hai mươi ❀| you get a shiver in the dark

[lotuslife]

[It's late afternoon on Beaver Street, and Vietnam is collapsed in the hallway of 1762 in a deep red, shimmering pool of her own blood. There's an obscene path of it smeared and streaked behind her, trailing from the kitchen to the living room up to where she's stopped. Blood stains the carpet and some of the walls; it permeates the tiles of the

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[lotuslife]

[After bathing the blood off of her body and inspecting the wound- the internal damage seems to be all but gone, and the entry and exit wounds are largely healed- she wraps her ribs in clean bandages and begins cleaning the parts of the house that Rika missed. Large portions of the carpet will need to be replaced. The kitchen tiles seem stained, as well

[lotuslife]

[She takes a step forward.] I would not... I wouldn't have if... [She can't force out '-it were you', because the worst part of it all is that she just doesn't know. No, it's not that- it's that she thinks that if she found America in the same state, she might have done the same thing. She might have had a moment of weakness, remembering better times. Might have. She has to remind herself that it hasn't come to that and hopefully never will.

The sentence dies off there, making it painfully obvious that she can't bring herself to say it. One hand lifts to her temple, touching it as though her head hurts, and it does from trying to put all of this together.]

[supersizedpower]

I know.

[He doesn't have anything else to say to her, so he turns to go.]

[lotuslife]

...America. [There's a moment of hesitation before her hand flies out to grab his sleeve and twist her fingers in it. She looks him in the eyes before murmuring a phrase in Vietnamese that he should have picked up during his time in her home.]

Cám ơn nhiều. [And then her eyes are elsewhere because she can't stand to look at him any longer, and she brushes past him before sweeping her coat off of the rack near the door and exiting. The roar of a motorbike can be heard around fifteen seconds later, and then it quickly fades as she tears down the street

[supersizedpower]

...Sure.

[As she leaves, America goes up to his room, where he'll stay until he hears Vietnam leaving the house. And then he'll put this out of his mind, watch cartoons, and by the next time he sees her, he'll be acting like nothing happened.]