Vignette: paying the price of blood
[ OOC: Millitimed to after this. ]
She makes to her room, after all, after a few false turns and close calls with people passing by in the hallways. The door slams shut behind her as she stumbles blindly towards the bathroom.
Nina shuts the door. Collapses against the edge of the sink, knees folding up beneath her. Her chest heaves, her stomach heaves, her body shudders as she gasps for breath.
There’s a force of emotion building inside her that she can’t control, she can’t hang on to. Overflowing, flooding, surging-she’s swept away in the tidal wave, drowned, pulled down into the bottomless depths.
Magius-down in the Bar-he showed her with his magic, in her mind, just how much he loved her. An image of herself without words, impossibly beautiful, filled with light and laughter and wonder: the way he saw her, had seen her ever since he met her. A gorgeous, radiant goddess.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. Her breath hitches as she struggles for self-control, shivers, trembles through her chest.
The way he had looked at her there, over the folds of the newspaper and piles of parchment, the bar glasses and polished tabletop-her foot teasing his under the table, her hands clasped in his, their eyes meeting-a look of such pure devotion and adoration that her soul shook with it from head to foot.
Purity. Devotion. Those words had been empty and meaningless to her for so long.
Before the noise blurred and the colours blared and her fingers pulled the trigger and her heart pounded and the gunshot cracked through the air, it had been the same look Jack Bauer would give his wife.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. She doesn’t deserve to be loved.
I’m a monster, Nina moans brokenly to herself, rocking unsteadily, shaking from head to foot, a monster... and through the whirling in her mind she sees, with hallucinatory vividness, dark mottled spots of blood staining her hands. Her clawed hands.
A cry tears her apart, wrenching through her in twisted, tortured agony, and she sinks to the edge of the bathtub with her face in her hands. She huddles there for the longest while, shuddering, as one by one her world falls into pieces.
Finally, after minutes-hours-she moves. She lifts her head. Her eyes are dry. She stares at herself in the mirror.
Her makeup’s smudged and running. Her clothes are rumpled and her hair is tousled all wrong. Her face is blanched a dead white and her gaze is haunted.
She looks like hell.
She looks like she’s in hell.
A shining image of herself without words-beautiful, glowing, radiant, a goddess...
With all the cool precision of arming a sniper rifle, she bends forward, picks up the soap dish from the sink and lets fly.
The mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, glass tinkling everywhere. Broken light scatters across the bathroom floor.
Shaking she clutches at the edge of the sink, leaning hard against it. Shards of glass mix with soap, with porcelain, with the crimson red that slowly seeps from between her clenched fingers.
For the longest time there’s no noise but her harsh breathing, rasping in the silence. Then, mixed with low, unsteady panting, there’s the sound-softly-of someone sobbing.
She makes to her room, after all, after a few false turns and close calls with people passing by in the hallways. The door slams shut behind her as she stumbles blindly towards the bathroom.
Nina shuts the door. Collapses against the edge of the sink, knees folding up beneath her. Her chest heaves, her stomach heaves, her body shudders as she gasps for breath.
There’s a force of emotion building inside her that she can’t control, she can’t hang on to. Overflowing, flooding, surging-she’s swept away in the tidal wave, drowned, pulled down into the bottomless depths.
Magius-down in the Bar-he showed her with his magic, in her mind, just how much he loved her. An image of herself without words, impossibly beautiful, filled with light and laughter and wonder: the way he saw her, had seen her ever since he met her. A gorgeous, radiant goddess.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. Her breath hitches as she struggles for self-control, shivers, trembles through her chest.
The way he had looked at her there, over the folds of the newspaper and piles of parchment, the bar glasses and polished tabletop-her foot teasing his under the table, her hands clasped in his, their eyes meeting-a look of such pure devotion and adoration that her soul shook with it from head to foot.
Purity. Devotion. Those words had been empty and meaningless to her for so long.
Before the noise blurred and the colours blared and her fingers pulled the trigger and her heart pounded and the gunshot cracked through the air, it had been the same look Jack Bauer would give his wife.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. She doesn’t deserve to be loved.
I’m a monster, Nina moans brokenly to herself, rocking unsteadily, shaking from head to foot, a monster... and through the whirling in her mind she sees, with hallucinatory vividness, dark mottled spots of blood staining her hands. Her clawed hands.
A cry tears her apart, wrenching through her in twisted, tortured agony, and she sinks to the edge of the bathtub with her face in her hands. She huddles there for the longest while, shuddering, as one by one her world falls into pieces.
Finally, after minutes-hours-she moves. She lifts her head. Her eyes are dry. She stares at herself in the mirror.
Her makeup’s smudged and running. Her clothes are rumpled and her hair is tousled all wrong. Her face is blanched a dead white and her gaze is haunted.
She looks like hell.
She looks like she’s in hell.
A shining image of herself without words-beautiful, glowing, radiant, a goddess...
With all the cool precision of arming a sniper rifle, she bends forward, picks up the soap dish from the sink and lets fly.
The mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, glass tinkling everywhere. Broken light scatters across the bathroom floor.
Shaking she clutches at the edge of the sink, leaning hard against it. Shards of glass mix with soap, with porcelain, with the crimson red that slowly seeps from between her clenched fingers.
For the longest time there’s no noise but her harsh breathing, rasping in the silence. Then, mixed with low, unsteady panting, there’s the sound-softly-of someone sobbing.