No one stopped for her. She didn’t expect that they would. What a sight she must have been. A banshee screaming into the night, face half masked with dried blood. She wouldn’t stop to help the soul that looked like her. But that didn’t stop the anger from bubbling up inside of her and hemorrhaging over her lips. A litany of curses gushed from her throat, half-coherent as she stumbled through dimly lit streets and when she wasn’t wailing to drown out the sound of her pain she was sobbing, an endless prayer of vitriol only changing in pitch.
Hopeite did not so much enter the warehouse as she did crash through the door a screaming bloody mass. The gauze that Faustite had wrapped her head in was crimson and sticky, but Hopeite was too frightened to remove it. What if this was the only dam keeping her from bleeding out? What if this was the only thing keeping her alive? She stumbled into the room, kicking the cat out of the way as she moved erratically. She kept a first aid kit in the warehouse for minor scrapes… would there be something in there that could help her?
Hopeite fell into the crate that held her toys, never once acknowledging Harmonia in her search for something to help the pain. She had nothing. Nothing. How could she have been so stupid? She tossed away gauze, disinfectant, band-aids, useless item after useless item over her shoulder until her nails broke against the bottom of the crate and she kept on digging, trying to find anything to help.
“Lieutenant,” the cat’s curt address called Hopeite back to herself if only by a modicum. “Captain Faustite’s directive was relayed to me… shall I call for a general?” There was a long pause as Hopeite gasped for air and tried to process what she was being told. Finally, she nodded and pulled herself up the wall and onto her feet. The cat hesitated for a long moment before slipping out of the warehouse and leaving the pair to themselves to make his call. Hopeite leaned heavily against the wall, watching Harmonia with hooded eyes as she tried to regain her baring before she moved again, stumbling and jerking like a reanimated corpse. She fell once, grabbing a small knife while she was down without a plan of how to use it.
“He wants… me to corrupt you,” she muttered, refusing to return her gaze to Harmonia. “He took my… he took my ear and he… told me… he took my… he took…” she collapsed behind Harmonia, forehead pressed to the back of the chair as she panted, stomach curling and twisting sickeningly in on itself.
“But I… don’t… want to…” Hopeite didn’t recognize her own voice as she spoke, nor did she know where the words were coming from in the first place. Her arm moved of its own accord, lifting the knife and slipping it under the zip tie. She pulled and the snapping of the tie sounded far too loud in her ear like the cat must have heard what she was doing… what was she doing…
“You need to leave. Out the back… you need to…” it was getting too hard to stay awake. Hopeite was so… so tired. And sleep sounded so good… she felt… warm…
Kolina
