A Living Shield (John Price x OC/Reader slowburn)

35) Cruel Inferno

[Song 🎵: Novocaine - Too Close To Touch, Bad Omens]

How do you treat death when it stares you in the eye? Do you acknowledge it? Do you ignore it like your life depends on it?

How do you process it, when that which was claimed by death itself, stared right back at you? Like it had never been dead to begin with.

You'd been mute ever since that door opened. The same old metal, creaky door you'd come to hate with an uncanny fixation. Always the cause of everything spiralling downwards. As if channeling your despair and anger on an inanimate object would change anything.

It was impossible to create a coherent thought. You were truly incapable. Ever since you watched those legs walk in, those guilt-ridden eyes avoiding your fixated ones at all cost, you'd forgotten what it felt like to breathe without having to manually remind yourself. The emotions had overtaken you in such chaos, you wouldn't be able to bring out a word if you wanted to, if you even had the air in your lungs to begin with.

Like all oxygen had gotten sucked out of the room, replaced by thick molasses. Choking everything in its wake as the pressure just kept rising, the more you stared at the paradox that had entered your prison.

Fernandez seemed to bask in it. The glory he'd found in your pained expression. In your devastating turmoil. The smile that painted his face was wide and conceited, grotesque even, but you couldn't register it.

It didn't matter.

All you saw was the woman sitting in front of you, pushed down by hands placed on her shoulders, seated on a wooden chair that Fernandez had rapidly shoved closer right before. Long dark unkept waves, high cheekbones sharper than you remembered. Blotches of burn marks telling a story you knew all too well. The same slender nose and plump limps, yet now accompanied by a fallen in face and a dull expression you couldn't recall her ever having. A mirage of the person she used to be, of the person you'd once called your subordinate, your teammate, your friend. It was like you couldn't accept it, yet it was undeniably her. In flesh and bone.

Witch.

Stuck in between disbelief and a barage of nostalgic emotion, reality was setting in so painfully fast you felt nausea hitting the back of your throat.

"What a tense reunion. You must be burning with questions, sargento. Pun intended. Though I suppose our friend here has more answers, don't you bruja?", Fernandez said with an air that showed he didn't even try and hide his entertainment. He'd lowered his face next to her head, Witch's shoulders stiffening slightly under the sudden close contact. It was the only reaction she gave, her face a stonecold wasteland.

Your lips opened, trembling as you sought for words, for the ability to create sentences. A strangled noise spilled from them instead, an echo of the word it was supposed to be, yet recognisable in it's torment.

"Mariana?"

Witch's eyes jumped to yours in an instant. They'd been vacant before but their auburn shade was the only vibrant thing left in her face, still familiar and recognizable. It was the flicker that ran across them, snaking through what seemed like eyes of solid, brown earth. Cracking on the surface, as they'd been dried under a relentless, scorching sun. The darkness in those cracks showing a hint of the emotion that lay underneath. The recognition. The vulnerability. The guilt.

Your lips spilling more words, grasping for any straw of sanity, of sense.

"You can't be..how?", you uttered, hoping for a response. Your desperation for mental relief so dire as your question evoked no answer, your voice cracking as you continued. "Please, just- say something?"