And it all comes to a head…
I feel really bad, like I'm abusing the characters. The next few chapters are going to have to be filler. This one's short, but has what I wanted in the previous chapter but wouldn't work just then.
(I wrote my Art History paper, which got pushed back to next week but needs severe editing, hence why I'm able to write at the moment. Stress is gone, but at the same time, professor expects wonderful papers. Ha.)
Your reviews are fantastic, as always. :)
She rarely slept anymore. Riley would close her eyes, she'd fall asleep, but then the dreams kicked in. The nightmares. She felt her wounds burn, she'd try and fight him off but it wasn't real. She'd scream bloody murder. She'd see his eyes, the eyes of an animal.
Scabior had attempted to wake her up one night, holding her limbs down, knees on her thighs. In her screaming and writhing, she'd managed to knock him off the bed. He landed onto the floor with a thud, hitting his head on a nightstand.
He was nursing an ice-pack, a cigarette, and a tumbler of Firewhiskey when she stumbled out of the bedroom at four in the morning. Their eyes met; he looked away first.
The doctor had shooed him outside of the room to give her discharge orders and explain the nature of her wounds. She was not a werewolf; her bites were given to her in the werewolf's human form. She would obtain lupine qualities; a taste for raw meat, a new sense of smell, her left eye would have a different visual field than before, a bit more strength than before, and she might have less control when it came to her spike in hormones.
But the limbo of human and wolf was still pressed on her. She understood now.
The tension was getting worse with each passing day. Scabior had given his field post to someone else, and was stuck in London until Riley could do something other than work around the apartment. She had hired someone to man the café, because she couldn't face the public.
He drank more than usual to deal with the situation. Because he hated himself. He'd done this to her, really. He ruined a young girl. He'd fucked up and now she was so different.
No smiles, no laughs, no playful glares. She ate meat like it was never going to be found again. She looked like hell, simply because no charms, no makeup could hide those shadows under her eyes. She'd be exactly as she had been when he left, as if she never moved at all.
She was not the same Riley.
It started when he'd had a bit too much to drink. Not stumbling, slurring, drunk, but the brave drunk. The stupid drunk that made his accent a little difficult to comprehend.
"Ye need to ge' ov'r this, love. All ye do is sulk 'round 'ere. Ye don' go ou'side. Ye 'ardly move."
She merely looked at him. Hoping to strike some sort of logic into his head that she clearly wasn't in any state to start her life again at the moment. Thinner than before, her pants falling from her hips. She turned away, heading towards the bottle on the counter. Drinking made him horrid. He would say things he thought when he was sober but had enough sense not to let slip.
She dumped the alcohol down the drain, dropping the bottle with a dramatic, loud, thud into the sink.
Her way of saying that she didn't give a shit what he thought. He wanted to play that game, she'd take away the enabler.
"Yer not the same, Riley."
"How can I be?" She snapped. "How I can be around the same man who caused this?"
She gestured to her face, where the pink marks never faded, with the single white mark from their meeting. To her eye, which, honestly, was dizzying to look through. They both knew under her baggy sweater (baggy to begin with, but now it hung like it did on a clothing rack, no form under it) were more pink marks, interlaced with the old marks from his ring.
"That was Greyback, not me." He growled.
"No, but you certainly didn't mind sharing my living location with one of his men."
"I didn' know! I 'adn't talked to 'im in months, 'ow was I supposed to know 'e worked fer Greyback?"
She was silent. In all honestly, who would ever admit to working for such a foul excuse for a man?
"Don' go blamin' me 'cause ye can' get a 'old of yerself. I'm puttin' up with this. I'm spendin' my day in a fuckin' office because ye can't be left alone for too long. I'm runnin' on little sleep because ye scream through the fuckin' night. I didn' know I'd be babysittin'. I didn' ask for this."
"Well, I didn't ask to be attacked."
"Why is it always 'bout ye, love? 'ow am I supposed to feel when ye don' look at me like ye used to? When ye don' smile or laugh or even talk? Yer a stranger, Riley."
At some point, he'd backed her up against the support column, pressing his weight on her. Her heart was pounding rapidly, somewhere between desire and fear. Hips on hers brought back the ever-present nightmare. Alcohol-laced breath made everything worse. She whimpered, trying to free herself from her prison of wall and flesh.
"Scabior, you're drunk. Let me go."
He leaned in more, crushing her, teeth biting her scar-riddled neck. The wounds were still tender with too much pressure and she cried out. Her mind put her back to that night, to the blood and the pain.
She freed her leg, her increase in strength kicking in as her toes escaped from his boots. She kneed him, and he stumbled back, breath suddenly gone.
"Ow, love," he gasped. He had doubled over, picking his head up and looking at her. Icy blue, filled with drunken anger, pain…sorrow, glared up at her. The kind of glare given to an enemy, a person that one feels nothing but loathing for. "Ye'll pay for that."
In one swift move, he struck her, arm in a sweeping arc in the air. Riley didn't have the time to cry out or attempt to dodge the blow. She stood there, looking in the direction the smack had turned her head in. A large red mark was making its way above the claw-marks, a handprint. She felt herself glaze over with shock, anger filling her from her toes to her chest, where it swelled and stayed there, twisting her stomach.
Scabior had pulled his arm back to his side, but looked at his hand and then back at her. As if he hadn't realized what he'd done. He had never hit a woman. Not even as a Snatcher. He'd shake them up a bit, try and appear menacing, but he'd never hit the women.
It tore at him to see his hand on her cheek. Amid all the marks, the red hand the most prominent. He had never intended to hurt her, for her to get hurt. The guilt felt as though it had a sobering effect on him, almost. His gut twisted in the most uncomfortable way.
"Riley…" He couldn't look at her. Not now. Maybe never.
"Get out." She hissed, head still turned. She was looking down, trying to control her emotions before her new sense of self took hold.
He didn't move.
"Get out!" She roared, looking at him with eyes wide in anger, the pupil of her yellow eye dilating. Her teeth were bared, locked together, an old display of power.
He glanced into her eyes, regret written on his face. It vanished as he collected his coat and scarf, the slam of the door resounding in his mind far after he had left.