I'M YOUR PUPPET; invincible

chapter 3

    At the center, a small headstone. Carved with one name.

    'MARKUS SEBASTIAN GRAYSON'

    She knelt before it as if it were ritual.

    (It was—even with blood on her hands.)

    She had long since been turned bitter. Bitter in the loss of him, in the death of Cecil Steadman and Eve Wilkins. Since she was left alone in this lengthy, god-forsaken life.

    The only thing that had brought her peace, the only thing that steadied the endless tremble of her hands or the burning beneath her lit skin, was ripping skin from bone and blood from vein. Seeing the Viltrumite's fall at her feet, praying to her as if she were sent by whatever power it was they believed in.

    She tugged her leather-bound hair from its hold, feeling it fall against the length of her back. Some draped over her shoulder, the thinned ends glinting under the light.

    Scissors had not touched it since the day his heart fell still. Since she covered his body in dirt. Since her hands had last been stained by it.

    Her hand lifted, reaching before she could even understand she was. Palm flattening against the cold surface of the stone, her heart crawled into her throat. Choking her.

    She fell forward, forehead falling against the stone. Her hands anchored her, held her up. She could imagine him, then, wrapping himself around her. Holding her up when she could not do it herself.

    "Don't cry," he would tell her.

    "It's all I can do to stop myself from joining you."

    (Screaming. Crying. Killing. Conquering.)

    "He would be so disappointed in what you've become. Such a monster."

    She does not turn. Not even as his voice washes over her. Her hands ball into fists, clenching. Nails digging into her palms.

    "You don't get to say what he would think. Not when you were the one to kill him."

    She can hear the smile in his voice. "Still, I know my son. You've become a monster he would hunt. He would kill you."

   "What a mercy that would be," she spits. "You won't have the same end. You don't deserve it."

    "No?" Omni Man laughs. "You sound so sure."

    "I am sure. That I will tie you up. That I will cut your skin from your bones and watch you bleed until you can do nothing but wish you were dead. You will get nothing from me but hate." She glances over her shoulder, finding his figure. He is nothing of the man he once was. "And I'll finally be free."

———

    Mark woke with an intake of air. Slight and muffled by the pillow his face was pushed into.

    He threw an arm out, pushing the duvet off of his shoulders. He blinked, attempting to clear the sleep from his eyes as he slowly, then, lifted his head.

    Across the room, he found everything familiar and in the taste of Loren...his girlfriend.

    With a dazed smile, his head dropped back against the pillow. His heart raged through his chest in triumph and elation, as if reflecting the joy of his smile from within the fabric of his very being.