Knifepoint (A Life Series murder mystery AU)

6• Inevitability

  "You've got this."

  Scott sucked in a breath, and let it out. "Cleo. Is dead. Poison." His closed up throat wouldn't let him say much more. "We... we have reason to believe she did it to herself but... other options are possible."

  All of them had some emotion splattered on their face. Some of them were in pure shock, some in the first stages of grief and some, angry. "This can't be a coincidence," muttered Joel, "The one day Cleo doesn't happen to cook, she's dead? Nope. I don't believe it."

  "Come on, now, Joel. I took a bite and I'm fine..." started Jimmy, trying to protect Scott and BDubs. Or maybe just Scott.

  "Yeah, well, Cleo could've eaten more than you. Maybe you ate so little, it's not affecting you."

  "Hold up," said BDubs, "Cleo didn't eat too much. She just took a cup of tea which, might I add, so did Grian!" He stared at Joel, challenging him with eyes.

  "Isn't it obvious by now? The food itself wasn't poisoned, the tea was. She brewed hers separately 'cause I don't like the flowers in mine." huffed Grian, who was starting to get sick of the silent standoff. Nods and murmurs of affirmation filled the room.

  "Flowers?" whispered Scott. Several heads turned towards him, confused and surprised. "Flowers... in tea... poisoning. Maybe she didn't kill herself."

"What do you mean?"

  "In... I think... some private server? There were poisonings. The flowers, they looked like something you put in tea but they turned out to be poisonous. Foxglove? I think that's what was used to kill Cleo."

  "Why would it take so long? Shouldn't this kind of stuff happen instantly?"

  "Foxglove takes one to three days to kill. It's, pretty smart, honestly, but... I don't get why the murderer would use foxglove and not cyanide." Scott's voice shivered as he spoke, "But... she would've shown symptoms. BDubs, weren't you with her most of the time? Didn't she seem off to you?"

  Impulse turned towards BDubs. "Unless, of course, he's the one who put the flowers there?"

  BDubs backed up. "No. No, no, no, Impulse, stop that thought process right now." Etho shook his head, "I don't think it's BDubs. He could have killed me so many times by now. He hasn't." Impulse opened his mouth to say something but he was cut off.

  "It doesn't necessarily have to be BDubs, Impulse. It could just mean that he was too incompetent to see the signs, or that Cleo was really good at playing it off."

  "Hey! I am not incompetent!"

  "The person put foxglove in the kitchen cupboards only because they knew that someone in the group would unwittingly put it in their tea. Someone knew of this person's habits. But, they didn't know whose habits they were. I think they knew that Cleo was targeted the minute she took a cup of tea.

"But another person took a cup of tea. That person was Grian. So, from here this plays out in two different ways. Either it's Grian and he did put the flowers, knowing that someone would take the tea, not adding the poison to his own drink, or he was just lucky when he didn't."

  The fire crackling was the only sound that could be heard. Scar shook his head. "But how would this guy know that someone put the flowers in their tea?" 

  "The fact that the amount of flowers kept decreasing. Someone was using them," he said as though explaining the concept to a five-year-old. Tango hummed in suspicion, "Well. That sounded like something out of Sherlock Holmes. Besides, how did you even know what poison that was?"

  "Honey, I run an entire empire that is sustained by the trade of dye. And astonishingly, dye comes from plants. Plus, I was an explorer once. I should know what plants are safe and whatnot."

  "Ran," interjected Joel. Jimmy turned towards him with a questioning look. "What do you mean, Joel?" asked Jimmy with an almost sheepish chuckle. "I mean there's no telling whether we're going home or not."

  Everyone fell silent as thoughts formed and their minds worked rather than their mouths. "I'm not hungry," announced Scott, grumpier than usual. "... Scott-" Jimmy shook his head, knowing about the long nights Scott spent awake playing this very scenario in his mind, the many breakdowns he had because of it.

  "I said I'm not hungry." With that, he silently stalked off to his room, leaving an uncomfortable silence in his wake.

  "I'll go... check on him. Be right back," said Jimmy, getting up with a screech of his chair. He, too, disappeared into the corridor. 

  "C'mon, BDubs," muttered Etho, standing up and leading a shocked BDubs away for an encouraging talk of sorts.

  Soon, the amount of people dwindled as one by one, people left with murmured excuses. It didn't take long for the room to be completely devoid of any Players.

  In bedroom four, Jimmy peeked his head in to see what the condition of his boyfriend was. Scott sat on his bed with his head pressed between his palms and his knees propping up his elbows. A shudder made its way across his tall frame.

  "Scott? Are you alright, love?" Scott jerked up as though surprised to see Jimmy there. "I... I don't..." Jimmy sat down next to Scott and draped an arm across his shoulder just as Scott had on the first day of this madness.

  "Hey. Hey, we'll get out of this, okay? You and me, we'll return home and we'll go back to our empires and our normal life games."

  Scott let out a strangled sound which was somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. After an excruciating silence, Scott slowly nodded and managed to say, "You and me. Home."

-.- .. .-.. .-..

  Tango sat on the bed as he watched Impulse fidget with the cupboard. It took him a little too long to realise that the heavy cupboard was tilting.

  "IMPULSE, IT ISN'T BOLTED IN-"

-.- .. .-.. .-..

Word count: 1003

This chapter was edited as well, mainly 'cause I realised how much better foxglove is in this situation than belladonna! Once again, may have written it wrong, correct me.

<RubyBlueWrites left the game>