Too Bitter

The Hunt for Elliot: Day Ten

It was five days later when Seth tried again. They had gotten no further with the hunt for Elliot, and Tina still wasn't taking his ideas about finding Elliot's motivation. He approached Tina from behind.

"Tina-" Tina jumped and turned round at the sound of his voice. "uh... I wanted to ask, how did you find the humans who hurt you?"

Tina turned back around to the maps. "A friend of mine told me that a birdy had told her that one of the humans was in New Orleans. I had already been staying there for a few months so I started looking for him. But he must have found out I was looking for him because he took off and ran out of town. It took me a while to find him but when I did he ended up leading me to another of the humans that hurt me. So I got them both at the same time. The last human, the one you saw, I heard about his whereabouts a few months ago, tracked him down. That guy used to spend a lot of time toying with me. It wasn't like how the rest would hurt me, this guy did it emotionally. So I did the same to him to a while after I found him. But then when I came to Forks and found evidence of Elliot, he was just a liability. So... you know. I got rid of him."

Seth nodded along with her story. It was disturbing, but it was helping him put a bit of a timeline together about the hunt his imprint did before they met, to find the people who hurt her. "So you came back to Forks to see Bella again, and then found out that Elliot was there too?"

Tina made a face. "What? No. The human told me that Elliot liked to look at how the lives of his victims carried on without them. So I went to Forks to see if he was there. He was."

"Oh." Tina gave him the side eye as he processed that. "So that's the answer, we find his other victims' families!"

Tina sighed. "If only it were that easy." She said as she studied the map.

Seth took the map away from her. "It is that easy. We find them and then we find Elliot and everything is the way it should be and you won't be so frustrated at how long the hunt is."

Tina shook her head. "The length of the hunt isn't making me frustrated. I've spent years looking for the people who hurt me. A few days is nothing."

"Then why are you so frustrated all the time?" Seth said incredulously.

"I haven't been frustrated." She denied.

"Fine then. Angry. Why have you been so angry?" Seth looked like he was getting angry himself and this just made Tina's rage rise.

"Why am I so angry? Why am I so angry? You! You're the reason I'm so angry. With your imprinting and your hovering and your calling me love and your imprinting."

"You said imprinting twice." Seth said, his voice icily quiet.

"It's weird!" Tina shouted. "It's so fucking weird. And you're always around because of it and I can't stand it!"

Tina stood there, heaving breath back into her lungs whilst Seth stood there looking like a kicked puppy. He reached for her, but she turned around and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door.