BLEED WITH ME [ETHAN LANDRY]

TWENTY NINE - "I killed for him (and I'm scared I'll do it again)."

TWENTY NINE - "I KILLED FOR HIM (AND I'M SCARED I'LL DO IT AGAIN)."

"Anika?"

The first words that left Lyds Altieri's mouth when she awakened for a second time were those of her boyfriend's second victim; Anika.

Anika was and would always be more than just that, Lyds knew that deeply, yet Ethan hadn't even hesitated before he took away what she could be, and would cease to never be again. She couldn't fathom it, not in any particularly way - how exactly had it been so easy?

Truly, the brunette would haunt Lyds for the rest of her life, in every crevice of her memory and every shadowed corner before bed. However, this would be the first instance for Lyds of Anika's emotional haunting, formed solely by the guilt of continuing to entertain Ethan and his presence in her life.

As long as Ethan lived and breathed, Anika would continue to coexist with him, until the soil took them both back to the earth.

Lyds had met her their first week of the summer semester at Blackmore College, just another drunk girl at a party looking to make friends who she'd never talk to again once she was sober. That was what Lyds had at least assumed her to be; she'd been deadly wrong. Anika was unalike with anyone she'd ever known before, simply not caring as to what had happened to any of them in their past, only that they existed in her present. She was funny and kind, fiercely loyal and yet the most gentle soul any of them would ever meet outside of Wes.

Sometimes, Lyds even saw pieces of him in her.

She witnessed hers and Mindy's love story, how it all went from a simple text one night to her practically living in their dorm like it had always just been the three of them. It was refreshing, to see her friends loved in such a manner after the loss they'd all felt. She was home to all of them.

And then, just like that, she was bloodied and hanging from those god damn ladders and her face was caved in on the dumpster. Ethan at one end, and Lyds at the other. Both with blood on their hands.

And Lyds understood that where Wes's ghost rested on her shoulder, Anika sat right beside him.

"Ani?" Her voice cracked, lost in the billowing sound of the storm outside battering up against the rusted shutters.

The blonde moved to the end of her bed then, shuffling ever so slowly, wincing with every pinch of pain, until finally she found herself sat at the end, witnessing the downpour like it was a gift from god.

Perhaps it could wash all her sins away.

The door too creaked with the relentless attack of the wind and rain, and the Altieri girl pondered for a short yet sweet moment just how easy it would be to run out into it, to make her way home and confess to it all, to face the music, all with her injuries to contend with.