Only in Darkness

0.5

Chicago, Illinois

2018

Catching his breath, he took in how her eyelids started to flutter. The tips of her dyed blonde hair turning pink as crimson liquid hit the strands. Chuckling to himself as he watched her gloved fingertips reach out across the field of glass shards and bent metal beams of the, now destroyed, coffee table. The dim Cosmic Staff just out of reach and rolling farther and farther away by the second.

She never had been one to go down without a fight.

"After I kill you. I'm going to kill dad. But not before I tell him how I watched you bleed out on my floor, not even able to call out for him to come save you like the little bitch you are." His voice took on a breathy quality as he crouched by her side and grabbed her hand in his, holding it to his chest.

The moonlight pouring in through the windows and shattered balcony doors reflecting off the glass on the hardwood and illuminating his face. Dark hazel eyes staring her down with a sick, twisted kind of joy dancing in them, like the flame from a single lit candle, "How I beat you bloody, again. How I, the bastard, won the day against his perfect warrior princess. Again." He was drunk on the feeling of power surging through his veins and it was almost enough to completely cover the tightness in his chest and the sickening twist of his stomach.

"You put up a good fight Mar, it's time to stop fighting though." He gently cooed, using his free hand to gently push back bloody strands of hair from her face, "You must be tired. It's okay to close your eyes, go to sleep." He was so sure she would just give in. After months of playing cat and mouse, months of long days and even longer nights holed up in shitty motel rooms, safe houses, and on the road. She would surely realize that her crusade to put him back in prison was a fruitless endeavor. A pipe dream.

She had always been stubborn though. It was an annoying trait she had picked up from their father. And if he was honest, it was a trait they shared. He tutted at the defiant light growing in her dimming eyes.

"Fuck you." She choked around a mouthful of metallic tasting liquid, going as far as to spit at him. A glob of spit and blood hitting him right in the eye and making him reel back.

Right into the brightly burning Cosmic Staff.