Cold, Heartless Love (Book 1, Vespu Cronicles [Lesbian Story])

Chapter 13 - Desperate Measures

Except it didn't. Johanna had had her cowl up since she was on the roof. While the bullet did break the bone between her eyes, it didn't go into her brain. She was still knocked unconscious by the shot, but was assuredly not dead.

***

She woke with a start, restrained to an operating table. flashbacks from when Embra stabbed her flashed through her mind. She tried to sit up, but intense pain tore through her forehead. She groaned, and laid back. She then noticed that she was not restrained, nor was this an operating table. She was in fact just laying on a bed.

She then noticed a figure out of the corner of her eye. She slowly turned her head, trying to not jostle anything in her skull.

The figure was Embra. Johanna then made the connection that this was Embra's room.

Embra stood.

"Hey, baby."

"H-how...?"

"After I shot you," explained Embra, "I felt really regretful and guilty. I sat down and cried for like twenty minutes. We're both really lucky that nobody came into the bathroom during that time.

"After I finished sobbing, I noticed that you were still breathing. So I brought you here and waited for you to wake up.

"While you were out, and you've been asleep for like five hours,  I decided something.

"This government that you are so loyal to has emotionally and physically manipulated both of us immensely over the past two months. It literally made us kill each other. While neither of us died, that still doesn't change the fact that we both shot at each other. And we shot to kill.

"Anything that makes you hurt a loved one is not a good thing. At all, under no circumstances, indefensibly. So, here's my idea for a mutually beneficial happy ending: we run away. Into the wilderness. Or an abandoned town, or something. As you heal from my bullet to your head, you teach me how to kill.

"You teach me how to fight. You teach me how to take out any sons-of-tarkas who stand it my way. Then, once you are all healed, and I can kill, we raid the government. The two of us, sisters-in-arms and lovers-at-heart, we bust into the government building and blast caps into as many officials and magistrates as we can. We cripple this nation. Stab it in its not-so-soft-underbelly. I know it's a suicide mission, but I say we go down swinging. You with me?"

During Embra's monologue, something stirred in Johanna. Some minuscule portion of her heart sparked. She felt... she didn't know what she felt. She knew what patriotism was, and this seemed like the polar opposite. In that moment, she stopped being Johanna the Nightlark, and became Johanna the Insurgent.

"I'm with you, Embra. Let's do this."

***

So they ran. They ran north to portions of the nation they had only ever seen on maps. At that's saying something, as Johanna had been nearly everywhere in Plymouth on different missions.

They found an old abandoned fishing village on the coast of Newfoundland. It was fairly well stocked, if a bit decrepit. They sustained on what they could for the next ten months.

There was a small town a few miles west of where they were holed up. Whenever the girls were running low on supplies, Johanna would sneak into the town and steal what they needed. In later months, once Embra was more trained in the art of stealth, they would raid the town together.

In fact, Johanna would even sometimes use the town as a training ground for Embra. However, one two different occasions, they were spotted by residents during training sessions in the town. For a few months afterwards, they became an urban legend in the town, spoken of assuredly by those who had seen the so-called "Jet-Black Lurkers", and dismissively by those who had not.