And then everything was okay.
It was all blissfully, wholly, perfectly okay.
All of the panic and the uncertainty melted away.
He was going to be alright. He was as he should be. He was alive, and he was killing.
With the first rend of skin, the world melded into a wonderful, unbearable torrent, and with the graceful arc of blood through the air and onto his waiting face, he ignited.
The ache in his body? Didn't matter. Only the working of his muscles to tear and the shredding of flesh under his claws. Even the piercing keens of the prey under him and the throbbing headache it drove into him were part of the whole, glorious moment. Rage, painful and beautiful. Satisfaction that both overloaded every nerve in him and screamed that it would never, never be enough.
His hunger couldn't be sated fast enough. Wanting to be close to the frantic pulse, he ducked his head to sink his teeth straight into his prey's throat. Yes. Yes!
There was nothing in the world except the taste and high of feeding, washing over his body in a swell of pleasure that made him absolutely, mindlessly desperate for more even as he ripped back and snapped the ragged chunk into his mouth.
In all of that chaos came a transfixing sureness, burning with truth and giddy as anything:
This was what was going to make him better. Fix all of the bad feelings, fix the wrongness, take him away if he could just keep doing this. Forever. Forever, forever, forever. He wanted to drown in it; wanted to choke, so that he could die at the height of that euphoria. So good it made him sick, just let him die just let him die just let him die-
The rest of the world came rushing back with the faint thump of the rope that had been around Skyler's arms hitting the floor. Just as soon as Cat was done slicing her loose, Skyler scrambled her ass across the room towards the door. She was primed to fight off a screaming, feral attack, which fortunately didn't come just yet.
No, Adrian was still occupied. The ones like him didn't stop unless they were shoved off or killed. Holy actual fuck.
One would think she'd be used to seeing him make a meal out of something before it had entirely stopped moving, but then again, it was usually one of the lesser infected and not someone that had been pleading for their life two minutes prior. Her feet tripped over each other once she hit the doorstop and she wound up going to the ground roughly, her remaining nausea from the sedative doing nothing to help the rest of what her senses were taking in. The sounds were what was going to get her. Either that or the smell. Spilled innards were different from blood on its own, there was this sort of bitterness to it that really okay shit there it was-
After tossing up just a little and swallowing the stinging bile back down, Skyler's self-preservation demanded that she look back at the potential threat. Cat was less concerned, unhurried enough to check in on DTA slumped against the wall rather than get some distance between herself and the feeding Hunter in the same room.
"Okay, mate," she started with a nice, firm jostle to the boy's shoulder, "Good job. Really appreciate the help. Now, why don't we... Ah, hell." DTA sagged bonelessly to the side, where he remained with no further movement. "Gone and choked on me from that paper cut, whatever, it's whatever."
Skyler didn't want to think too hard about whatever Cat had planned if he'd still been alive.
"Cat, what the fuck?" Skyler whispered hoarsely and emphatically.
"Melodramatic?" Cat responded with a sheepish chuckle as if that had been the problem. She gathered a few things from the ground and the younger man's corpse that Skyler didn't pay attention to, and only then decided it was time to evacuate the deathtrap she'd created. If there was one thing to be said for her attitude, she did have the presence of mind to kick the stop out of the doors so they swung shut, which Skyler had admittedly been far too frazzled for. "I figured it was only fair to give him his go, what with the whole..."
Amazingly, upon some apparent reading of the room, she jarred and trailed off into what looked like actual, honest-to-god surprise, and what left her mouth was, "Oh. You're like actually freaked."
"You got someone eaten," Skyler laid it out, just in case she hadn't realized!
In an unexpected contrast to the crazed array of violent sounds and ripping flesh, a heady, breathless rumble rolled invitingly from the sealed room. Against her better judgment, she looked up, finding Adrian twitchy and wholly blood-drenched on the other side of the window using shaking hands to push a sizable, unidentifiable hunk of gore towards her in spite of his own obvious reluctance to let the morsel go. She supposed she could be glad he was keeping himself busy and subsequently hadn't attacked either of them but wasn't sure how to take the generosity. Her mouth was dry.
"Uh. N-no, thanks."
So long as he wasn't crashing through the glass for a second course, she could spend a moment focusing instead on Cat's fucked-up-itude. She didn't even know where to begin with that.
Before she could cook up another way to emphasize just how fucked this was, Cat held up her hands in an appeasing gesture. "Okay. Okay," she spoke, her tone still far too casual, "Maybe I've mixed up some signals here. Misread the vibe, you know. I get it! That happens." The girl sauntered, slow and measured, not quite boxing Skyler in against the second-floor railing, but taking the lead step as she started, "Just let me ask you, so I know." A quirk of her lips, and the heat of something simmering and intense locking the two of them into eye contact. "You've never done it? Killed someone who's done dirty by you?"
Hey. Say something, idiot, Skyler's thought process caught up to her after a silence that stretched far longer than she'd intended.
"...I'd rather not talk about it."
"Heyyy," Cat smirked, lighting up in what Skyler could only imagine as a celebration at getting the paper-thin deflection out of her.
"Fuck off. I'm done. Leave me alone." She'd deal with the mess she'd been left with on her own.
Cat's brows bounced in offense, but she did retreat a couple of steps, then let out a short laugh like Skyler was being unnecessarily aggressive here. "Whoa. Alright, I can take a hint. I'll give you two some alone time. You know how to get hold of me if you decide you want to. Yeah?"
As the other woman backed off to go her own way, Skyler got a glimpse of a tiny flick of her tongue at the corner of her lips; just happening to catch a droplet of arterial spray flecked onto her face. And then she watched her back as she descended the stairs, struck with the feeling that maybe she'd made a mistake not stopping her. It was a call she took too long to make unless she chased Cat down.
That left the two of them then, her and Adrian. Or at least, she thought it did, so long as she hadn't lost him here, which she guessed she'd find out.
Steeling herself, Skyler put her back in the direction Cat had gone and forced herself to face her Hunter and his bloodbath.
The glow always faded too fast. For all of its intensity, it was like trying to hold onto water between his fingers, trickling away by the second. Even as his belly was full as it could possibly be, as much as he savored, it never lasted. Never, never. The drive was always towards more.
And there was more. Despite the barrier between them blocking most scent and muffling sound, he knew he wasn't alone, that there was still another healthy body that would scratch that unbearable itch. Don't let it slip away, he needed it, needed it, couldn't, didn't want to make himself alone, yes no yes no yes no-
She was looking at him. That pierced through to the front of his fractured awareness, pinning him to the spot. That look. He couldn't take it. Fury crashed down on him, rising up to meet the anger and disgust she must be assaulting him with. Make it go away. Reeling with psychosis, he snarled, dropping towards a hunting crouch.
Noise. Startling and grounding at the same time. "Adrian." Name. Him.
The ground split wide and left him both plunging into icy water below and standing naked with nothing to cover him but the blood, all in one breath. It was going to swallow him. He had nothing to stand on. A flood of conflicting impulses hit him strongly enough that all he could do was barely whine.
An equally pressing command rose to rival the one telling him to physically lash out against her attention, to instead hide away every inch of himself. He nearly acted on it, only stopped by the swell of a nascent longing, twisted up nauseatingly with the thrumming excitement and pleasure still diffusing down through his spine; the same that had gripped him somewhere recent in his scattered mess of memories. To be seen. For someone to know. All of it.
Shakily, Adrian withdrew his gifted trinket into his hands and put his whole nerve into a step forward. She did the same and for a few blinks, the clear wall between them was the surface holding the other him behind it, until the delusion wavered.
She wasn't looking away, which steadied him somehow. More noises, level and quiet. Her hate that he'd felt burning into him wasn't to be found, and might not have been real to begin with. It was so hard to tell. So hard to tell. He jolted from the repetitive thought when she moved to the side, towards the entrance.
Wait! He gave a brief yell, a knee-jerk response before he even knew quite what he was doing. The gift nearly slipped from his blood-slick hands as he held them up as if to push her back. Don't. He did his best to pull his scattered thoughts into something cohesive, although he couldn't express them meaningfully. That was- It was too much. Taking away the boundary dampening his senses would make her too real, then he'd have to... did she understand that?
Maybe. She paused where she stood, then slowly lowered the hand she'd had on the entrance. He exhaled his held breath in relief.
What she did do was approach the clear surface, putting herself closer without broaching the space.
"Okay?" She'd used that one before; he thought he had a vague idea of some of the meaning. "You?" she gestured clumsily, "You're okay?"
Him-okay? No. There were ways he couldn't even understand that he wasn't. He couldn't quite remember what he was supposed to do for "no", but his lack of response seemed to say the same. What could he do? One of his feet skidded on the slick floor on his dazed, uncertain trek across the enormous void from the precious remainder of his kill to the clear wall, where after lingering momentarily, he brought one hand to the barrier, marring it with a vibrant smear.
His heart felt like it was going to seize up by the time she took in a deep breath and raised her own to the other side.
"She was right, you know. About me. When she was talking about..."
It was weird. How much weight that admittance had to it regardless of whether Adrian understood the words. He was attentive enough, if not comprehending. Still though, or maybe because of it, Skyler wasn't sure she was comfy with that one. She'd compromise and not drop it entirely.
"What I mean is. Hell. Out of all of us, seems like you're the most fucked-up about what happened." Without exaggeration, especially now, standing before her the way he was. Who would have thought? It was almost enough to laugh about. She didn't, though; just watched him with one hand brush the glass with his fingertips and claws and with the other clutch at her tags like an old lady at a rosary. Softer, "You weren't cut out for this killing people shit."
Adrian was the first to move, pulling away to sit down on the floor and ease into the slow back-and-forth sway that had become familiar. A sign he was in cooldown mode, hopefully. Skyler followed suit, her back against the window.
"Just give me some time to think."
Inarguably, this whole thing was a mess and a half, in every sense of the word. Aside from the gore that she didn't much care to look at, they were also faced with the fact that after the time spent with her and even having managed to coax him out of attacking her, he had absolutely just slaughtered another uninfected person. That was a problem. Where were they going to go with that?
This was... different. The feelings that were melting into each other weren't totally foreign and in some measure was how it had always been, to the point Adrian had taken it as a given of the kill; but he'd never been so trapped in thinking about it, whether that was because the shrieking terror didn't allow for it, or because nothing usually punctured the elated haze so thoroughly so soon after he'd finished.
Calm, calm. He continued to rock himself in one of the few ways he had to ease himself. Occasionally he lifted his eyes enough to glance over at the mangled corpse, however much he wanted to ignore the whispers emanating from every gash in its flesh. They weren't going away, though, and so eventually he responded in noises of his own that didn't keep their shape, but that in his head were questions.
Why had the man spoken to him, told him to stop? Why had he thought that he could?
More sounds, this time from Her outside. Nothing that registered clearly, but that part of him was glad were there nonetheless. Adrian looked up at her, once again standing at the barrier, and his soft murmur held yet another question:
Why did he still hurt people that helped him?
Skyler felt the need to talk "back" at Adrian, his direction at her obvious despite no intelligible speech. "Got me all sorts of fucked up," she mumbled, scrunching up her hair on one side. "Shit could have been cool if she hadn't cut the rope, could have just walked out and..."
As she motioned down the staircase and turned slightly, she found a scowl creeping onto her face and the tightening in her chest increase. Yeah. Aside from her other concerns, she was definitely pissed off in that direction, and somewhat to her own surprise, that was probably the worst of it right now.
"There wasn't any reason for her to do that to you."
He followed her gaze towards where he'd been faintly aware of that other Clean One taking her leave, the one with violence in her eyes and who'd cut him loose. Oh. Her.
There was a visceral discomfort lodged deep inside of him as he replayed the events, although he wasn't fully sure of why. She'd given him exactly what he wanted, after all.
The whimper that drew from Adrian was what did it. Skyler shook her head, "Fuck it. Fuck it, we'll figure it out."
She placed her hand back on the door, then did what she could to gesture as she spoke, "Come on. Let's get you out of there. You? Out? Yeah?"
She meant it?
"Yeah. Really. I'm not gonna let that happen again. Gonna try, I mean. I-"
Skyler didn't get farther than pulling open the door before she was sent into an incredibly quick reconsideration of whether she'd made an enormous mistake, as Adrian bounded her way so fast he was practically a blur. The instant he made it outside, he lunged; fortunately, up and over the railing, onto the first floor. Down below, she could hear his panting, and the birds-eye angle afforded her a good view of him pacing, stopping briefly to huddle once more, then pacing again. The whole while, he seemed to be simultaneously stiffly trying to avoid looking back and compelled to do so. He wanted to get the fuck out of here, she was reading, same as her.
Unfortunately, though, she couldn't exactly walk out of here empty-handed and expect to see the end of the day, which meant retrieving her pilfered belongings. Nothing more to do than suck it up and get it over with. Still, she took her time leaning over the balcony to call down, "Wait there. I'll be there soon."
This time, it was quiet enough that she could hear the melodic jingling of a bell above the door, which was nowhere near enough to distract from what had become of their wannabe captors. Hell, she couldn't help thinking. For seeming so shaken now, Adrian really had gone full damn Hunter on these two, hadn't he? Even the younger of them, who'd apparently been already dead by that time, hadn't escaped getting a good few savage bites taken out of him. Focus. Get her shit and get out.
The best thing she had going for her was that DTA had been the one messing around with her radio, which meant she didn't have to pick it out of the remains of Grandpa. If the old man (god, she hoped he'd died fast, his ribs were more or less a bowl) didn't have anything too important on him, it could stay. Luckily, she spotted the shape of her rucksack in a dark corner of the room, and the dark outline of her assault rifle beside it on the floor.
She was more than certainly ready to say good enough and ditch with those without checking too thoroughly, but halfway through, some inkling prickled the back of her neck. Hang on. She'd had some pretty pressing other things on her mind at the time, but she was just about ninety percent sure that she remembered the old man struggling to grab for the tranquilizer gun where it'd been left on the floor. Where had that gone, anyway?
A barked call summoned Skyler from standing, squinting in the dark at where she'd thought the gun had been. Without much choice but to let it go for the moment, she snatched up her belongings and tossed her pack over her shoulders as quickly as possible. On the way out, she carelessly let the door close with a thud and bell-clatter of finality. Rest in peace, poor, stupid bastards.
She emerged back onto the walkway to an audible sigh of relief once she was in Adrian's sight, as though he'd thought she'd have vanished, which... fuck. Maybe was the smarter idea. Good thing she wasn't smart. Anxiously, he resumed his circling as she neared. She wondered whether he was aware of the direness of his stare back up where she'd come from, or for that matter the copious amount of saliva collecting on his chin, in the lapses of his focus on her.
Admittedly, she didn't spend much time looking backward, which was why she didn't immediately notice she was alone on her way towards the exit. Uh-oh.
"Adrian."
He- he knew. They had to go. All of the sense behind why they had to was out of his reach, but he knew that. To the need, it didn't matter. His body remained tensed and his hands shook beyond being able to so much as grasp his trinket.
The sound repeated, and, overwhelmed with frustration, he fronted into a defensive stance with a sharp snarl. Quiet!
Alarm and regret leaped into his chest, though, seeing her edge backward away from his aggression. No! Wait. Okay. Go now. He understood. Not like the small, dark space with the Crying Sister. Please. He wasn't that far gone, he promised without knowing what a promise was and also afraid that wasn't true. Please don't leave him.
Even still, the shudder that was going through him gave way into a drawn-out whine that shook him and spilled over into distressed grabbing at fistfuls of his head covering. Just for a little bit? How was he supposed to walk away, didn't she understand?! He needed... he needed...
She shuffled closer. He clenched his teeth.
"Yes?" she asked cautiously, prompting a confused blink. It took too long to process that she'd been addressing him, and was now holding her hands out to either side as if asking permission for something. What that was, he didn't know, but he thought he didn't want to stop her. Just don't hurt her. Don't. Not the only one who was helping him.
His gaze slammed down onto a fat droplet of blood that dripped down off of his saturated coverings and onto the floor. He kept his muscles so locked that at first when she took hold of both of his trembling wrists and tried to guide them, she didn't succeed. It was only slowly that he relaxed enough to be budged, allowing his own hands to be placed over his face; it didn't truly do much to muffle the smell, or the infuriating colors that he could somehow still see through his hands, but gave him enough pause to break the cycle of fixation, if only temporarily.
He could... he could do this. Hurry. Now.
With a hand pressed against the back of his shoulder, Adrian and his Sister-Not-Sister stumbled their way back out into the cold.
A/N: Hi again all, and happy spooky month! I'm back with another chapter! I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who's stuck with me this far, all the way from 2016. I also wanted to give a shoutout to a guest reviewer on the last chapter, regarding my trigger warnings. First of all, I'd like to offer a thank you for the belief that my free online fanwork of a game from 2009 is comparable to a history lesson. I've done my best to keep this a period piece from those days. Secondly, I'm glad to give my readers some advance notice of the content that they're about to engage with, especially where it's not necessarily standard to apocalypse media such as the experience of gender dysphoria. As always, I love all of your feedback! Happy Halloween!
