Running (FOUR SWORDS FANFICTION!)

Shadow's Point of View

She was a bit younger than me, probably about ten. She had brown skin, covered in ugly scratches, and I realized that someone must have cut her side open because it was stitched together...

...with barbed wire. It looked painful, and blood still seeped through the stitches. She had dark eyes, and her hair was thrown in a ponytail. She must have been a brunette, but I saw blood matted into her hair. On top of that, she sported a black eye, a bruise on her chin and a small cut over her bottom lip. 

She was thin too. And small. I remembered Vio talking to me once, about how if you didn't eat enough when you were young and small, you wouldn't grow right, that malnourishment would lead to you not having the energy to grow. Maybe she was actually my age and just didn't look it, I didn't know.

"What's your name?" I asked her.

She fumbled with words for a minute. "Aki...My name, it's Aki..."

I felt my gaze soften. She was a little girl in the middle of the forest...what could a little girl be doing in the middle of the forest, no child should be in that particular forest, maybe some other clearing full of trees, but no, not this one.

"Well, Aki...what are you doing here?"

"I got lost," she looked over her shoulders and I saw her hand go over her face, pressing down on a bruise and wincing. I had a feeling she wasn't being honest. This was also a sentence she managed without stuttering, like it was well-rehearsed. 

"Maybe don't be so quick to judge," she spoke inside my head. "Be nice to her. She's just a kid."

I sighed. I was a bastard, but I couldn't harm a kid or scare them. "What happened to your side, Aki?"

Her lip trembled and she didn't answer. 

I sighed and held out the knife. Aki flinched as if I had flung it at her instead. "I'm not gonna hurt you," I promised.

She hesitantly took a step forward, and then another. She grabbed the knife quickly and then stepped back.

I frowned at what she was wearing. A simple dress, like one any common girl in Hyrule would wear, but it looked like it had been ripped down the middle and then sewn back together, the ends were torn and there was a rip in her sleeve that went down to her elbow. The tear on her dress looked wrong though like rather than just a tear, someone had grabbed a knife and cut a slit in it.

"Maybe instead of it just being a rip, maybe someone ripped it off of her," she said.

I grimaced at all the blood on her.

"How old are you?"

"...Fifteen," she said, looking down at her dagger.

I frowned. "I'm sixteen and you don't look anything near my age."

She looked like a deer caught in headlights (not that I'd know what that means, because cars don't exist, what even is a car?).

"Be honest, how old are you."

"...Twelve," she sighed. "I...don't want any tr-trouble, just please leave me alone..."

"You're...alive, aren't you?" I asked. "You ran into them too?"

"Who...do you know...who they are?"

"No, not really, but I think they're dangerous," I admitted.

"I kinda already knew that," she whispered quietly. 

"What's with all your injuries?" I asked and then I regretted it. After a brief silence, I asked, "They hurt you, didn't they?"

"...One person found me...but there was, there's a lot more...than just one person..." Her hand went to her side and then she cried out in pain. 

"What did they do to you?"

I crept closer to her. She might have not noticed.

"There was two of them...I was tied down...One was male, the other was female, I think..." she took a deep shuddering breath. "The male one was the one who did this to my side. I kicked him and tried to get away, so he cut me open, and then the other one told him to not let me die like that and he stitched me back up."

"With barbed wire?"

She shook her head. "It was just normal stitching. Then he left and the other one flipped out for some reason, she pulled my stitches out and..." she shivered. "I managed to get away. They kept me asking questions, I didn't understand...but I escaped..."

I closed my eyes.

"Stop it, stop it, STOP IT, please!"

I heard swearing and shouting, coming from someone older. I couldn't make out the words from all the anger in them.

"Why are you doing this, I don't know anything! I swear! Just let me go!" Another scream.

I stared at Aki. She seemed to have just realized how close I was standing. She stepped back. "How...How do I know--if you're...Are you with them?"

I shook my head. "No, I...they did the same thing to me too," I said. "Well, not the same thing, but..." I pulled up my sleeve and showed the cut that had closed a day ago. She flinched at it. "I managed to get away before they did anything else..."

"What's your name?" 

"I'm Shadow."

"What are you doing here, Shadow? In the forest, I m-mean?"

"I'm dead."

"I'm alive," she admitted.

"So what are you doing here?" I asked.

She frowned. "I heard something, voices...calling for me...ever since I was little...my parent's thought I was crazy...and then I learned the voices were coming from here...Now I don't know how to get out."

"Do you think your parents are looking for you?"

"I don't..."

I frowned and closed my eyes trying to think.

I didn't even know where I was except for a place I didn't want to be. I heard more screaming, and then I saw someone coming closer. I fought against my restraints until they finally gave, ignoring the blood all over my arm. 

"Fuck, they saw you, go for that rope on the tree."

I didn't know where the voice came from, but I listened to it while someone got closer, I saw a rope tied around a tree. I untied it as quickly as possible while I heard shouting. 

"He's escaping, he knows something!"

"Leave the girl, help me catch him!"

"Motherfucker!"

Something fell, and blocked the way in front of them, slowing them down. I started running. 

"Get back here!"

"If you're still alive," I said slowly. "That means you can still die...how long can you survive in this forest?" I added the next part hesitantly.  "I don't suppose you'd like to tag along with me?"