Hey everyone! So sorry this chapter took so long! Trigger warning for abuse in this chapter. One more to go! Pictures for this part can be found on my tumblr.

The elevator came to a stop and both Clair and Waylon lingered inside. The gore down in the main lobby was just as intense and horrifying as the rest of the asylum. The floors, the welcome desk, everything was covered in a thick layer of blood. Clair was the first to take a step out, and as she did, the full realization of escaping the asylum hit her. The door outside was just a couple feet away. Bright, beautiful morning light was flooding in and cutting the gloom. She'd been in this nightmare for no more than a day, but it still felt like an eternity.

Waylon followed her out of the elevator moments after, and the two started to make their way towards the door. Clair stopped next to the information desk. She hadn't really thought about it before now, as escaping was the only thing occupying her mind for the last several hours, but where was she going to go? She still had three more years of rehabilitation before they were going to even look at her file again. She could turn herself in. Get set up in another institution for the remainder of her sentence. It wasn't that she considered herself crazy, but she needed help. The things that man had done to her. Nobody just walks away from that, not without some scars. And oh, did she have scars. She thought she'd been getting better that past few months, but meeting Eddie had torn all her progress down.

God, Eddie. She wasn't naïve enough to think he'd actually cared for her, but all his words still hung around her neck. Choking her. Making Clair regret everything she'd said to him. Words had a way of getting under her skin, and she clung to them, internalized them quickly. But Eddie was a murderous, cruel monster, and she needed to keep reminding herself of that. She needed to remember all those bodies.

"Clair?"

Waylon was half way to the door when he turned around, noticing she was leaning against the welcome desk. He walked back over to her, his hand still gripping is wound tightly, and pressed his hip on the wood counter for support. She could see he looked worried. And irritated. They needed to get out of here and she, like an idiot, was holding them up.

"Is everything alright?" He asked. Clair raked her upper lip with her teeth and looked away, a bitter snort leaving her nose.

"I don't know what I'm going to do when I get out." She explained. "I think I might just turn myself in-"

"What?" Waylon interrupted. "Clair, you can't just turn yourself in. Murkoff is going to come after us. I knew something was off the moment that swat team tried to kill us – they don't want any survivors. They don't want people knowing what they do here. If you go off to another institution, they'll get you."

She hadn't thought of that. What was she going to do now, live in the damn woods? She'd never gone to college, Mark wouldn't let her get a job - there was nothing she could do. As if Waylon was listening to her inner panic, he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey. You can stay with me for a while. I want you to meet Lisa and the boys. I'm not sure what would have happened if we hadn't run into each other."

"You wouldn't have spent half of your time here looking for me." Clair laughed. "I think I've been more dead weight than anything else."

Waylon smiled at her, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I would rather be chasing your ass around this god forsaken place then be stuck in here alone. No one wants to be alone in here."

There it was again. That pang of guilt. She'd heard Eddie muttering about being alone – how much he hated it. It might have been the one thing out of his mouth she actually believed to be true. She'd left him to die alone. Clair's stomach clenched but she forced a grin. Waylon was being so kind, she didn't want him thinking her sour expression was because of him.

"Well, I would love to meet your wife and kids. Thank you. Really." Clair said. Waylon nodded at her and pushed off then information desk, moving towards the door again. All things considered, they'd come out of this place fairly unscathed. Yeah, Waylon was shot, but he wasn't dead. And herself? Clair placed a hand over the bandage on her cheek and peeled it off. The area was still raw and swollen, but she didn't notice till now that there were small stiches in the gash. He'd closed up the wound – she'd thought he'd just covered it up.

Didn't matter. He was going to gut her. Hang her in that gym then run off to find another person to do the same thing to. Monster. He was a monster. He had bodies hanging from the ceiling, and he was a monster. She repeated it to herself like a prayer and followed Waylon to the door.

The world suddenly flipped and a surge of pain pulsed through her head. Clair was flung back by her hair and her skull bounced off the floor. Her vision blurred and she let out a chocked cry. Even with her sight impaired, when Clair lifted her head off the ground, she knew who it was. Tall, broad, wielding a knife. Eddie.

How in hell had he survived? They'd heard the gun shots – but he didn't seem to have a wound on him. Any wounds she could see, anyway, it was hard to tell when he had so much blood on him. Eddie had been sitting in the dark across from the elevators, had he really gotten the jump on them? It didn't matter how he'd survived now; the point was, he had. Clair instinctively flung her arms in front of her face, waiting for his knife to come down. He loomed above her, chest heaving.

"I would have loved you forever." He whispered, his voice dripping with sorrow and rage. Eddie turned on his heel away from her and started towards Waylon.

Panic filled her body and she tried to scramble to her feet. "Eddie – Eddie come back please!" She called. "We need to talk. Please, we should talk about Abigail!" She needed to say something, anything, to pull his attention away from Waylon, but it wasn't working.

"You." He seethed. "I remember where I've seen your face now. I asked you for help. Instead, you do this? You took my baby away, didn't you?" Eddie was on top of him now, and Waylon let out a cry when a fist slammed into his face.

"Eddie!" Clair shouted, she was on her feet now, trying to hurry over. "Oh god please stop!"

"I'll kill you." Eddie growled out, his voice quivering slightly. He lifted the knife over his head and Waylon kneed him in the jaw. The blade fell from Eddie's hand and slide on the floor. "You jack-booted fuck!"

Losing his knife didn't hinder him and he grasped Waylon's neck with both of his hands. Eddie continued to snarl as he tried to choke the life out of the smaller man. Clair was right behind them now and her gaze fell onto Eddie's knife. She hadn't had to kill a single person while she was here. Not one. Did she have to kill Eddie? Of all people?

Stop thinking. She knelt to the ground and picked up the blade – it was half the size of her arm. It was heavy, but she wasn't surprised he was able to swing it around so effortlessly all the time. When Clair stood back up, something felt off. The arm holding the knife started to shake and she tried to steady it with her other hand. Waylon was screaming – she could hear his choked moans. Move. She needed to move. Clair stepped towards Eddie, his knife clutched tightly in her shaking hand.

Their blue rug was maroon now, and he was going to be so angry with her.

He'd brought up that subject again. She hated when he talked about children. How kind he sounded. How wanting. Like he would be the perfect father. 'I'll protect them.' He'd say, 'I'll spoil them so much.' She knew better, though. She'd always known better.

For the first 9 years Mark had been so focused on his career that children had never even crossed his mind. He hadn't even mentioned them until his friends and co-workers started to have children. Then, out of the blue, he needed to be a father. He needed to be like everyone else – just better.

Most of the time something would interrupt the conversation. The phone would ring, one of his friends would come over, something.

Not tonight. She was making dinner, pasta, it was his favorite. Clair only ever made his favorites, and made sure to always make them right. He'd come into the kitchen and started to talk about it again. She waited for the interruption, but it didn't come. He wanted a straight answer this time, wanted her to be excited, to tell him how much she wanted this too.

Clair said no. She remembered every time he hit her, punched her, told her no one would ever love her, and stopped her from calling her parents and her friends. Clair said no.

She heard the smack before she felt it across her face. Mark was screaming at her, call her horrible things, and she gasped when his foot met with her stomach. He was so angry with her and she knew this time he might not stop. He might actually kill her this time. The umbrella. That fucking umbrella. He was going for it by the door. It was left there so casually, a normally benign object used for disgusting things.

She followed him, the serrated knife she had been using to cut bread still in her hand. This was it, he was going for the umbrella, and he didn't even know she was behind him. He was the one unaware now.

Their blue rug was maroon now, but she didn't care that he'd be angry. She didn't have to care.

Clair stepped over to the small table where their phone sat. She placed her knife down and picked up the phone to call the police. Calm. That's all she felt. She was aware of what she'd done, but it hadn't fully sunk in yet. The body, with twenty-two stab wounds they would later tell her, didn't seem real. Like it wasn't actually him. Like he would walk through that front door and the pain would start again.

The couch had remained clean and Clair sat down to wait for the police to show up.

Clair felt sticky. The room around her was coming back into focus and for some reason she'd ended up on the floor. There had been screaming, she was screaming, then everything had stopped. She felt a hand press on her shoulder and she jerked away, her eyes wide and turning up. Waylon. He was covered in blood – but it didn't look like any of it was his. Whose? He turned his head from her and looked over to the welcome desk. Clair followed his gaze.

Eddie. He was slumped against the desk, his chin pressed against his chest, and both arms hung to his sides. The smear of blood across the floor suggested he dragged himself there – but Clair couldn't remember. She didn't remember anything. The white parts of his outfit that had stayed clean before were now maroon. And like Mark, it didn't matter if he was angry with her.

"Hey."

Waylon was talking to her now, but she didn't turn her face away from Eddie. There were so much blood, but she wasn't convinced he was dead.

"You saved me, Clair. You did what you had to do. Remember we talked about that? When we first met? You did what you had to do then, and you did the same now."

Clair nodded but still wouldn't turn to look at him. She wondered what went through his mind while she was stabbing him. Had he felt angry? Betrayed? Relieved? He'd looked like he was in so much pain. Not just physical pain, either. The only time he hadn't looked horrible was when they'd been in bed together. Not while it was happening, no, but after. She'd felt sick then but there'd been a shift in him, only briefly. Like he actually might have trusted her in that moment.

But he was sick, and cruel, and a monster. There would be no more bodies hanging from the ceiling now.

"Clair."

They needed to leave, she knew that. On shaky legs Clair lifted herself off the ground. His knife was still in her hands, and she had no intention of leaving it behind. She leaned into Waylon and the two helped each other walk out of the Asylum. There was a body by the door. He looked to be an executive of some kind. Blue suit, black hair, but he was clutching a wound on his stomach that must have cause him to bleed out. She heard Waylon make a type of groan above her in regard to the body, but they didn't linger long.

The feeling of actual sunlight made her skin prickle and Clair couldn't hold back a smile, or the tears, as they made their way outside.