Arcanum:
Red
by
Kel
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership to Dark Angel or its characters, in this case namely Syl. X5-213 (AKA Rizzo), unnamed but very present in this fic, is my creation. I just wanted to make him really the bad guy at least once.
Author's Note: This is the ninth fic in the Arcanum series, but can easily stand alone. To read the other fics, if so desired, visit my profile page. This fic takes place sometime before the episode Cold Comfort, and therefore before Arcanum: Automaton (but pretty far after Almost a Memory).
Everything around her was sketched haphazardly in flashes of red.
His eyes, though, were black. She had seen them in flashes over her, under her, barely meeting her gaze even as he'd melded himself to her, how long ago?
Had it only been yesterday?
She wanted to believe she had trouble believing it, but she had known. How could she not, when she'd seen those eyes glance off her profile as if she were nothing, even as his hands had fisted in her hair and he'd lunged for her, tasting, possessing, devouring?
He was cold. Silent. Disconnected.
She didn't need to see him through her window, sitting in front of a sniper rifle, watching her as the blood soaked her clothing. She didn't need to see it to know it.
This was her fault, then. Her foolish mistake.
It was costing her.
When she'd first met him, she hadn't known what he was. She still didn't know if he'd known the same about her.
What she'd known, was that there was something different about him, and for a split second, she might have slapped herself for reaching such an old-fashioned schoolgirl conclusion. But it was true.
He'd sat down beside her, on a semi-sanitary bench, in an almost-beautiful park, in the middle of a dead city. She'd been on her lunch break, eating a peanut butter sandwich on stale bread, smelling of smoke and spice and french fries. His first words to her had been, "You have peanut butter in your hair."
She'd replied, in her sarcastic, offhand manner, "Because the rest of me is so tidy." And she'd flicked the offending strand of nutty, unkempt hair over her shoulder without a first or second look.
She should have broken his fingers, but instead let them gracefully sift through her hair and rub out most of the peanut butter.
She hadn't glared at him, or hit him, but instead had watched him lick it off his fingers as if he were moistening them to flip pages in a thin-paged book. She'd let him take her sandwich from her and finish it without glancing at her. And then she'd let him take her, right there on the dirty park bench.
Because Syl was no queen, and the park had been no castle, and she'd never really needed to pretend.
And there was something different about him, something . . . dangerous. Tempting.
Deadly. She'd always been fascinated by fire, burning red-hot like lava.
They hadn't exchanged names, and it wasn't until she walked into Noelle's apartment, found her bleeding to death on the floor, and saw him watching from the building across the street that she learned he had none.
Just a number.
And a mission.
This death was on her hands, thick and congealing and coating her pale skin – inadequately masked by her friend's blood, where she had tried to stop the bleeding. It ghosted over the memory of his touch.
She stepped into Noelle's shower – Noelle, whose only fault had been trying to know more about the friend who would disclose nothing. Syl simply washed off the blood, put on some of the dead girl's clothing, and fled the city.
It was probably blind luck that saved her from Manticore, because her brain had never come into play. If he sent them after her, they never got to her in time, and she never found out.
It would have been her fault. She'd known, after all, and had done nothing.
She saw his eyes, and let herself believe they were black. But she had always known that they were red – blood red.
End.