Ache

Ch 12

"I can't believe... he just... left..."
Nina practically breathed the words. No emotion. No inflection. Nothing. Just empty words. Mirroring what she herself felt inside.
Closing her eyes the memory replayed once more in her mind's eye. Of the white clad Mika, his shock of white hair shining the same silver as the glow of moonlight streaming through the window. The sad, bitterness reflected in the pools of his eyes as his arms wrapped around that bastard's neck. She chocked back a harsh gasp as the memory of the two jumping clear out of the window replayed over and over in her head.
Her hands balled into tight fists. The urge to hit something was suddenly all too real and way too violent to keep in check.
"How could he just LEAVE like that?! And with that fucker no less, who not only nearly killed him but also you... Reed..."
She sighed feeling the pain, the frustration and disbelief that'd welled inside her only moments ago drain out of her leaving her dejected and resigned.
Of course, the fact that a slumbering Reed lay on a hospital bed before her also played a big role in reminding her to keep her cool.
While she'd gotten away with a few bruises and scratches, Reed hadn't been so lucky. His entire body was not only covered in deep, shallow cuts and bruises but he'd also been left with a few broken ribs and the countless stitched up gashes from where those metal rods had been rammed straight through tender flesh of his body. His beautiful face was now marred by deep purples and reds, his eyes ringed by dark shadows, his skin so pale underneath all those bruises that Nina had to remind herself he wasn't dead. 
She sighed.
Even in his sleep, she noted touching a finger to his furrowed brows, he was fighting. Fighting for Mika.
A fight that had earned him a battered body and the thick belt straps looped over his chest, waist and legs, binding him to the bed he slept on.
The attending nurses had to stab a syringe of morphine into him, not for the pain, but to calm and force him to sleep when he roused from his slumbers. That night, when Mika left, the attending nurse who'd walked in a half hour after everything had happened found them battered and bloodied, just barely hanging onto consciousness. While Nina'd been placed on a gurney and was about to be carted out she'd managed to catch a glimpse of the moment Reed was finally taken down from the wall. 

She would never forget the sight.

It was like someone had flipped a switch.
Reed had become a man possessed.
Drenched from head to toe in dark glistening blood, Reed began to make his way to the open window. As if he wasn't bleeding out, as if the wheezing labored breaths slipping past his split lips was nothing and as if two of his ribs weren't broken clean through, he'd stumbled, fallen and crawled his way over to the window. When the nurses started to descend on him, trying to get him on a gurney of his own, he fought them off. Nurse after nurse were shoved, pushed, punched and even kicked by the rage fueled beast reed had become. Amazingly, Reed had managed to fight off at least six nurses who'd come after him before they ganged up on him and finally overpowered him. He'd fought hard all the while crying out Mika's name.
It hadn't been until one of the female nurses ran out and rushed back in with a syringe full of morphine and stabbed it right into his neck that he finally began to loose strength and calm down. Still, Reed fought till the very moment his eyes finally shut and the strength drained out of his body.
Nina swallowed and blinked the memory away. As she smoothed back the silky jet black hair from his bandaged forehead, Nina smiled bitterly recalling when he'd come to later that very night.
Reed hadn't been too happy when he'd come to the first time and had to be physically restrained by another group of nurses when he tried to leave with a set of newly bandaged broken ribs and freshly stitched cuts. Completely furious the second time around when he awoke to the series of straps keeping him restrained to the bed.
The fury smoldering in his dark eyes had been enough to burn through walls.
But... no matter how hard he'd stared at her, the ugly words he'd thrown at her, the fury and hatred reflected towards her Nina decided that she couldn't hate him or feel hurt, she was betraying him in a sense by standing by and letting it all happen instead of helping him go after Mika, it had all been for his own good.
If he truly wanted to help Mika, she thought as she smoothed the sheets tucked over him and stared hard at his sleeping form, he had to get better first.
And she would make sure he did.
                                  -
"Do you remember any of it?"
Nina stared hard at her nails; chewed straight down to the tender, pink flesh. To be honest, she'd asked the question not because she remembered but because she didn't. She had to know that she wasn't the only one whose head had been messed with.
Reed didn't respond and it was this lack of a response that made her look up. Even sitting in the white hospital regulation gown and bottoms, a loose arm sling holding one of his arms to his chest, it'd been discovered that his arm had also been broken, and an explosion of both gauze and band aids, Reed was still a sight to behold. Handsome and stoic as ever with eyes that pierced holes in the white wall across his bed, his was the image of a young man aching for war, bloodshed and for the return of his beloved to his side.
Plus, he was still a bit pissed at the way he'd been treated, what with the straps and all so there was also that.
"At least you get released the day after tomorrow. And don't worry, while you're out on recovery I'll make sure to do everything in my power to look for them," Nina smiled sadly. "Mika and the fucker that took him I mean."
Reed finally deigned to turn her way but fixed her with a cold, stoic stare. He didn't say a word though and instead reached over to the nearby bed stand and pulled out a file folder and offered it to her.
Nina swallowed. Shivers ran up and down her arms, danced along her back and they were not from the cold. There was something about the way he looked at her while waiting for her to open the file and look  inside that was unsettling.
"What is this?"
As she asked the question she flipped the folder open to find a stack of documents and an array of photographs inside. Police reports with names, addresses and descriptions of some kind, blown up photographs of what looked like crime scenes and, her head pounded, bloody unrecognizable corpses.
Mutilated. Shredded. Torn apart with such violence that there was absolutely no trace or semblance of who the unfortunate victims had been before. 
They'd been reduced to nothing more than chunks of meat.
Nina clamped a hand to her mouth feeling bile rise up in her throat.
Reed said nothing.
She had to force herself to breathe slowly, swallow hard and blink furiously to keep the burning unshed tears in her eyes from spilling a few times before she finally managed to croak,
"What the shit is this Reed?!" She gasped for breath feeling her pulse on her tongue. "How did you even get this?"
The young man sitting across from her didn't even bat an eye when he began to explain the contents of the folder in her hands. All Nina could do was stare in disbelief, shock, revulsion and confusion both at the file on her lap and the young man sitting before her.
"What you hold in your hands Nina are files on victims. Reports on what was found on scene at the countless crime scenes found scattered not only in this town or this state but across the country. And those Nina," He pointed to one of the many glossy photographs inside of the file "Are the fucker's victims, or at least what was left of them by the time police finally came across the pieces."
Nina shuddered fighting another wave of nausea. The fact that he'd ignored her question did not get past her but... what she held in her hands, the carnage she was looking at, put that fact on the back burner. She'd ask him all about it later and hope he would answer her with the truth when she did.
"You mean that pale, gangly bastard did all...this!?" She gasped, her fingers trembled as she held on to the papers in her hands with such force they were on the verge of being torn. She couldn't believe it, this... this was insane!  
Reed nodded. Nina was just beside herself with shock. And then a thought came to her so awful, so horrible it ran icy fingers down the length of her body and stopped her cold.
"Mika...!"
Reed shook his head. The look he gave her was so dark and so very, very full of violent intent it put a stop to her train of thought as quickly as it'd come.
"Mika's too important to him to simply dispose of the way he did the others. I don't know exactly why but I could tell that much from the first time he hurt him and the fact that he tracked us down here to this hospital, to this very room only served to prove it: he needs Mika alive."
Nina swallowed hard as her frozen body sagged in relief. Still, Reed's words did nothing for the white hot fury curling her hands into tighter fists or the burning fire deep in the pit of her stomach.
"Here's to our lucky stars no?" she spat bitterly. "At least he's only just probably raping him, probably torturing him, tearing new holes in his body..."
How was it that things changed so quickly? One minute it'd been Reed who'd been vibrating with fury and the next it was Nina who was on the verge of exploding, complete with sparks and smoke coming out of her ears. She couldn't help it though, not when the thought of her best friend with that fucking psychopath  drilled into her mind and especially not when the images before her showed her a glimpse into what the bastard was capable of.
Nina looked up then and looked hard into Reed's eyes, into those deep pools of ink that went on forever. She opened her mouth and asked again before she lost her nerve.
"That night, when Mika was taken, you remember it don't you? And I mean all of it, not just fragments. I honestly don't remember anything that happened before Mika left and even then it's just bits and pieces. It's all so fuzzy and vague, like I was underwater while it was happening, you know? My head felt like it was swimming and everything seemed so murky."
Reed watched her for a long time under those thick heavy lashes of his before uttering one single word. "Asphyxiation."
Nina frowned. "What?"
Reed went back to looking at the white expanse of the wall before him and it was almost like he was seeing it at all happen again. His profile was suddenly cast in shadow, his back rigid straight. his eyes heavy lidded and dark.
"He choked you until you lost consciousness the first time. When I jumped in he let go long enough for you to crumple to the floor. Mika jumped in when the fucker broke my arm."
She sucked in a breath but didn't say a word. The words he'd said though, 'the first time' rang in her head like an incessant bell toll. The room was suddenly too small, too hot...
"The second time he wrapped his hand around your throat and lifted you up in the air like you weighed nothing. That's when the taunting began, the fucking mind games to make Mika break. He almost did right then and there if it hadn't been for me and the needle I drove straight into the bastard's eye."
Nina winced at the sudden stab of pain that went through her when she tried to swallow against the hard lump in her throat. Jesus...
"The last time he did it, I thought he'd killed you. Mika did too. The bones in your throat creaked, we could hear them crack  as the delicate bones began to give way under the pressure of his hold. Your eyes rolled into your head. You turned blue. He held you pinned against the wall and kept you there, squeezing all the while." Reed's voice was so soft now, just barely audible in that small room. 

Nina swallowed a shuddering breath. Sometime during his retelling of the events Nina'd reached a hand to her throat and wrapped her fingers around the suddenly fragile part of her body. She felt fire and ice rush through her veins, tasted battery acid with each swallow. Somewhere a drum beat a heavy angry sound.

"Mika's screams filled the room and there was suddenly my hand wrapped as tight as it could be around one of the needles he'd torn out of Mika's arm. In an instant I'd stabbed the fucker right in the eye."
Nina shivered. Reed never cursed. Which just about put into perspective how hard it was for him to relive the memory as well.
"Before I knew it I was tacked to the wall like a fucking ornament. His hand still wrapped around your throat and Mika..." She heard him swallow. Saw his hands ball into tight fists. He looked down and stared hard at the tight fists on his lap. Reed sighed a deep heavy breath, turned his face skyward and closed his eyes. "And Mika was begging for our lives. Pleading with the bastard... Until he gave him exactly what he wanted."
Nina bit her lip hard feeling fire run through her veins, pump into and out of her heart until it was hard for her to breathe.  
"A willing victim."
Her voice was just barely above a whisper and even she wasn't sure she'd spoken in the first place.
Reed nodded.
And the worst part of the entire situation was just that. Not that they'd nearly lost their lives at the hands of whatever kind of monster the scrawny fucker was. Not that he'd taken Mika either. No, the worst part of the situation was that Mika had practically begged him to take him. And that he'd thought they'd simply be okay with it.
Of course they wouldn't be okay. They were hurting. Bad.
Nina felt herself reach the breaking point with that last thought.
"That fucking idiot!"
Her cheeks were on fire and her eyes were crazed. There was a rush of wind and hot blood in her head and she had the sudden urge to throw something, break something, punch the living shit out of someone.
She was furious.
"Can you believe that- that- that IDIOT?!?! That fucking bastard! How dare he?! I mean who the fuck does he think he is?! Superman? Does he really think that his little"sacrifice" is all it would take for everything to magically be okay?! Is THAT what he's thinking?!"
She was ranting. Fuming. And although some small part of her knew it wouldn't help she couldn't help but shout. She wanted to strangle the idiot. n fact, she vowed that the moment she saw the little snot, that would be the first thing she would do.
Nina stole a glance at Reed in a small moment of clarity. He was staring at her with a bemused expression, his lips tilted slightly in a smirk. Even though she was angry and frustrated, Nina suddenly felt the need to defend herself from any remark or judgement he might make.
"What? Don't tell me you're not mad at him."
He shook his head chuckling softly. That alone was enough to make her heart feel just a bit lighter. The fact that even in this dark time they were experiencing, Reed was able to smile just a bit made Nina believe things would work out. They would find Mika, beat him up a bit for his foolish decisions, kill the bastard who'd made them go through all that hardship and finally be okay, she truly believed that.
Reed let out a breath, didn't even wince though his ribs had to be killing him and shook his head once more. "I don't think I can be, I mean you're pretty furious for the two of us already. But even if you weren't, no I'm not mad at him. All I want, all I feel now is the need to get him back."
Nina gaped. All the anger and white hot fury she'd been feeling simply vanished. Embarrassment and self-consciousness took their place with a vengeance.
She looked down at her hands absently tracing figures on Reed's bedspread.
"Sorry." She felt her cheeks go up in flames and her neck and ears follow suit."You're right. We'll find him though... I know it."
Reed didn't say anything. And for once she was grateful for the silence.