Sativa.

1. Blood

Blaine remembers blood isn't a slow ooze or a fountain gushing from mangled arteries. It's a heartbeat, thickly pulsing from her chest, like a metallic paint-can under pressure.

The carpet absorbs her veins. She remembers it soaking her up like a sponge one that vaguely smells like ash and cheap pet deodorizer. Somehow, it's worse than the iron taste at the back of her throat. Her left arm spasms, her fingers curling tight enough into her palm to break skin, until her right side goes lifeless in the sticky paint-like substance.

Someone attends her. He has a nice mouth. He administers CPR but his lips change rich crimson by the throaty phlegm she coughs out. The man vainly plugs her nose then sucks air through her deflated body.

Red and blue lights skitter off him erratically, like reflections of sunlight bouncing off a calm lake, as his pretty mouth twists into an ugly shout. Blaine can't hear past her pulse pounding in her ears. Not much longer now before her own heart beats the life out of her.

His strong arms cushion underneath her legs. Blaine cries out, every inch he lifts her makes her oozing corpse collapse into a shock. She clings onto a fistful of his T-Shirt, crying soundlessly against his neck. His skin is flushed and vibrant with heat.

The journey isn't fluid in Blaine's mind. He nearly trips over a door that's broken off the hinges. The tile floor is blemished by a tide of blood. White elevator buttons, two staining red, are pushed clumsily by his clenched fist.

Everything goes dark for awhile. The next flash is of outside, cradled, and swooning dizzily against his solid chest.

A shrill wailing of sirens in the background shocks Blaine into vague awareness. Red and blue neon lights flash in a hopscotching array across her, whenever she lets her eyes slit back open, she's blinded by the spectacle.

The man doesn't strain carrying her but he kneels down as if all his strength has expended. He inhales so deeply she can feel air rattling through his sternum.

"Blaine."

She aches at her name. Like someone starved but sickened by every bittersweet bite.

"It's okay." The world goes grey around the edges. She hardly notices her own ragged voice. "It's okay."

As if her slurred response is somehow permissive, he gently rests her head against the concrete step. The intense cold of the pavement serves as her grave. Blaine's head lolls to the side but her eyes stay open, dimly aware.

Blinking slowly, her breath a jagged rasp cutting through her chest like shrapnel, she watches the man stand. He walks like someone possessed, dealing an unwavering gaze, as a squad of police overwhelm the lot. Blood saturates his clothes and face deeply violet.

The man kneels then raises his arms over his head, submitting to the tsunami of law-enforcement who descend upon him in a flurry of twisted shouts or aimed 9mm pistols. His arms are roughly jerked into cuffs before he's forced to stand by a wincing tug of his elbow.

Inwardly, Blaine is screaming. If she weren't so freezing and faded by now she'd be kicking. Waving her arms like helicopter propellers. Doing whatever she could to free him. Instead her savior is shoved into the back of a police cruiser as a common criminal.

"Travis."

His name feels foreign and familiar to her all at once. She desperately needs him to look back at the concrete steps he left her at.

The glance isn't granted.

To him, she's as good as dead.

"It's okay." Blaine whispers.

The world fades in and out against her will while she watches a cop car squall away into the dark. Suddenly slipping away into night sky doesn't feel like meeting a stranger. Maybe there is a heaven after all. That's supposed to feel like coming home, right?

In the back of her mind, she knows they'll have evidence enough to convict Travis of her death. She thinks a lawyer should. And the reason she remains gasping on the concrete, burning numb from the bullet in her chest, is only the fact that she's determined to convince them wrong. Even if she can't remember why.

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