The Axis My World Turns On

Blood On Her Skin

The path was painfully familiar, the glow of the lamps were far more eerie tonight than the night she was dragged past them. The flowers are beautiful, red with the rage she felt in her heart for a ginger just a short distance away. The stairs seemed longer too, her bounds two at a time seemed eternal with the rhythmic boom of her feet with every climb. Reality adjusted back to normal shape and size when she was finally pounding on the door so hard she thought she'd literally knock it down.

It was barely open a crack before she was forcing her way in. One well placed leg wrap later and she had a handful of red hair forcing the 6'2 cause of all this frustration down to her size. The anger felt like hot rocks riding a slow wave of boiling lava right down to her spine.

"Laura!" Danny gasped, barely able to sputter it out.

Without a word, Laura punched the wood exactly next to Danny's head, shattering the door with her force. She could feel the pain shoot up her arm, the blood start to trickle down her knuckles into the splintering gap she just created, but she could care less. The way she felt right now, she could rip her arm off and beat Danny Lawrence to pieces without feeling a thing. She still had Carmilla's blood on her clothes as she visibly shivered under Laura's hold. It was speckled over her shirt like she dipped a paintbrush into it and flicked. Laura's grip on her hair tightened. In her mind, Danny Lawrence was at the halfway point of decapitation.

"Why?" She spat, ready to yank teeth with her bare hands for answers.

All she could picture was Carmilla lying on Mattie's couch trying to remain neutral to her wounds like half her blood volume wasn't evacuating in mass. So, when Danny didn't answer her right away, she snapped her head back and connected it to Danny's nose so hard that the snap was audible. There was no scream like she'd wanted– imagining how long it took for Carmilla to scream out in pain, how it must have sounded. Laura wanted this woman to suffer more than the most miserable of people. She deserved to suffer. Unsatisfied, she twists her wrist swift and hard until Danny's hand was no longer positioned anywhere near natural. The crackling of the bones separating was barely auditory over the ear piercing scream of the ginger yanking herself out of Laura's grasp, crawling away cradling her hand in the other. Strands of red hair still clung to Laura's fingers. She ripped them away with a newfound, dangerous level of calm.

As Danny cried in the corner, Laura took a seat on the couch, leaning forward on her knees, any semblance of the gentle girl that she was known to be completely evaporated. Her breathing was steady, slow, and paced.

"Carmilla showed up to her sister's home bleeding and in pain, and she told me that is because of you." She spoke slowly, the calm in her voice more threatening than any yell. "If you don't tell me what possessed you to attack my girlfriend so gruesomely, you're going to be showing up to the hospital carrying what's left of your arm."

Her muscles flexed, her body adjusting into the couch a little deeper as her words simmered in Danny's mind. Rather than cower in the corner any longer, the taller woman eased herself up to her feet with a grimace. Her back straightened as she limped forward, stopping just in front of the coffee table. Laura never moves, she continues to wait for her response.

"I think we both know I won't go down without a fight, Laura. That's clearly the reason you came. And this isn't a fight you can win." She winces again, holding back a scream as she pops her wrist back in place as best she could, fighting to form her fingers into a fist. "So, why don't you do yourself a favor and go home?"

Laura looks towards the floor, nodding slowly in understanding. Her blood splatters silently on the floor as her hands open and close. With a deep breath, she eyes Danny again.

"Is that all you have to say?" She asks with a soft shrug.

"Unfortunately, that's all you're going to get, Lauraonica Mars." Danny remains steady in her façade. "I have nothing else to say."