shoulder momentarily before darting away, and now, as she raises the apple fished from her pocket to her mouth, her calculating eyes observe the bolstered confidence in the blonde's posture with a predatory interest.
"You have a sharp eye." Lilly's words come muffled from around the crunch of sweet and tart flesh as her teeth sank through the skin of the apple. Hand pausing only to tap her knuckle to her wounded shoulder, indicating that she'd caught Violet's wandering eye. "Either that or you got off a lucky shot."
Violet simply scowls darkly at her captor, making no effort to move beyond folding her arms across her chest, guarding herself against the goading voice. "You got lucky. I was aiming for your head."
Cheeks filled and jaw working, Lilly crunches up the mouthful. With every chew her mouth opens, treating Violet to a view of partially masticated fruit and the gross, wet smack of her lips. After a handful more chews she swallows and swipes the back of a hand across her mouth, eyes the fruit and takes a second swinging bite as she sneers. "So, shit aim and a lucky shot."
The blonde's narrow hip cocked to the side with a shift of her weight, eyes rolling and her words come clipped and cold as she scoffs. "Slide your gun in here and I'll show you just how shit a shot I am."
Lilly threw her head back and laughed at that proposal. Not the same dusky, throaty chuckle that Violet has heard before, bouncing down the corridor from the galley where the rations were held, but a loud and mocking bray that dripped derision. The laughter ends as suddenly as it began and Lilly's dark eyes narrow, hardening instantly and met Violet's challenging expression with her own severe one.
"You had your chance, more than one actually, and you fucked up." Her words carry with them the subtle hint of anger, echoing the emotion that her features contorted into. "You don't get any more."
The dark light that sparks behind Lilly's eyes chilled Violet to the bone and she felt her whole body instinctively tense beneath the threat, thinly veiled among words that could easily be seen as a passing comment. She casts her gaze to her feet and considers the statement warily, her chest tightening as her fury slowly churns alongside the first stirrings of dread.
She feels trapped. Not just by the bars that keep her caged like some feral junkyard dog -showing her teeth to her master in fear and rage- but also by the careful isolation that Lilly has implemented over the last twenty four hours. Ever since she regained consciousness, Violet has neither seen nor heard from or of Omar and Aasim beyond the basic knowledge of them also being captives. And even Minnie has been strangely absent.
Only the mean and dangerous faces of Lilly's people have been her company, watching her, leering at her, as they came to her in strange rotating shifts that were never equal in length, and they always, always drew her attention them. If she had been dozing when the guard had passed, she was sharply woken with a curt shout or heel slamming the door. When she had to reluctantly force herself to squat over the piss bucket in the darkened corner, her eyes had lifted at a sharp whistle only to find some greasy creep watching her, his cruel eyes dancing in grotesque delight and his lips twisted up in a perverse grin. And now, finally, the isolation from her friends and her home, the violations to her dignity and pride were taking their toll on her mental state.
Lilly knew what she was doing.
She was furious and scared, frantic and humiliated… And completely alone.
Thunk.
An apple, the half eaten apple that had been in Lilly's hand just moments ago, rolls across the cell floor, stopping only as it bumps against Violet's boot, bitten side down. The teen's eyes flicker down, her lips pressing together in disdain at the offering.
"Eat it."
Violet rolls her eyes from the partially eaten fruit resting against her foot and over to Lilly, peering through the bars at her. Taking in the smug twist painting her lips and sinister shadows that shift in those dangerous, dark eyes. Violet suppresses the cold chill that floods her bloodstream as she feels her whole body snap rigid. Some primitive instinct catching on the subtle threat in the body language of the more dominant woman. Her movements slow as she draws her arms up around herself, shoulders hunching and the emotion in her eyes clouding over. Her mental defenses slam back into place and begin to reconstruct around her, shutting down and shutting away her vulnerability as quickly as possible and replacing it with a feeble flare of defiance.
Lilly's smirk lessened then. Her lashes lower and her tongue clicks in a mocking, scolding tone, almost as though she were reprimanding a disobedient toddler for turning their nose up at their vegetables as she shakes her head slowly. "We don't waste food at the Delta. Scraps get fed to the pigs." Her shuttered lashes part again, to better scrutinize her young potential recruit, and that smug grin crawls back into place on her mean and twisted features. "So, you pick that up and eat it!"
"I'm not hungry." The teen winces at the nervous quiver in her voice. Strained under the suffocating swell of fear and betrayal. The slow comprehension of just how dire her situation truly was finally seeping into her thoughts and settling weightily in her chest. Passing her tongue over her dry lips the blonde croaks. "And I'm not Delta."
"Yet."
That single word hangs ominously in the air between them and sends a violent chill through the blonde.
The tight fist that has been balled in her chest since Lilly had appeared outside her cell tightens further and something in her rational mind finally snaps. With a confused and strangled snarl of anger, tinged with unfettered fear, Violet burst forward and snatches up the fruit in one hand as her fingers on the other curl around the heavy steel door barring her path. A defiant and challenging light ignites in the smokey gray undertones of the peridot green of her eyes. "Ever!"
Lilly doesn't move. Doesn't even flinch at the seething teens charge. She simply slouches there, watching her, dark lashes slipping over dirty brown orbs rhythmically as she breathed out two words that carry more menace and malice than they had right to. "We'll see."
For a beat or two the adult and teen simply stand there, scowling at each other, nose to throat, before Violet swings her jaw wide and savagely bites into the half eaten apple. And, despite herself, finds herself relishing the tanging sweetness of the fruit as its ripe flesh breaks easily beneath her sharp teeth.
Wet and crisp, the soft crunch fills her ears as the rich flavor of the fruit fills her mouth and sends her salivary glands into overdrive.
She'd never have imagined just how much she'd miss fruits and vegetables in her diet until the apocalypse hit. She hasn't tasted fruit in several years, not since her fifteen year old self had stumbled upon vaguely familiar berries in the forest. In her adolescent haste, she had snagged a handful of what she had wrongly assumed to be huckleberries to sample, only to be quickly disappointed by the bitter taste that burned her lips and tongue. Her disappointment was swiftly followed by regret when a horrified Ruby informed her that she had actually eaten Virginia creeper berries and, within the hour, a firestorm of nauseous agony had cramped her belly, taken her to her knees and a mortifying case of the shits had her doubled over for days.
Since then, she'd stuck to the familiar wild vegetables, nettles and edible flowers like dandelions that Omar would collect. So the clean taste of apple that teases Violet's tongue is both heavenly and torturous, and she so badly wants to swallow. But the glint of triumph in Lilly's eye and the gloating smirk on her lips is infuriating her beyond all reason. Prickling her irritation into rage. So she slows her chewing and narrows her eyes, fixing her sight on Lilly's as she arcs her head back, hawks together the mess of pulped up apple and phlegm into her mouth and spits. Violet allows herself a moment to enjoy the satisfaction of watching the mess splatter the bitch's face and slither down her chin before she hurls the remainder of the apple as hard as she can through the bars, wild fury blazing in her green eyes.
"Fuck you!"
An instant later Violet's head snaps to the side. The fury in her eyes dampening as they widen in shock, her cheek burning beneath the stinging slap of the military woman's hand. Stumbling backwards a step, Violet raises her shaking fingers to graze her reddened skin as she stares with unabashed wonder at the the tall figure of her captor drawing back her hand through the bars and glaring hatred at her.
"You ungrateful little shit!" The contorting rage in Lilly's face is terrifying. Twisting up her features into inhuman grimaces and bestial snarls. But what terrifies the teen more so is the way that the darkened fury suddenly ebbs, how the lips carve upwards cruelly and the calculating gleam in her eye swallows up the hardened edges to the muddied discs. "Dorian!"
"Ma'am?" A gruff, disembodied voice drifts from the galley end of the corridor, followed by the reverberating squeals of a protesting chair being roughly shoved backwards and the thuds of heavy boots slowly journeying down the narrow walkway.
"How are we faring for firewood?" Lilly lifts her arm to her face and scrubs her sleeve against the mess of Violet's saliva and rejected apple. Her dark eyes flicker to the side, guiding the blonde's own as she delivers her questions to her subordinate in a voice that was deceptively light and unsettlingly placid. "For the engines?"
A dark-skinned women, hard faced and dead eyed, eases partially into sight to stand at Lilly's side. A raider that stirs up a vague sense of recognition in Violet's mind, but not enough for her to confidently place her in her clouded memories. The new mercenaries fingers flex menacingly around the grip of her rifle and her eyes, bottomless pits of shadows, harden as she watches Lilly scuff at her face with her sleeve one final time before she responds. "We ain't low. But ain't a bad idea to get more in, b'fore the herd circles back around."
Lilly's gaze swings back around, her eyes catching and holding Violet's eye-line as the corners of her mouth twitch upwards in a knowing grimace. Stepping back on her heel, the woman turns to leave. "Find Minerva. Tell her she has a job to do." She pauses and delivers one final glance toward the captive blonde before she vanishes from sight, leaving only her parting words in her wake. "And bring the girl up to the main deck after. There's something she needs to learn."
A rough, unexpected shove between her shoulders sends Violet pitching forward. Deep rooted instincts have her throwing out her lead foot in a valiant effort to correct her balance while her arms; zip-tied at the wrist and twisted up against her spine, strain painfully, uselessly, to come to her front to catch herself and break her fall should she trip. A few uneven trotting steps keep the blonde upright but did little to ease the discomfort of the anxious knots coiling in her belly. Or to soothe the way that her heart flutters in her throat as though it were a panic stricken bird in a feather storm of motion, clamoring for freedom.
"Getchyer ass movin', girl."
Chest heaving and her temper short from the adrenaline singing through her veins, Violet throws a scowl over her shoulder. Her sharp gaze catching on the dark, almost black, eyes that peer coldly at her from beneath hooded brows and the thick lips that purse together in a tight emotionless line. "Lilly don't like t'be kept waitin'."
The derisive scoff rolls off of Violet's tongue and out of her mouth before she can think to prevent it, only for the arrogant sound to be rewarded with a second sharp shove, this time from the sinister maw of the rifle at her back instead of a hand. Catching herself from the stumble for a second time and not willing to risk a third, the teen lowers her gaze and watches her feet take the steps that carry her further from her cell and closer to the main deck where Lilly would be waiting for her.
Dorian's steps echo around her as they fall with the confidence of someone who knows that they are large and more heavily armed than their prisoner. Someone who considers themselves untouchable. And, to Violet's dismay, she finds her own feet awkwardly mimic the strange rhythm. Like she was someone who was still learning military discipline, manipulated by the strange and uncomfortable marching quality and adapting her steps to match of Dorian's own.
Like a good little soldier.
Her heart clenches at that thought. Something so insignificant such as her footfalls matching those of her companion's being turned upon her cuts her as sharply as any blade. No longer an endearing little quirk that a younger Minnie had declared to be cute as she had dropped her first shy kiss to her nose. No longer a sign of the companionable ease she had felt with Clementine as they strode back through the iron gates of Ericson's after clearing a path through the walkers for their stranded hunting party. Now it carries with it the ominous undertones of a future she doesn't want and hasn't asked for. Something she feels powerless to stop.
And that terrifies her.
Her lips tighten into a colourless line, her bound hands clenching and unclenching into fists at her back and she is so twisted up in her miserable thoughts and memories that she almost misses the strange rumble of multiple footsteps echoing down the corridor. A corridor that should have been empty save for herself and her escort.
Daring to lift her gaze just enough to peer through her lashes, Violet feels her heart stutter as relief floods through her. Moving toward her, bound by their own wrists, are Aasim and Omar. Alive and mostly unharmed. Though, even from this distance the blonde can easily make out the blossoming bruise that discolours Aasim's jaw and the limp in Omar's uneven pace from the bullet wound in his knee, and then she sees the terror in their roving eyes. A terror that, as soon as those frantic orbs land on Violet's face and spy her lips parting, had both boys silently shaking their heads and turning away from her.
And it hurts. Her whole body seems to spasm, tensing up as though wracked by simultaneous cramps as her friends, her family of the last eight years, turn away from her. It hurt her to flinch away from her two almost brothers as they pass her. Away from their silence so palpable that feels as though the air is too thick and her airway too narrow for her to breathe properly. And it hurts as she lowers her own head in defeat.
Her desire to keep fighting is ebbing. It would be so much easier if she simply gave up.
So Violet keeps her head hung low, her eyes glued to her feet bobbing in and out of view as she continues to trek miserably toward the bow of the ship, toward Lilly. Only glancing up when she hears a cacophony of voices barking orders, affirming said orders as all meld together with the gut chilling hiss of an enraged walker and rushing water.
"Michael! Get that rope on it!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Gad! Watch your aim! It'll be useless if you put that through its head… fucking idiot." The last two words are muttered as Lilly twists her head over her shoulder. Her focus shifting away from directing her men as her lips part into a wide and sickeningly sweet smile as soon as her gaze falls to the bound teenager. "Ah, Violet, wasn't it? I do hope you'll forgive me, I am so very bad with names."
Her lips creep higher as she holds her hand up, halting her men in their duties before she turns. Taking in the minuscule tremble that shivers through her captive before directing the blonde's gaze toward the bloated, waterlogged living corpse, now dangling just barely below the upper guard rail. Its arms are secured down by thick cords of rope and a harpoon skewered through its cheek directs its gnashing teeth. "I thought you might be interested in joining us for a spot of fishing. Minerva told us so many stories of how good a fisher-woman you were for the school, so I thought perhaps it might serve a good bonding experience for you and me. You see…"
And suddenly Lilly is right there, clearing her throat unsettlingly close behind Violet's ear. The rough sound stirring up an icy chill and sending it flooding through her thrumming blood just as the muscles in her shoulders bunch up against the steel grip of the woman's hand on the back of her neck. "While I've found your fighting back to be... amusing, my patience is fast running out. And when it does, well-"
Cruel amusement touches Lilly's dark eyes as her grip on the thin neck has Violet's chin tilting toward her. Finally finding the terror that she wants to see in those wide, green eyes as the blonde quickly realizes the scene about to unfold. Lilly has her attention now, all that is needed is one final push. "You won't like the consequences."
Her hand shoots upwards. Fingers twisting tightly into the girl's blonde hair and gripping as she pulls her around and ignores the desperate pleas that rip from Violet's throat. The hardened woman hauls and drags the stumbling teen across the deck before forcing and pinning her between her own large frame and the snarling creature dragged up from the murk of the riverbed. Still swinging gently against the hull like some grisly pinata.
"The Delta breaks everyone eventually, Violet." Violet can barely make out Lilly's cold words as they twirl about her ears. Mingling with a dark chuckle that rumbles deep in the woman's throat and warping it into a sound that's almost akin to the guttural growl of the walker snapping up at the blonde bent over the rail.
Lilly digs her nails into Violet's scalp and raises her knee to press painfully against her back, stilling the frantic struggling beneath her and forcing the girls face even closer to the bloated walkers swinging jaws.
"Question is, what will it take to break you? Should I take your finger? Cut out that sharp little tongue of yours? How about the lives of the friends you came in with? Or your precious Minnie? Or maybe... Clementine?"
Her eyes screw shut against the nightmarish creature that writhes furiously beneath her and, with the woman's sinister words eddying around her ears, Violet twists wildly in Lilly's grasp. She doesn't recognize the voice that echoes around her skull, the shrill and desperate cries that punctuate Lilly's own voice, but she does recognize the humiliating burn in her throat that tells her that the screams are her own.
She wants to fight. To scowl. To meet Lilly's eye with defiance and prove that she is the hardened survivor that she has grown into... but she can't.
She can't suppress the terror that rolls off of her in crushing waves. Can't stop the quivering whimpers that dribble from her lips and she can't hide the trembling of her body as the woman holds her there. Her cheek just barely out of reach of the deadly swinging jaws. Violet can't even stop her body from falling rigid at the sensation of something warm and slimy barely tracing over her cheek, frozen when she realizes it to be the tip of the walkers protruding tongue, straining for a taste of warm meat. As she waits for the teeth to slam shut and tear the flesh from her face, the harpoon speared through the walkers own rotting cheek twists, yanking its face aside and ensuring that the deadly teeth remain just barely out of reach of her. Though the distance is not so great as to prevent her gagging on the putrid stench of rot and mold that waft over her face and filled her nose in hot growling blasts.
"No matter what it takes, I promise you, it won't be quick. And it won't be painless. I will let your friends turn and leave you to clean up the mess your stubbornness made." Lilly whispered in a voice so low that Violet has to stifle her shudder. It almost feels as though the words were oozing directly into her mind like venom. It was a subtle motion that didn't go unnoticed by the mercenary; whose smirk carves a deeper crease upon her face. "Or, you can save them. You can save all of them. All you have to do is stop fighting me."
A string of curses rents the air. Drawing Violet's attention away from Lilly and her threats, to the flurry of motion that was suddenly unfolding around her. Surprise shorts out her intelligence and fear renders her unable to decipher the clamoring words into a dialect that she can understand. All that she does understand amid the chaos, was the wet, sticky sound of rancid flesh tearing and the excited howl of a walker baring down on its prey.
Heat licks through Violet's veins as her blood thrummed through her temple, and ice slams into her belly; cold and numbing, as comprehension floods into her startled eyes. Her knees buckle beneath her in an attempt to drop her but her body remains bent against the rails. Lilly's knee, still dug in her spine, preventing her from crumpling to the deck.
"Shit!"
The fingers twisting tightly in her hair grip more firmly and snaps her head backwards. Cutting off her panicked screams as her throat constricts under the violent motion and she is hurled clear of the deadly gnashing teeth. Scalp stinging and her coordination clumsy, Violet scrambles to kick herself further away from the scene unfolding in front of her. Further away from Lilly as she bends herself over the rail and digs her clawed fingers into bedraggled creatures rotting scalp. Her vision blurring under the sting of terrified tears as she catches sight of the dozen blonde strands dangling from Lilly's outstretched fingers that gesture wildly between the teenager and Dorian before she reaches for the knife sheathed at her thigh.
"This recruitment pitch is over! Take her back down to the cells!"
The soft indigo's of twilight gradually stole away the muted golden hues of the day. And, as the light ebbed, so did the suns warmth until all that was left was the chill that rolls up over the glassy black water and carries with it the promise of a cold night to come.
Tonight, as she patrols the narrow corridors of the ship, Minerva's footsteps aren't so strident. Almost completely devoid of her usual confident tread and with little evidence of the military discipline instilled into her over the year. But she pays it little mind as she increases her pace to a brisk saunter, too lost inside her head where her thoughts are in chaos, a maelstrom of contradictions and conflicting emotions.
Finding Louis alive and learning that Tennessee was safe; hearing who all had survived the raid had eased the strange and unsettling sensation that had engulfed her chest ever since her time spent with Violet. It was almost as though there has been a boot crushing down on her sternum ever since she'd left the Delta and now, knowing that the three held in their cells were not all who remained of her old group, she found she could breathe properly again.
But the heart warming reunion between friends had been short lived, the mood quickly turning sour as the conversation naturally progressed to talk of the attack. Minerva's soft, open expression had hardened and chilled the moment the new kid, Clementine, had taken control of the narrative and redirected it to the welfare of the Delta's captives. The arrogance in the younger teens stance, her dominant posturing and intense golden glare as she spoke, immediately had the redhead curling her lip and returning the scowl with one of her own.
"We had to fight."
"No. You didn't. Clementine knew that, and she made you fight anyway."
"That is some grade-A horseshit. Clem saved us."
The words from their argument fluttered formlessly about her ears, but her skin prickled against one intrusion even more so, like feather light touches cautiously tracing over a raw wound. A tentative invitation issued by Clementine herself.
"It's not too late, Minnie. You could come back to the school with us."
It had unsettled her even more so than the resurfacing of her fondness for Violet, and her temper had shortened considerably with the strange discomfort that was coiling her guts up into knots.
Fucking Clementine!
Sinking her teeth into the inside of her cheek, Minerva forces herself to move just a little faster, breaking into an easy jog. Slowing her pace only to avoid tripping up stair cases or to nimbly slip past her people as she hauls herself around corners. Pausing just long enough to slap on the occasional storm lantern strung to the pipes and hooked into the steam fed generator.
When Minerva ducks down the dimly lit corridor of hastily converted cell,s her heart is pounding and her breathing is sightly labored from strange urgency that drives her movements. Her eyes dart away from the huddled figures of Omar and Aasim; curled up in the corners of their cell, and across to the other occupied one that held their final captive. She peers inside the barren room where her shadow, coupled with the lack of proper lighting mingles with the darkness of the night that spills inside and swallows everything inside. Everything, save for the ashen blonde hair turned pale blue, bathed in the soft glow of the moonlight.
Minerva leans in close, her fingers curling around the bars and voice pitching low as she called out to the girl caged inside. "Violet?"
No response. Just the slender body shrinking smaller, curling in further on itself.
"Vi. Come on. I need to talk to you… it's important." Leaning back and stealing a careful glance toward the galley, ensuring that none of her companions had rotated in to watch their new recruits, Minerva huffs out a sharp breath in a silent sigh. Pressing closer and dropping her tone a little more the redhead hisses.
"It's about Clementine."
Minerva sees the way that the muscles in Violet's shoulders jump, sees the sedate way that she lifts herself onto her feet, and her chest tightens unpleasantly as she watches the slow shambling way that the blonde moves. Her steps short and stuttering, as if she were in a stupor, replacing the familiar temperamental swagger that usually carried her.
Silently, Violet halts her travels and settles herself, still shrouded in shadows, against the cell wall. Her thin arms thread together over her chest as her jaw shifts, teeth worrying her lower lip as a spark of something flickers within the shadows of her hooded gaze. Minerva can feel the unease thrumming from her former girlfriend's hunched frame, thickening in the air until she can almost taste her fear. Every movement, every motion she makes is carefully considered, calculated and cautiously executed. And when Violet's eyes finally slide over to the redhead, the hollow gaze elicits a chill to flood through her veins as she struggles to pin those darting orbs with her own.
"Clem?" She looks so broken. So hollow. Like a wraith. A shell of the girl she had once been.
"She was out there. Skulking around." The young mercenary's voice falters as she finds herself holding Violet's vacant stare. Sees a glowing ember capture the banked emotions and ignite the silver that edged the watercolour green into something hopeful. Minerva feels her own gaze harden at that, feels her lip curl as the next words left her lips on an undercurrent of spite. "She's not coming back for you, Vi. It's suicide."
"You don't know that." Pale lashes slip over shifting eyes as Violet's voice catches in her throat, closing for a moment before flickering wide, the ember burning in them a little brighter and her voice a little stronger. "Why else would she be out there?"
"Hell if I know." The redhead scoffs, her lips curling into a grim smirk. "The girl put a damned knife to my throat. Doesn't exactly strike me as someone playing with a full deck, y'know?"
Violet drops Minerva's gaze for a moment and takes a small, shaky breath. She's hesitant seeming to consider her words, until she lifts her eyes once more. "And Lilly is?" Her fingers flex and curl around her biceps, rubbing the thin worn out fabric that covers them idly between her thumb and forefinger. "Because I'd take Clem's brand of crazy over Lilly's sanity any day."
Shit! Lilly.
If Lilly knew… If Minnie reported sighting Clementine so close to the ship...
It took a moment for Violet's thoughts to pierce the mist of panic that descends in her mind like static and another moment for them to settle long enough for her to form her next words, a concerned question that she blurts as soon as they came to her. "Minnie? Did you..." She shivers, gasping and gulping down painfully large mouthfuls of air in a vain attempt to ease the rapid rise and fall of her chest. "Did you tell Lilly that you saw her?"
Minerva's brow furrows, marring her pale skin, confused when Violet refuses to look her in the eye.
"What does it matter? We're coming back to take the rest of them in a couple of weeks." Then she notices, even through the gloom, that her ear tips appear slightly reddened, somewhat heated and her movements were cautious, guarded as she aimed her gaze anywhere but at her.
That had been the moment; as Violet avoided her eyes and a hint of a blush had settled across her sharp cheekbones, that Minerva decided that the younger teen was hiding something from her.
"Shit. You… you like her, don't you?" The redhead's voice comes low and monotonous, with an undertone that almost bordered on dangerous. A shrug of the blonde's shoulders, a shift of her attention and Minerva felt a pang of irritation twinge behind her ribs. And then her irritation flares into an anger that she firmly decides was to be directed at both the girl behind the bars and the girl she'd met in the woods. "You do ."
Violet swallows. Hard. And nods slowly.
Minerva gave a single bark of laughter in response to the feeble admission. "Nice to know I'm replaceable."
The blonde cringes, flinching under the bitterness in Minerva's voice. "That's not fair! I thought you were gone. I was told you were dead. And Clem…" Violet draws a shuddering breath and wraps her arms tighter around herself, tears stinging behind her lashes as she blinks furiously. "It was nice having someone to talk to again. Nice not feeling so god damned alone."
"Nice while it lasted you mean." Minerva can't prevent the sneer edging into her voice, doesn't even try to, as she folds her arms over her chest. "Because I'm looking around and you seem pretty fucking alone to me. No Clementine in there keeping you company. No Clementine coming to save you." Her voice softens then, her lips pulling into a tight, grim smirk. "Louis looked pretty chummy with her though. Real cozy. Had each others backs out there. Guessing they did during the raid too. Let the pawns take the blows while the king and queen watch. Face it, Vi. She played you."
"That's not…" Violet desperately blinks back tears as the familiar buzzing haze of confusing images and conflicting emotion fogs her mind again. Of relief chilling into icy fear. Eyes of gold turning from her and a mist of crimson spraying into the air across the yard. Of flames swallowed up in pain and darkness. "That's not what happened. You don't understand-"
"No! You don't understand!" Minerva spat. Her hand shot out to grab hold of the bars as she moves closer, even as Violet shrinks back into shadows. Backing away from the onslaught. "You think they care? They don't! I've tried your way. Their way. Tried to fight the wrong people. Tried to leave the Delta. All it accomplished was…" She shook her head slowly, eyes closing as her tone softens. "Getting Sophie killed."
Something twists sharply behind Violet's ribs, a flutter of sympathy for the devastated girls hidden behind the anger. "Minnie… I-"
But Minerva interrupts her sharply, almond shaped eyes hardening and voice chilling once more. "For someone so convinced she's not a soldier, you sure were quick to march into war for your general. For Clementine."
Unable or unwilling to meet Minerva's cold eyes again, Violet shifts her gaze to a spot over her shoulder, her voice barely a whisper. "Clem taught us to protect ourselves. To survive. A bunch of kids left-"
Rifle shots explode in the stillness of the night, tearing through Violet's words and bouncing along the corridor, ringing around the small cell until each shot sounds like fifty.
A harsh cry goes up then and footsteps thunder across the decks as Delta soldiers fall instinctively to their posts.
Minerva's own focus darts away from her former lover as a broiling wave of hisses and snarls rolls up over the ship and, through the din, Lilly's voice slices clear and crisp and loud.
"Get rid of those fucking walkers!"
Minerva immediately steps back on her heel, her training under the Delta's regime flinging her into action and has her hearing sharpening, awaiting her commander's voice to call for all hands. Snatching up her crossbow, the youngest mercenary checks the tension of the string and cables, ensures the bows built in quiver was fully loaded.
"Grow up, Violet! None of us are kids. Not anymore. We're survivors. Survivors are soldiers. If you're not a soldier then you're dead!" Sliding her boot through the weapon's cocking stirrup, the redhead drags the string back and loaded up the first bolt before her narrowed eyes dart back to the blonde. "And the sooner you figure that shit out the better because, pretty soon, something will decide to bitch-slap you and force you to take notice of what's happening outside of that delusional little bubble inside your head."
And then she was gone. Racing away to aid her people and leaving Violet alone once again.
The firestorm of bullets has ebbed to almost nothing now and Violet is painfully aware that her tensing against the shaking of her limbs is useless. But still she does. Instinctively trying to suppress, if only for a few moments more, what she knows she can't. In her mind she was falling; fingers groping for a crevice, a foothold, just something, anything for her to catch and hold onto.
But no matter how she tries to twist and turn, or reach out into the darkened abyss, she finds nothing. There is no one here to catch her, nothing to break her final descent into the yawning chasm that her own mind had eroded into her psyche, just the blackness of the void below the edge that Lilly had held her over and Minnie had shoved her into.
So she continues to plummet. Until voices pierce through the darkness that is intent to swallow her up.
Voices she knows.
"Louis, give me a hand."
"Yeah, sure."
The screams of rusted hinges shatter the serenity of the silence and drags her from her morbid thoughts, as the door to her cage was slowly pried open. The narrow streams of light, bladed by the bars, gracefully meanders together into a wave that bathes the room, only broken by the shadows that quickly follow the light inside.
And Violet holds her breath. Not daring to make a sound, hoping her silence would deter the intruder she knows from searching her out.
Every second that passes felt like an eternity as she sits, curled around her knees, perfectly still and listens to the footsteps that move deeper into her space, closer to her, the heavy boots muting the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears.
"Violet?"
She recognizes the soothing voice. But she wishes that she didn't.
No!
Her gut clenches down so hard that she gasps. Her lids slam shut as the boots scuff their way over the floor, moving slowly. She mentally counts to thirty, pauses and debates cracking a lid...
"Violet!"
Her mind churns as she tucks her limbs tighter beneath herself, curling into a tiny ball of misery.
Go away… please!
"Violet. Come on!"
The heat from the fingers that touch her, that curl firmly around her bicep, creeps into her consciousness and she feels the overwhelming urge to pull away. After everything that has happened to her since the night of the attack, she can't stomach the idea of being touched, not right now. She no longer feels the comforting intimacy in the touch, but more the invasion and the want to dominate her.
As the fingers around her arm tighten her eyes snap open, pupils dilating wide and darting wildly as she desperately searches for an escape even as she feels herself being gently turned…
… Until the touch slides away from her arm and Clementine's body crumples with a soft grunt, stunned by the vicious blow that robs her of her consciousness.
Behind her, Violet can hear Louis's surprise, can hear the betrayal seep in to his voice and smother the original emotion as Minnie's own voice breaks under her demands and threats.
Peering over her shoulder, her brows tugging low over eyes of silver green, Violet catches Louis's eyes and allows the soft brown orbs to guide her in their darting path. His jaw is clenched as his sight drags from the loaded crossbow shoved into his face. She follows when they fall to Clementine's still form, hand stretched out beside her, before they lift and find her own eyes, drawing so wide to where she can almost feel his desperate pleadings for her to help him puzzle out why Minnie was doing this, eddying around her skull as loudly as if he had screamed the words.
But Lilly's threats have her broken and fearful, and Minnie's cutting sneers have her bound, so much so that Violet is hesitant to move. Instead she simply watches as the lanky teen and small child are shepherded from her cell and into what she assumes is another before she chances a glance back to the fallen girl behind her.
Clementine's dark lashes flutter against her cheeks as her eyes dart beneath the shuttered lids, her breathing is shallow and even, punctuated with soft little mumbles that sound suspiciously like the fractured syllables of her name.
It's only when Minnie's footsteps recede into silence that Violet cautiously turns around, slowly shifting herself backwards until her spine is flush against the wall. Unperturbed by the cold steel leeching her body warmth or the way her blood wraps the icy touch around her heart as she simply watches the unconscious teen in silence. Counting her breaths as the minutes drag on, until as the final gunshot wearily reverberates into the night and Clementine's prone form shifts.
Her lashes part slowly as she groans and lifts herself up just high enough to dig her elbows into the floor and prop herself up properly. Fever bright amber peer blearily along the length of her body toward the door, sagging little lower on her elbows before her head tilts over her shoulder and her sights fall to Violet.
"Vi?" Raising herself up onto her knees, Clementine winces as a ripple of vertigo seizes her guts and needles of pain prick behind her eyes and set her teeth on edge as she swivels around to face the blonde fully. "What happened? Are you ok?"
The eyes that peer back at her from the darkness are lifeless and dull. The spark, that had once been a vibrant flame that radiated such warmth and vitality, almost entirely snuffed out. The wretched thing that gazed at her, that shrank further away from her, arms around her knees and nails digging into her own skin, was not the same Violet she had known.
"Violet, talk to me..." Silence. Save for the shudder of Violet's breath and the whisper of fabrics shifting with the barely there motion of the body beneath the layers as she turns away. "We're here to take you home."
"I looked for you! When they grabbed me I saw... you let them take me!" The words that came next, that leapt from Violet's mouth, were ones that slam Clementine's thoughts to a stall. Her jaw tightens and her gaze darts away from the storm of heartbreak that turns the green eyes dull. Away from the naked betrayal and the emotion, once so guarded and now stripped bare to scrutinized and ridiculed without mercy. And then she is stunned by words that she never thought she'd ever hear, unable to do much else but stare as Clementine realizes that Violet, her strong and fierce Violet, is wilting.
"I'm just supposed to forget that because you're here now? Some fucking feelings you had for me."
Violet looks so utterly defeated. Her presence hollow and spirit broken. And Clementine finds herself hating that she has no idea how to fix this. "I'm so sorry, Violet. It was a mistake. Louis needed help. He wouldn't have stood a chance against these guys. I knew you could fight back."
"Louis looked pretty chummy with her though. Real cozy. Face it, Vi. She played you."
Violet tries to quiet the dark little voice that has been whispering it's twisted little secrets into her thoughts ever since she had been taken. Frustrated as she finds herself unable to block her ears to the cruel mockery as it intertwines Minerva's sharp words and Lilly's threats, twisting them up into Clementine's own, and serves only to add fuel to their quarrel now. Angering her as it confuses her further, and she instinctively projects her frustration as a shield. "Yeah, sure."
"What's wrong with you, Vi? Come on, let's get the hell out of here."
"You think they care? They don't!"
As much as she wishes otherwise, as much as she had struggled against acknowledging it, Lilly has her cowed. And it terrifies her just how easy it was to finally admit it. To give the words her voice. "No, Clem. I'm done. This whole situation is so fucked! At least here I have Minnie-"
"You mean the Minnie that betrayed us?"
"Don't act like you know her. She tried to escape. Her and Sophie…" Violet's eyes are hard staring and unblinking as her voice trails into silence; lost to her thoughts for a moment.
"I've tried your way. Their way. Tried to fight the wrong to leave the Delta. All it accomplished was…Getting Sophie killed."
"The Delta breaks everyone eventually, Violet. Question is, what will it take to break you? Should I take your finger? Cut out that sharp little tongue of yours? How about the lives of the friends you came in with? Or your precious Minnie? Or maybe... Clementine!"
"They said if I fight back… they'd kill Minnie. Or one of you. If you fuck this up worse… I'll stop you myself."
When Violet turns her eyes away from her, it's agonizingly slow, like they're heavy, an effort for her to move. Whatever Lilly had done to her, whatever games Minerva had played, Violet is completely ensnared and the girl that Clementine cares for, the girl that she kissed and confessed feelings for beneath a blanket of shimmering stars is fading before her eyes.
It's like Violet has simply crawled right back inside that same invisible shell that Clementine spent these past weeks coaxing her from, pushing herself in so deeply that Clementine is certain the blonde may be unreachable.
But there is a chance for her to come back still.
Clementine knows strength can't come from within someone so broken and defeated as Violet, it has to enter from the outside. She's seen it before, with Kenny after he lost Katjaa and Duck, and again when he had lost Sarita. It may have taken a little time, but firm words had dragged him out and made him fight again. So, maybe, all Violet needed was for someone to follow her in her fall and cut her free from whatever noose was dragging her down so she could kick her way back to the surface.
"Fine. Stay here then. But I'm bringing everyone else home."
When Violet looks to the brunette, Clementine's regret is immediate and consuming. "Until you decide you don't want them around anymore, either." It's like the fire in Violet's eyes has been smothered by ice water. Cold and hollow, the vibrant light that had burned so brightly, that had given her so much strength and fierce determination, paling. "Whatever you do, leave me out of it."
The young survivor's blood runs both hot and cold at once as her guts squirm and roll as though maggots have infested her organs. And she realizes, too late, that Violet is not like Kenny. Realizes that her sharp words did indeed cut her free, but now she is simply falling faster, plummeting beyond her reach now. And, in that moment, as again, Violet curls around herself, this time even more tightly than the last. Clementine wishes that she could take the words back, rectify the mistake - the worst of all that she has committed.
Violet had felt her armor crack under Lilly's knee. Felt the woman reach inside her overwhelmed mind and molest her tattered thoughts into even more of a shambled mess with her relentlessness. Never ceasing her twisted assault until only one dark, fucked up affirmation was deposited into her cupped hands, burning its brand into her damaged psyche; that she was still that same helpless, scared little girl dumped outside the gates of Ericson's Academy. That same terrified child deemed unworthy of protection and left to die by the cowardly faculty as they fled to save their own skins. And finally, in her naked vulnerability, she realizes that nothing has changed since that day.
Her parents. Teachers. Marlon and even Clementine... All of them had pretended to care for her, right up until a hard choice had to be made and then they shoved her aside. At least with Lilly there was no pretense. The woman wanted a soldier. Not a friend, not a daughter and certainly not a lover. Just someone to hold a gun and take her orders. Someone who would present her with their obedience and she would repay them with security.
And Minnie had driven the final nail home. That she is still nothing but a pawn, just like in the old world. Something to be sacrificed to save another.
The grief that surges with every expelled breath seizes her by the throat, choking her with a fist that was trying desperately to dissolve into tears. There had been a glimmer of hope before. Just a tiny candle flame flickering against the howling winds and the bleak emptiness in her heart; and she had snuffed it out when she had pushed Clementine away.
Huddled, alone and shrouded by the darkness, her thin arms wrap around her knees and drag them so firmly up against her chest that she can feel every beat of her pounding heart vibrating through her thighs.
Lost amid the sensory overload, she barely feels her teeth tearing at her bottom lip, completely unaware of the damage until the salty tang of copper floods her mouth and coats her tongue.
"I wonder if that's how the twins would tell it?"
"One of them would."
The disembodied voices that penetrate Violet's thoughts are unexpected. Slurring together as though her ears were full of water. The conflicting tones are coarse and grinding and hardened, as they tumble and writhe over and around each other like ravenous things. She is cautious as she picks apart the tangle of words until she catches a voice that she recognizes not just by the dark, low pitch and cruel inflections but also by the way her skin instinctively crawls with the cruel and smug tone that directs her eyes toward the redhead faintly trembling beneath every set of scrutinizing eyes.
"What happened then, Minerva?"
Minerva felt the question coming. The unspoken words sliding thickly along her spine, cold and oozing, a poisonous liquid slowly filling her belly and lungs.
She didn't want to say it. Saying it made it real. She had spent the last three quarters of the year finding some kind of twisted solace in the uncertainty of that night. Allowed herself to believe in the doctored memories that her mind had conjured to defend her from the truth that her heart argued against. Her thoughts replaying that night like some perverted clip show of twisted high-lights.
Now she is stripped of the comfort of confusion, Minerva's eyes dart wildly, unable to settle. Not on the wall, not on Lilly and her sinister smirk, not on Clementine and her amber eyes widening with horrified comprehension, and certainly not on Violet.
"You have betrayed your home with your selfish cowardice."
"I…" Minerva can feel Clementine's amber gaze pierce through her. Can feel Violet's expectant gaze pinning her to the spot as firmly as any scowl from Lilly had ever done.
She lowers her gaze to the crossbow in her hands, faintly trembling under the sudden weight of the deadly weapon in her grasp as she trains the loaded bolt on Clementine. Her chest constricting painfully as she recalls the heavy weight of a loaded glock in her hands also trained on the heaving chest of her quarry. Only the eyes that had stared back at her then were not the tawny gold fire that watch her now, but the same ocean blue as her own. Her lashes slid together, her thoughts taking her back to that night.
A flash of teeth bared wide in a cruel, Cheshire grin. "Children who misbehave must be punished. My trust in you girls is broken and must be earned back."
"I… I can't-"
Bang!
Minerva takes a steadying breath, sloughing away the softness that she had worn these last forty-eight hours as her lids part and reveal a chilled, hard light that Violet has never seen before. Turning those eyes away the familiar warming blue of tropical seas into foreign chips of glacial ice. And her words, the ones that came next, are as cold as the frigid gales that dominate the arctic tundra, stealing every last trace of warmth from what made Minnie, Minnie, leaving only 'Minerva' in her place. Strong in her conviction, proud of the capabilities learned under the protection of the Delta and, more importantly, still very much alive.
"I killed her."
