Endgame

--

Pain was just a form of information. The line played over and over in her head, running like tiny electric shocks through his body, from the pain receptors to the spinal cord to the brain. This was just her sensory nerves sending information to the brain, identifying and processing and cataloging the information, cross-checking with the existing database. She had never felt this before, but the information her brain sent back in response to the pain told her she was going to die.

Kai blinked slowly. Her shoulders were twitching. The ground was hard and rough underneath her body, the cold seeping through her clothes through her skin to the very core of her bones. The only warm part of her was her hand, but even that was turning cold. Blood didn't stay warm for very long once it left the body. Pressing her hand against the gushing wound in her stomach was more of a reflex than anything. The pool of blood underneath her body had soaked up to her elbow. Her heartbeat was loud and erratic in in her chest, a stark contrast to the dead silence of the darkness around her .

She blinked again. There was something hard and heavy touching her cheek. The barrel of a gun. The cold metal dragged up and down her cheekbone slowly, nuzzling her like the most intimate caress. Her own breathing was too loud for her to hear the person above her, but then the gun moved down to her shoulders and shoved her over. She let out a breathless cry as her back hit the ground, the jarring movement triggered another fresh flow of warm sticky blood through her fingers. her head was swimming, vision blotchy with dark spots, but the eyes looking down at him were bright and unmistakable even in the hazy lighting. She had once held a sense of disgust towards them - eyes so bright, so cold, so empty of any emotion, juxtaposed against an unbelievably kind smile. The effect was jarring, and she hated it. Yet right then she knew it wasn't disgust she felt anymore. It was fear.

The older man was smiling down at her, cheekbones rising up high, smile lines deep around his eyes. He slowly crouched down next to her head, and she could see from the corner of her eyes the way the man inched away from the pool of his blood, careful not to ruin his expensive bespoke suit and his shiny Italian leather shoes, both picked up from a small boutique somewhere in the heart of Milan. The man was tracing a semi down her cheeks, but he had always told her he wasn't a killer. Except when the nose of the pistol slowly dragged down to the edge of her mouth, the metal rough and cold against her lips.

"Open up."

The man was still smiling, his voice soft and gentle as if he was talking to a small child. The barrel pushed its way into her mouth, and soon she was swallowing hot around cold metal. Her full lips were stretched tight around the man's favorite revolver, all shiny silver and sleek graceful lines, and it was hard not to flick her tongue up. The gun slid in deeper, almost choking her. Death tasted heavy and metallic on her tongue.

Except she didn't want to die, not really. Her blood-soaked hand reached up, shaky but determined in its aim, clutching around the man's wrist. Her grip was weak and slippery, smearing red all over the crisp white cuff of the man's shirt. It felt like she was staring death in the face. The gentle smile was still there, the eyes still ice cold and too bright. She didn't want to die.

The cock of the hammer was deafeningly loud in the dark.

-

The air in Los Angeles was swelling hot and humid, heavy with the smell of sea salt in the air. He had only come here a couple of times as a child, following his family on summer vacations, running around on the crowded Santa Monica beach. Twenty years later, the crowd and the heat were still exactly as he remembered. Stephan ran a hand through his sweaty hair, and the sight of the sandy blond hair out of the corner of his eyes startled him. It was still taking some getting used to.