Prompt #5: All of this hate, And all of this pain, I'll burn it all down , As my anger reigns, 'Till everything burns – 'Everything Burns', Ben Moody, feat. Anastacia
She gasps for breath, her fingers scratching at the hands on her neck. He's going to kill her, she knows this now, and yet there's a part of her that still believes he won't. He can't. She looks like Laura and he loved Laura with everything he was.
Maybe that's the problem. He's not that man anymore, and she's not Laura. She was never really Laura, not when it mattered, not with him.
She deserves this, for what she's done to him. She stops fighting, fixes her eyes on his. If she's going to die by his hand, she's masochistic enough to watch him kill her.
Black spots dance at the edge of her vision. Her lungs burn, begging her to fight, to live, to breathe.
He releases her, stumbling backwards until he reaches the wall. Oxygen rushes into her lungs and she's overwhelmed for a moment. She blindly reaches out, her fingers meeting her discarded gun, closing around the handle.
Kill or be killed. It's what she's lived by for thirty years.
He looks at her, his face expressionless as she points the gun at him. In his eyes she sees his devastation, sees what she's done to him. She pulls the trigger.
The bullet lodges in the wall next to his head, and she lets the gun fall to the floor. She cannot kill him any more than he can kill her.
Instead, she crawls across the floor, her bones and muscles already feeling the effects of their fight. He pulls her to him and his mouth moves straight to her neck, his kisses soothing the damage done by his hands. Hands that are now tugging at her blouse, taking off her bra, moving gently over her skin as if all they know how to do is love a woman, this woman.
She runs her fingers through his hair, remembering a time before it was grey and they were the happiest two people in the world.
He mumbles her name – her real name – against her skin and she pulls him closer.
And now he's gentle with her, so gentle, and it's somehow worse than the violence. All she knows anymore is violence, and to be loved is something unfamiliar and frightening. It's love that will kill her, she knows this, and yet there's a part of her that rejoices she's still worthy of being loved.
For a moment, it's just the two of them and the rest of the world doesn't exist, and she's on fire. He runs his hands over her as if he's sculpting her. Maybe he is, she thinks. Maybe he's making her into something new.
She leaves when he's asleep, knowing that whatever fragile peace they have might not have survived the night. They'll meet again, they always do, and they'll fight, but they'll make love too.
It's enough for now, she thinks with a smile, to know that he loves her as much as he hates her.
It's a start.