Chapter.3: Strip the petals and watch them fall.
It would be a cold and moonless night tonight. The sky, dark and low, and the air so sharp and bitter that it hurt to breathe. Already, the ground had been laid with frost, a sugar crisp coating over leaf and loom, crunching under the heavy tread of combat boots. The cold, onshore winds blew right through the layers of fraying fabrics of thin sweaters and thick jackets. Chilling skin dampened with sweat and river water alike and seeping in through pores as it bit into warming blood, leaving icy touches and aching bones behind.
"You have betrayed your home with your selfish cowardice." Lilly's words were daggers in the darkness and her words venomous. One of the girls before her shrank back, cowed and half-hidden behind her sister. That sister, however, met Lilly's cold expression with eyes blazing in fierce outrage and indignant confidence. "A home that clothed you. Fed you. Kept you safe and warm. Taught you to fight and survive."
The woman's dark eyes looked like bottomless pits in the shadows. Black voids, hollow and inhuman. "You spoiled children still think that survival is a fucking right in this world! Well, I'm going to teach you that it's not. This is a world where survival is a privilege. You have to earn the food you put in your bellies and the clothes you cover your backs with. You have to fight for every god given day. And if you don't fight-" The line of the woman's thin lips lift into a sinister sneer. "-well, then you don't deserve to live."
Minnie cringed beneath the vicious onslaught, a distressed whimper catching in her throat and escaping her lips in a dry sob, but not Sophie. Sophie stood tall and proud, planting herself between her sister and their captor, uncowed by the accusations and cruel words slicing at them. Her seafoam eyes blaze in fierce outrage and indignant confidence as Lilly plowed on.
"Children who misbehave must be punished."
Those words made her skin crawl and Minnie could feel needles of ice and flame lancing her belly as fingers of numbing fear slid their touches into her thoughts. Her own mouth opened and closed wordlessly as she saw Lilly's hard dark eyes shift down to settle on her and watched as her mouth, full of spite and threats, curled up in a calculating smirk.
"My trust in you girls is broken and must be earned back." The woman's eyes never left Minnie's as her hand went to the holster at her hip and withdrew with her worn glock in hand. Fingers moving confidently as she ejected the clip and slowly began sliding out the rounds, one by one, into her hand until only one remained. Then she methodically replaced the magazine and loaded the single round into the chamber with palpable intent. Lilly's eyes narrowed at Minnie as she extended her arm out, levelling the vicious maw against Sophie's brow. Thin lips baring teeth in a Cheshire grin at the quiet hiccuping gasp that bubbled from the twin's throat as she slid her gaze back up to Sophie.
The girl was afraid. Lilly could see that in her eyes. It was clear in the way that her pupils had blown so wide they almost swallowed the blue-green irises entirely and how her chest rose and fell in an irregular rhythm. But still, the teen held herself tall, refusing to kowtow to the dangerous woman even with the weapon brushing twisted kisses to her brow.
"You don't scare easy." Lilly murmured in some kind of macabre awe even as disappointment flitted over her features. "Such a pity and such a waste. You'd have made one of the finest soldiers the Delta has ever produced. If not for your damned stubbornness."
"I told you that we'd never be your soldiers." Sophie hissed. Despite the tremor in her chest and tremble in her voice, there was no missing the pure strength and conviction that laced her words. "I told you, you'd never have us-" Sophie's lips twitched in a small defiant sneer. "-and you don't. I'd sooner you put me in the ground than fight for you."
She saw something in Lilly's eyes shift. A tiny shadow of doubt passing over her features, rippling her cheek and softening the tensing of her trigger finger. A delicate brush of relief touched her thoughts for a second, but that was all because what Sophie heard next made her blood chill and chased the doubt from Lilly's face. Replacing it with an expression that terrified her to her core as she fairly saw the plan forming in the vile woman's mind.
"We're sorry, ma'am." Minnie's voice trembled as she spoke. "We'll go back with you. We'll accept whatever punishment you see fit."
"Minnie! Don't-"
But Lilly had already turned, facing down the softer twin and scenting her vulnerability. Here was the beta personality to Sophie's alpha one. This she could work with. This one she could break and mold to her will. The twin who had always been a little bit less confident, a little more susceptible. The twin who had sobbed all the way as Marlon had handed them over. Crying for their gentle baby brother. Wailing for her girlfriend to save her like she always had.
"Please. Just take us back to the Delta. We can prove we can be trusted."
Lilly sucked the air noisily through her teeth. Clicking her tongue and plastering a sickeningly fake sympathetic expression over the twist of malicious intent. "Now, I would love to, Minerva. But you see, Sophie here has you all mixed up with her stories."
Minnie's gaze turned to Sophie, her eyes widening in horrified despair. She took slow and careful steps backwards, away from her sister as Sophie's own eyes welled under the look of utter hurt and betrayal, her voice shrivelled in her throat but still, she mouthed to her twin. "That's not true."
But Lilly continued. Her voice crooning so softly, so soothingly. So much so that Minnie barely even flinched as Lilly's arm curled around her shoulders and leaned in close to murmur her soft, dark lies directly into her ear. "I bet Sophie told you things, didn't she? That you'd go home? Back to that school. Back to your friends and loved ones. But, do you really think that Marlon would welcome you home? Do you really think that anyone would believe your stories?" She rasped her fingers through the shorn side of Minnie's hair. The touch gentle and motherly and disguising the obvious menace in her words. "You'd be a threat to him. If Marlon doesn't kill you two first, he'll convince the others that you're traitors. That you left of your own will. Can you imagine it? The look of betrayal on poor innocent Tenn's face? How could your dear, sweet little Violet ever trust you again after you abandoned her? No, they wouldn't want you back, they'd be afraid of you."
"Minnie!" Minnie's head snapped up, tears rolling down her cheeks as she saw her distress reflected back at her in Sophie's own glistening eyes. "Don't listen to her! Whatever happened back home, we can fix it."
"Can you?" Lilly purred. Her fingers tightening around Minnie's shoulder and drawing her to stand in front of her. Carefully sliding the glock into the red head's fingers while her eyes fix on Sophie. Her spiteful lips twisting up and her poisonous words oozing. "Can you make them understand? Why would your leader trade you away? Maybe you ran and left them. How could you still be the same girls your friends once knew after months away doing who knows what to survive?" She cupped her palms around Minnie's trembling hands and guided her arms to rise, trailing the muzzle of the glock up the central line of Sophie's torso. "You could go with Sophie, but we both know that you'll both die out there. Or you could come home with me, Minerva. Back to where it's safe and you'll be protected. All you have to do is squeeze that trigger and all will be forgiven."
"Minnie, please. She doesn't know the others, you do." Sophie's voice wavered, her confidence leeching from her stance and words the longer that she faces her armed twin. "You know they'd listen. Brody and Louis. Violet. You know they'd help us."
"Brody? Brody was there!" Minnie whimpered back. "She-she didn't stop him. She didn't even try!"
"She was scared, Min. You know how she gets when she's scared. And Marlon… He was scared too. The same way that you're scared now." She shifted her gaze to Lilly, hardening into a glare as the woman lay her cheek against her twin's temple in an almost motherly gesture. "It's because of her."
Lilly could feel the girl quaking in her grasp. Could hear the stuttering gasps of breath and hiccups of terror rattling through Minnie's frame. Carefully, the woman slid her fingers between the trigger guard and Minnie's trembling digits, preventing her from lessening her touch on the trigger, only constricting whenever they tightened. Like an anaconda wrapping its coils around a panicked fawn.
And then she spoke softly, smoothly. Her words catching in the terrified teen's mind. Toxic whispers murmured so low that only Minnie could hear them. "You can save them, Minerva." She purred. "You can save your brother. Your friends. You can sweep your little girlfriend off her feet for a change. You can all be safe with us, we can make you strong. And you will learn how to recognize who is a threat to yourself, to those you wish to protect." She felt Minnie's fingers twitch beneath hers and immediately her own tightened over them. Her smile chilled, she could feel the tension in the weapon, primed and ready to fire. "Real safety. Real walls, beds. Food and weapons. A life. This world is dangerous, Minerva, it confuses you. And the people in it, lie. Even those who you feel deserve your unwavering trust in them. But I haven't lied to you, have I? I haven't betrayed you. I've always told you the truth, even when you don't want to hear it."
"I... I can't-" There were too many words. Too many thoughts… Too many voices and faces in her head. Each one rolling and tumbling over the other in a frenzy. Each one telling her, asking her, to do ten different things at once. "I can't!"
"You want to save them."
"She's lying to you!"
"I know you do."
"Don't listen!"
"But Sophie won't let you."
"Please, just stop!"
"Do it!"
"Don't!"
"Minerva!"
"Minnie!?"
Bang!
Minnie felt like her breath had been punched out of her lungs and her hands ached and burned from the recoil. Chest heaving in rapid breaths her eyes fell down to the smoking gun in her hands... just her hands. Had Lilly's ever even held hers or had she simply imagined it? The teen tilted her chin to observe the woman beside her, her eyes wide and startled by the dark smirk painting her lips and a gleam of dangerous satisfaction in the woman's rusted orbs. Minnie cringed under the expression until she realized that Lilly's gaze wasn't aimed at her, instead, she completely ignored her and was transfixed by another.
"Mi… Minnie?"
The voice, weak and thick, turned Minnie's heart to lead. Sends it burning and freezing and leaping both into her throat and plummeting through the ground at once. Time slowed around her, thickening the air to sludge. Fighting her every movement as she forces herself to follow the gaze of her commander and face the terrible broken voice of her sister.
Sophie's face was so pale. Her ocean eyes blown so wide that her pupils constricted to pinpricks despite the darkness of the night, and the whites ringed her irises. Her palms pressed over her left breast. She had no doubt that her sister's heart was trying to hammer through her chest as Minnie felt relief bubble in her own. She saw no wound through her sister's skull... She'd missed. She had to have. Either that or Lilly had slipped every round from the magazine without her notice and this whole thing had just been some cruel trick.
A hysterical, hiccuping laugh burst over Minnie's lips and the tears that had been blurring her vision and burning her nose began to fall. It was a test. That was all. Lilly was testing her loyalty and Sophie's nerve. That had to be it.
"Soph, you're ok. We're both going... to…"
Crimson bubbled up over Sophie's lips and dribbled down her chin, bright red and frothing. From between her fingers at her chest more red welled, pushing through organ and flesh and blooming like a macabre rose.
Sophie's lips part, moving to form words and only succeeding to free more the pink frothed blood that filled her lungs and flooded her throat. And then she crumpled. Sophie's knees simply giving out from beneath her and her body folding up, dropping the dying girl into the mud. A fine, pinkish-red foam froths at the corner of her mouth, misting into the air and as she whimpers and a sickening crunch reverberates through the darkness. Bouncing around inside Minnie's skull, ricocheting off of bone and brain, more loudly than even the gunshot had been, her sister's arm snapping like a dry brittle twig as her body simply fell.
"Sophie?" Minnie is on her knees before she can think, mud and blood balling together in little globules and seeping through her jeans. Shaking fingers stroke her twins cheek and come away chilled and damp before they push through long ribbons of sunset flame. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you." She can't breathe right and she feels sick. Her ribs expand and her lungs inflate but her body just feels so weak, like it's ready to give up and lay her down beside her sister. "I love you, Soph. Please, don't go. I'm sorry."
She clings possessively to her sister, her forehead pressed so firmly to the others that she can feel flecks of bloodied breath marking her flesh, warmth that cools rapidly and leaves her skin itching and tight. Can hear every gurgle and wheeze as ruined lungs labour and battle on, can hear every tacky and thick swallow that catches in her throat, until she feels a hand land heavily on her shoulder and fingers, more vicious talons than human extremities, dig and bruise into her collar.
When Minnie turns, neck craning and ocean eyes snapped wide, she finds no comfort. The dirty brown orbs that pin her own are cold and merciless, the sharp, hooded features twist into an almost grotesque amalgamation of human and vulture as Lilly's cruel lips part and she sneers. "You're mine now, Minerva. Mine by your own hand." Her artic gaze shifts to Sophie's, noting the tiny flicker of movement, the tiny crease between her brows. The brave teen's final act of defiance before the life faded from seafoam irises. The women smirked, her palm sliding along the remaining twin's chin, fingers curling painfully around her jaw as her face is forcibly jerked to stare at the dead girl in the mud. "How could they trust you? How could they trust a girl who killed her own sister to save her own wretched and miserable hide? How could they trust the selfish little bitch that you are."
The muscles in Minnie's jaw scream beneath the painful grip and her chin trembled with grief. Despair fills her throat even as her trapped voice threatens to choke her. "Bu- but, you made me… I don't… I didn't-"
"Oh, but you did." Lilly purred. "My finger was not on yours when you pulled the trigger. And I saw that glorious little bloodthirsty gleam in your eyes." Lilly squeezes the teens jaw until she yelps and whimpers and squirms in her grasp, her mouth turning up in cruel delight as she watches the girl struggle. "This, all of this, was all your doing, Minerva. You're a soldier. A cold-blooded killer. And that's why you'll survive while your sister did not."
Minerva's eyes snap wide, her body hurling her from the gentle arms that held her, with Lilly's spite laced taunts still ringing in her ears. When the fingers curl firm around her biceps, restraining her desperate movements, her fight or flight instincts took control and she lashed out. Fighting and struggling blindly, only stilling once she is free and pivoting around in a defensive squat with her eyes darting, seeking the enemies that she is convinced to be concealed within the shadows.
"Fucking hell, Minnie?" She knows that voice. She knows she does. She just needs a moment to match it to a face. Her brow creases as she shuffles through her muddled thoughts, separating her memories and shifting from her horrifying unconscious dreams and into harsh reality. Her sight fell to the owner of the voice. Violet..? Violet! The blonde's tongue flicks over her familiar lips and prods at the oozing slit that splits the corner of her mouth. Her storming, river-water eyes, wide with shock and hurt, fix on the redhead and her posture radiates the wariness of a beaten dog. "What the actual fuck is wrong with you?"
She'd hurt her. Violet was bleeding because of her. But none of that mattered now. All that mattered is what her Delta training dictates. Get up! Get moving! Neutralize the enemy and protect your own! But who exactly was her own? She blinks hard and shakes her head, trying to settle her tumultuous thoughts before one face floats to the forefront of her mind and sets her blood seething. The redhead whirls around on the smaller blonde, cold eyes blazing as she all but snarls at the girl. "Where is she? Where's Clementine?!"
Violet flinches beneath the tone, but her eyes harden and she sets her jaw firm in defiance. "I dunno. Lilly took AJ, so she went after her- Minnie!" The girl lunges and grabs Minerva's sleeve, fingers twisting into a tightly balled fist. The redhead's lips pull back into a feral grimace, teeth bared and eyes slit, but still Violet clings to her. "You can't!"
They are locked there, faces furious and frightened, but still mostly unreadable. In that frozen second, teetering between attack and retreat, they simply scowl and glare at each other until Minerva's temper flares and snaps.
"Stop fucking protecting her!" She wrenches her arm out of Violet's grasp and snatches up her discarded crossbow. Her cold eyes move slowly from the vacant space where a bolt had previously been loaded to the shaft and over to the corpse of her fallen comrade, zeroing in on the deadly dart protruding from the back of her skull, slicked in brain and gore. With calm and calculated motions, Minerva moves, careful not to slip in her former companion's blood, the edges already congealing and puddling around her feet as she places a boot to the dead woman's head and wrenches her bolt free. She takes a moment to clear her mind, methodically wiping the off the bolt upon Dorian's clothing and loading it back to her bow, before whirling around and bearing down on the blonde once more. "Don't you dare defend her! Not after everything that psychotic little bitch has done! She didn't protect you! She let her take you. Every little thing that Lilly has put you through is on your precious fucking Clementine!"
"I'm not defending her!" Violet's voice cracks painfully on her protests, the lie almost jamming her throat closed around her next words. "But Clem said they'd planted a bomb, Minnie! A fucking bomb! Do you get that?!"
"A bomb?" The scar split brow raises skeptically and lips twist in scorn. "Mitch is dead, who else could-"
"Willy could."
Willy? Minerva's mind explodes with crazed shifts of chaos and possibilities. She had seen him in the forest with Clementine and her pathetic scouting team and he still looked like that same weird little kid that followed Mitch around like a lost puppy. That same kid who idolized him, always watching with those unsettling bugged out eyes of his and mimicking whatever it was that Mitch was doing. Of course the little fucking creep would want to try his hand at Mitch's craft. But how successful could that boy be? He wasn't Mitch. Wasn't as practiced and wasn't as smart. The bomb planted is likely a dud, the half-assed experiment concocted by an immature little kid and reckless teen that was doomed to fail. But still, Minerva's thoughts twisted and turned inside her head. Corrupt whispers of doubt suffocating her rationality and intending to drive her insane as it turned her logic into fear.
There was a stillness in both girls, a silent tempest of warring emotions shadowing their expressions and clouding their eyes. Then suddenly there is movement as Minerva whirls around and bolts, leaving Violet stunned and frozen for a few moments before her thoughts kickstart once again and she scrambles to her feet. Tearing after the redhead already running full tilt and disappearing into the depths of the hull.
Minerva's breath came in sharp, short bursts. Hot and riddled with anxiety. Already her lungs burned and a sharp, stabbing stitch seized her side. A cold sweat had sprung to her brow and trickled uncomfortably down her neck as she ducked and wove around the cluttered corridors. Her eyes falling upon the occasional body of a fallen comrade, crumpled and bleeding and sprawled across her path but she couldn't stop. Behind her, she can hear Violet's own ragged breathing, can hear her footfalls echoing off the narrow walkways, ringing louder and carrying her closer as she races hot on the redhead's heels.
"Minnie!" The smaller teen threw herself forward with even greater abandon, her footfalls stumbling as she clips the shoulder of a fallen raider with her trailing boot. Her lungs and heart were pumping furiously, but the air she breathed in just didn't seem to be enough as she sprinted after the older teen, panic trembling through her exhausted limbs. "What are you doing? We have to go!"
"You go!" Minerva hissed, not bothering to look back, just pushing forward. "Go back to the school with the others. You take Tenn, pack up your shit and get the hell outta Dodge! Lilly knows where you are now. She knows where the school is, and she will come back. And the next time she does, she won't be recruiting-" This time, Minerva did look back. This time, Minerva stopped and turned around and faced down her former girlfriend, her glacial eyes glittering like shards of ice, empty and hard, as the small blonde stumbled to a halt, her blood-chilling with Minerva's ominous words. "-the next time she comes, it'll be a massacre."
It feels as though Violet's blood has thickened to sludge in her veins, her heart pumping wildly and still, she feels light-headed, her adrenaline surging so fast that she feels as though she might vomit. The warm sweat beading on her brow and trickling down her temple turns to crystal ice, chilling her heated skin uncomfortably, it's like she's woken from a dream turned nightmare only to find that reality is so, so much worse. "What?" She croaked, her tongue struggling to force the thickened saliva at the back of her throat down. "How would you-"
"We've done it before."
'We've?' Violet's knees tremble, it feels as if all the strength in her bones have left her and her muscles are withered. Bracing herself against the corridor wall with her shoulder, she simply stares at Minerva, at the girl she once loved, and for the first time, she doesn't recognize the person glaring back at her. "What are you saying? Minnie, I don't-"
"I'm not Minnie! I'm Minerva! Minerva! Minerva! MINERVA!" The redhead seethed. Her face twisting up into a bestial snarl and her balled fist slamming violently against the steel, punctuating each reiteration of her name. Every strike thundered through Violet's skull so painfully that even her teeth ached. The violence in Minerva's words frightened her and the blonde shrank back, whimpering with her palms clapped firmly over her ears as the final illusion shattered around her. "I am Minerva. I am a soldier for the Delta. Lilly is my commander."
The next words Minerva spoke, and the tone that she used to give them substance, confused Violet's brain. Soft and soothing, almost in a maternal way. "You and yours aren't the first group to fight back."
Minerva's abrupt shift from rage to placidity was unsettling. A calm and calculated switch as she, once again, shut herself off emotionally. Effectively stonewalling Violet out, disconnecting with almost no evidence of the rage that she had launched at the smaller teen, save for the thickened atmosphere that slid and oozed over her skin and set her instincts of self-preservation aflutter. It almost felt as though there was an internal clock ticking down inside Minerva, counting the moments until next explosive outburst, though no one could see the timer.
"We killed them. While they were sleeping." She fairly crooned, eyes of frigid aquamarine glazing over in that strange vacant, far-away expression. The same expression she had worn when she had talked of killing Sophie, it was like she was physically there but mentally absent. "I followed my orders, like a good soldier, and cut the children open, from belly to throat, while they slept."
Violet's hands trembled and her eyes watered, and sour bile filed her throat. Minerva's words are gasoline poured over the tiny spark of fear that had been smoking in her belly ever since she had followed the taller girl down here. Her body burns hot but her blood runs cold, and the sweat that trickles down her spine feels like stroking fingers of agony. "Minnie…"
It was like a switched had been flipped in the redhead's brain. Hatred contorts her features and pulls her lips, tight and thin, away from her teeth. A nightmarish creature wearing Minerva's face as a mask. "I am not Minnie! I haven't been 'Minnie' since I killed Sophie… maybe even before then." Her lips twist again, caught partway between a smirk and a sneer. Baring down on Violet, Minerva sucks her tongue against her teeth as she purrs. "Maybe I've not been Minnie since Marlon handed us over and you gave up on me. Or maybe, I never was Minnie and you were in love with an illusion."
"No-"
"Lilly told me… She told me that I would be the one to kill you, Vi-Vi. If you kept resisting and fighting back." Minerva's boot slid forward noiselessly. Just one step. Testing Violet's nerve. Would she run? Flee. She kinda hoped she would. With the way that slight little blonde's rawboned frame tensed, she looked like she might and chasing her down before stranging the life out of those pretty gemstone eyes sounded kinda fun. "And then you followed me down here. Alone… That wasn't very smart. But then, you never were when it came to people you cared about. Your blind loyalty will get you killed one day-"
Then there was a sound that froze them, two deer caught in headlights, and the floor beneath the two girls lurched. The enormous explosion echoed through the narrow hallways and roared up into the heavens as a fist of orange flame and black smoke punched its way through the ship. Forcing its way through the chimney, funnelled through the pipes and rushing free from the smokestack. Minerva dropped to her knees as soon as the first screaming note of steel warping and rending reached her ears, her fingers laced together over the back of her head in a feeble attempt at protecting herself. She was intimately aware of the devastating damage shrapnel could cause and knew that her fingers would barely slow a projectile intent on ripping through her flesh, but still, she curled down low, laying on the ground in the fetal position, trying to protect her ears and organs…
… Leaving Violet still standing and vulnerable as a piece of twisted metal pipe erupted from the wall and cut through the air, as keenly as any blade, a deadly missile careening toward her. Fast-moving and impossible to dodge.
The searing pain that takes over Violet's brain is a flash fire of heat and agony that takes her to her knees. It's a pain that radiates from beneath her skin and through her blood, swallowing her up as though consumed by acid, intent to destroy her from the inside out. Violet could feel the soft skin of her face as it split under the strike and peeled back, retreating from the heat like plastic recoiling and wrinkling into thick melted folds. She can feel that thin layer of connective tissue between her skin and muscle blister and bubble and smell her own flesh and fat cooking as if some invisible flame were still held flush against her skin. The agonized waves that rolled and crashed through her synapses increased with every thump and pulse, the small, brief lulls between bringing to her a false hope of an end. Each peak robbed the breath from her lungs and, in turn, robbed her the ability to speak, to scream. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, half a minute tops, but in those seconds time around her seemed to slow to a crawl, each moment extending to an agonizing lifetime.
And then it stops and Violet simply folded up and crumpled to the floor, her breaths coming rapid and shallow. The smoke filling the gloom chokes her, blinds her, she can no longer see when Minerva had been huddled. Her chest rises and falls, lungs inflating and deflating in quick little bursts, but her ribs are like steel traps that prevent her from taking full breaths of dirtied air. Her throat burns and aches, inhaling heat and flames that scorch along her esophagus. Then she hears a rhythmic thundering that rolled along the floor and through her cheek, her defocusing eyes catching a glimpse of a blur moving past her. A streak of blood-red racing down the hallway and curling away into cold infinite darkness.
A second explosion, more violent than the first, rocks the ship and belches a firey ball of yellow flame and thick, cloying acrid smoke into the hallway. Igniting the stacked piles of cargo and melting strands of once pale, buttery blonde to already ruined flesh.
All Violet could do was writhe feebly, alone and abandoned on the bare boarded floor as she burned, the occasional gurgling whimper escaping her throat to echo piteously off the walls. Every thought in her mind had become confused, a jumbled and painful mess, as the burning pain licked deeper. Bubbling to her nerve endings and lighting her up with agony that quickly became a brief flash fire that left her unable to do much else but wish for any raider still alive to find her... at this point, a bullet to the head would be a mercy.
A mercy she wanted. A mercy she would happily beg for.
Instead, she is granted no mercy, and the ship lurches a final time. The steel of the hull wailing as a third blast hit and splits the body asunder. The groans and whines of buckling steel competing with the roar of the rushing river, as well as the howls and chorus of the dead. And Violet finds herself hurled through the fissure, a broken rag doll tossed aside without a care, her burned body striking frigid waters so brutally that it robbed her of her breath as swiftly as it did her consciousness.
And all she could do is wait for the cold, grappling hands of the dead to take her and finally end it all.
