I bolted the doors. The anguish I felt took my breath away. So strong was it that I had no air in my lungs to release it. All I could produce was a thin, wailing noise. I fought to catch my breath, but the pain was so deep within me. A hole had opened up in my heart that sucked all the joy out of me, all the life. It felt like I could die here, on the filthy floor of my makeshift clinic.
I lost consciousness for a short time. Justice made me breathe. Filled my lungs with air, and as I swam from the darkness, I heard myself. I sounded like a wounded animal, screaming in pain. I had slipped from sitting to lying in the dirt, just inside the doors. My arms were wrapped tightly around myself as I tried to keep myself together, but in the face of my hurt and my anger at what the Templars had done to my former lover, what the Templars had made ME do to my former lover, I thought I would break. No arms would ever be strong enough to hold me together.
The pain I felt was only made worse by the fact that Karl had come back to me, just for a few seconds, and how he had pleaded with me to end his life. The knife, sharp and cold against his chest. The sickening smell of incense. The low voices chanting, never silent even in the dead of night, exhaling the Maker's words on the world. The hated Chantry all around me, heavy with accusations. And the ripping sound of the knife, moving through his clothes and through his chest. The sudden warmth of blood on me, and the tang of copper and iron staining the air around me. The steel's indifference as it reached his heart, and stopped it.
In my hands.
The knife in my hands.
I looked at myself then. I saw his blood drying on me, and I felt something that had once been whole and wholesome break inside me. A rift had opened in my soul. In the dark, a monster reared it's ugly head. A shadow had fallen over me, and this was the beginning of another end, although I didn't yet know what a horrible revenge the shadow would claim.
I have no memory of how long I spent just inside those doors, wailing and keening, hoping against hope that I could be released from the very physical hurt that had taken hold of me. Crippled by it, I fell asleep, exhausted by grief and pain - lost, as it were, in my own personal hell.