when the devil wants to dance with you, you better say never, Because the dance with the devil might last you forever
Elias POV
Gunfire. Execution. They were all lined up and killed.
My knife, sliding against the throat of a man on his knees before me. His blood staining my hands, dyeing my hands red. I simply shook it off, wiping it onto the pocket square from my suit jacket pocket.
I wanted them all dead for what they had done. What they had taken.
And their blood soaked the concrete.
Images of her flashed in my head. The burns. The cuts. The blood.
My men searched for her. The base, the woods around it. Aleksei stood near me, seeming impatient. Worried. His foot tapping like he too wanted to be scavenging the wilderness for her.
"Have they found her?" I said lowly, while looking at my watch.
It would be dark soon.
He turned his head to me, blinking. "No. By the state of her wounds if she's left overnight—"
"She is no doubt waiting in the trees ready to stab me." I said, remembering her very words to me. I didn't doubt her threat. But his words didn't fall short. She would probably be dead if we didn't find her until morning.
And the very thought that the fucker had slid a blade into her flesh made my skin burn. If I could kill these men twice, I would.
I would Let her watch if she chose as I killed each and every one of her captures.
She broke his trachea with those little chains.
Blood pooled under my feet, and I looked at my watch again, before surveying the tree line. Nothing.
If she had run, I'd find her.
I'll find you and I'll bring you back.
"Fucking Christ." I hissed as I began walking towards the backside of the building. They were all gathered in the front when we showed up, prepackaged for death.
I wonder if that was her doing. Did she know I'd kill then all? Slit there throats and have them shot through the skull?
Id watched that live feed video from the very beginning.
Saw those tears on her face. The way she begged—the second a little pathetic beg came from her lips, as she begged him not to touch her—I felt rage. It was as if my blood was burning. I had stared at the screen, demanding the feed be traced.
My eyes locked on her as I noticed each and every little hash and cut and bruise. She looked defeated. Messed. Broken.
He has cut over the pre-existing scars, and then bled new wounds now.
I should have remembered she was not one to beg, and as he unchained her to fuck the space between herlegs, she snapped his neck instead.
I felt Aleksei follow me, and I stopped quickly. "No. Go find him." I hissed, and he stood in his tracks and nodded. "Bring him with us." I finished.
He didn't just get to die. No. Not for what he has done to her. It didn't matter that he wouldn't feel the pain.
I found myself alone. As I found myself towards the backside, and woods ever expanding into nothing.
"Syn." I said lowly into it, as the darkness already began to chase away the light. The trees casting shadows that made it look ghostly.
There wasn't a sound from the trees. Not a rustle. No wind. Nothing.
Still I wasn't oblivious to the possibility of her coming from anywhere and sinking a blade into me, the same one used on her.
Blood, I wonder how much she has lost.
I stepped first into the dark, looking around. As I heard the Laughter and calls of my men closing in.
My eyes scanned lowly, and the idea that she very well might have just run became more of a possibility.
Run. That's what she should do. But, even if she did, run and changes her hair and her name, I'd still find her. Id find her and chain her to the bed, to be sure she'd never run again.
A new Anger begin to rise in me. And I began to think over every reason I did hate her. My fists were stone, and I went to turn around when I saw—
She was sitting against a tree, staring into nothing. Her expression blank as she sat in her own blood. It streaked like raindrops down her thigh.
The short film did nothing to fully show how dark the bruises were, how deep the cuts. How much her eyes didn't look the same as they did before.
She must have known I was there, because she grabbed the knife from the forest floor that was beside her, never taking her eyes of the landscape before her.
"Syn." I said, but it was like she could not hear me. Or simply chose not to.
She killed a man. That changes you. Forever.
I moved closer to her, cautiously. She notice that too, the slowness and my hesitation , and with zero expression she took the knife she was holding and threw it into the bushes several feet from her.
I wondered what she was looking at.
The closer I got, the worse she looked. The foggier her eyes became.
There was no curses, no screams, no attacks. She didn't even move as I now stood beside her. "Syn." I said, now close enough to see the blood, close enough to smell it.
She was covered in her own blood. Her wrists which she held herself with had indents from the chains, as well as her chest and around her back.
She was covered in dirt, and grime and blood.
"let's go." I whispered as I crouched down, and got closer and not even then did she care to look. She put her wrists together and held them out to me. Ready for me to bind her like my prisoner.
She killed a man with her bare hands.
The first kill, is always the worst. Al next few were easy.
"I'll keep you safe." I told her, I promised her I would. And the knowledge I had failed at that made me furious.
she whispered, it was scratchy and low. "I will never be safe" She urged, as I noticed a tear from her eye. One that wasn't the same as those facading droplets in the cell.
Oh flower.
Her body was naked, they had stripped her. Had they touched her? Bruises were on her neck, she chest, bite marks.
I took the blazer from my shoulders and brought it over her shoulders, it was aggressively too big, yet I did it up anyways before I scooped her in my arms with none of her usual protest.
A part of me hated that.
Was she lost? She said she wouldn't break easily. And that was what I knew to be true in the midsts of all other lies.
But being shown hell can make you do things you swore you wouldn't.
She was here for three days and three night. Some cuts already red and inflamed likely from growing infections. Her forehead was hot, her lips cracked.
I stood quick with her in my arms, her blood dripping onto my white button up. Her head was against my chest motionless.
"I killed them all." I told her as I turned around and walked slowly out of the darkening wood. Every step made her wince, her hands pressing against my chest like a warning to be careful.
Delicate. Flower. Gentle but murderous.
She again didn't answer but looked as if she was lost in her own head.
Lost.
I stepped carefully, yet with hurry as I moved quickly back towards the car. Aleksei was waiting, his eyes widening as he took in the very sight of her. Many of the men stopping and staring. Some looked away, others shook their heads and balled their fists.
And any of the thieves men that were still alive, were killed Immediately.
She seemed not to care. Like none of us were even here. She was staring at things that weren't even there, yet I saw the wheels in her head turn.
Aleksei's eyes just traced her, looking to the ground as he opened a car door and I stepped inside quickly with her. Setting her down on the seat beside me.
She turned in the seat, abrasive, and moved back until Her back rested against the opposite side of the door, and it seemed like she was staring at me—but that wasn't it, she was staring through me.
Aleksei climbed into the front, and the engine started. His looked at my thought the rear view, before the car moved as my men set the whole building on fire.
He kept looking at her. His eyes shifting as he too noticed the scars retraced.
"Why." She said simply. Just one word.
I looked over to her, as her looked now at my bloody hands.
"His sister was...killed." I told her, and her lips closed and parted again. That was hardly the whole truth. But she didn't need to know, not yet, that there was more to Rebecca Myers death than she thought. More then just a murder in a alleyway.
More then just her friend being gunned down in the street with her as witness.
Her eyes turning away. "It was quickly." I said, like I wanted to reassure her.
"Well then this just evens the score then doesn't it." She told me, as her head tilted back and rested against the window. Her eyes closing.
•••
Syn POV
I sat in a bathtub. My hands shaking as I scrubbed the blood and dirt off of my skin. My hands trembling, as my fingers rubbed the soap across my chest and collarbone, and with every move my skin aches.
Elias sat outside the bathroom door, sitting patiently on the bed, watching. Waiting. Like he wanted me to say something, anything.
But I couldn't. I had nothing to say.
The water was red, the bubbled dissipating slowly. I dipped my hair under the water and rinsed the soap from it.
When I came back up, I rung my hair out, ignoring how the water made the many cuts sting.
The two deep scars on my face, now bleed new. It was like an old wound had been cut open.
I turned my head lowly as I put my arms on the baths edges and sunk down. I looked at him, and he was staring lowly at me.
"stop looking at me like I'm going to break down or cry or something." I told him Coldly, but my words were not frozen.
I dipped my head back and looked at the ceiling. Hearing him stand and the bed creak. His footsteps as he inched closer.
The water hiding more of me.
He stood at the door.
"This place isn't safe for you anymore, we are leaving." He told me, his eyes dark as they just traced the parts of my body that were left out of the water.
I saw his men drag the man I killed into the back of one of the cars. I'm sure, he's already in little pieces in the basement.
"I can handle myself just fine." I whispered.
"I watched the whole video." He told me. His arms folding over one another. His eyes glazing over for a moment as if we was replaying each scene in his head.
Something I could not bring myself to do. Could not afford to do. I tried to not think about it. About the whole thing. The way he had slid the knife across my skin, kissed and hit and sucked and—
"Well the video was for you, I kind of assumed you would have." I answered, looking over at him. "Just say whatever it is you want to say."
"You killed a man." He said.
I pursed my lips, "I did what I had to." I said plainly. I have always done that. My whole life I have done that.
"Its alright not to be fine with it." He told me, as I splashed my hands into the water. Waving my pal over the steamy surface. The mirrors were foggy.
This version of him, made me almost miss how horrible he was usually. Now he spoke and acted and looked at me as if he had something to be sorry about, yet knew would never utter the words.
"I'm alright." I said. And, maybe I was. I could forget this. But I needed a minute to not be fine, but I couldn't take that minute with him standing there. Waiting for it.
"The first time is always the worst." He said. Like he knew what he was talking about it. I wondered who had killed firsts. Who was the first to die by his hand?
Those scars on his back. The deep, jagged whip marks, they were old, maybe the person who had done that to him was the first.
I wanted to ask about them. I have wanted to know since he turned his back to me in the water and I saw them in the shade of the falling sun.
I wanted to know who did it. Why. But knew he carried the same questions about the gashes on my own skin.
"Are we talking about sex or murdering?" I said. Trying to talk about anything but this. Anything else.
"Syn." He scolded. And I turned my head down towards the water. And In the reflection I could very distinctly see my face. The scars that marked down from above my eyebrow, across my eye, and down halfway my cheek.
"He was not the first person I have killed." I told him very lowly, not even sure he had heard it, while leaning back onto the porcelain once again.
And I looked at my left hand, and rubbed where the ring on my finger goes.
"Who?" He whispered, walking closer still. For being such a monstrous beast he walked silently.
Who?
The night of it all rang like gunfire that pelted my body. The memories flashed in my head. Like little snapshots. Drugs blurred them most of the time. Liquor burned then away.
But they burned fresh now, like it was only yesterday. AndIt burned up my throat until I felt like I'd cough up flames. My eyes darkened. And I stared foreword.
I regretted even saying those fucking words. This wasn't a I'll show you mine if you show me yours thing. He has demons. Monsters. So did I.
"I'd like to get out now." I whispered instead.