The Grey Blood #2

Killing is Easy

Alicia breaks into the land of the living with a groan, her body feeling as though it's been shredded to pieces.

"You're lucky," comes a voice close to her and Alicia turns her head and cracks her eyes open. Samantha stares at her, a grim set to her lips. "I was able to save your leg."

Alicia attempts to sit up, wrapping her arm around her abdomen. "Galya?" she asks, her throat like sandpaper.

"Alive and recovering quicker than you will. Try not to move." Sam eases Alicia back down with a hand on her shoulder. She grabs a flask from beside the bedroll Alicia lays on and helps her drink. Alicia grips the flask, her mouth parched and her desperation for water causes her to choke on it, dribbling it down her chin. She lays back with loud breaths and looks up at Sam.

"How bad?"

Sam shakes her head and looks towards the gaping hole in the crumbling stone they're in. "It's been a few years since I was in the army, I wouldn't trust my doctorate skills, but I did what I could. I didn't need to amputate and your kneecap was in one piece. Like I said, you were lucky."

"How long have I been out?"

"A few days." Samantha rubs her temples with her fingers. "Galya already told me it was Warren who did this."

Alicia is silent for a moment, her eyelids fluttering as she recalls everything that happened.

"Do you wish you'd killed him?" Sam asks, her voice causing Alicia to blink and meet her black gaze.

She thinks on the question. She's had many chances to kill Warren, and if she'd taken those opportunities then people wouldn't have suffered. If she'd killed him after what he'd done to Kathryn, then he would never have destroyed the Commons. If she'd killed him in the Commons, then she wouldn't have this bullet hole in her leg now.

But does she wish she'd killed him? Are all those people's lives lost in the Commons on her hands? Would she trade their blood for his?

The answer should be simple, but there are always more monsters in the world waiting in the shadows for their opportunity.

"It doesn't matter," Alicia says, her voice hard, and tries to sit up again, her body begging her to lay back down and sink into sweet nothingness. "It's all in the past and questioning my choices won't help our current situation."

Sam hums and sips at the flask, raising an eyebrow at Alicia. There's a knowing glint in her gaze that Alicia doesn't want to even begin to acknowledge. The girl doesn't know her, doesn't know why she made the choices she did. Half the time, Alicia doesn't even know anymore. But all she can do is continue pushing forward and right now her path is leading her back to Warren.

"If I need to kill him, I will."

Sam puts the flask down on the ground and turns back to the gap in the ruin that was perhaps once polished marble, but now it's wrapped in vines and moss. "Let's not make promises we can't keep, okay?"

Alicia rubs at her eye and lays down, thinking of such things causing a deep throb to begin in her head. Alicia doesn't want to remember any of it. She lets out a defeated sigh as she gazes up at the cracked stone above her.

"Sometimes you have to kill," Sam says. She looks at Alicia with heavy shadows swimming in her gaze.

Alicia meets that gaze for a moment before she turns away, unable to look at her, unable to see the blame in the girl's eyes. If she had done what she needed to in the past, Galya wouldn't be hurt and the Commons would still be standing.

"Taking a life is the hardest thing out here," Sam continues, "but sometimes it has to be done."

Alicia stares at the spiderweb cracks in the stone, her regard sightless as she remembers each and every life she's taken, etched into her soul like the bloody scratchings of a madman. She sees the blood drenching her hands, the crimson of her scarf so easy to hide the splatters of it. The Reaper's Curse reopened her wounds, poured salt into them, showed her things she had never wanted to see again. Every time she closes her eyes, she witnesses it all over.