Knife's Edge - The Legion (Frank Morrison)

Chapter 11 First Signs

Frank drove up the gravelly driveway of a shabby looking motel. He motioned his friends to get out of the truck and instructed Joey to get two rooms for the five of them. Julie and Suzie went after Joey and were already on their way to their room, when Joey returned to Frank and Snow, which was still sleeping on the front bench of the truck. "Should we wake her up?", he asked but Frank shook his head. "I fucked up really bad, she needs to rest a bit...", he added and sighed as he turned around to gaze at her sleeping form. She looked peaceful but Frank couldn't shake off the image of her being paralized with fright after what he had done to her. He slowly picked her up and followed Joey to their room, the girl still in his arms. Her head rested against his shoulder and her soft breath tickled the skin of his collarbone. When they reached the hallway of their rooms, Frank took Snow to his and Joey's room. "I'ma sleep on the couch...", Joey said as he helped Frank with tucking the girl in. "Joe", Frank said, his voice was nothing more than a exhausted whisper "I fucked up so bad." "What did you do?", his friend asked, Frank knew that he needed to talk about it. He couldn't handle this situation alone any longer. "I... fucked up. I really did. Y'know things got a bit heated but she had the upper hand and -", he squeezed his eyes shut as images of his girl flashed before his eyes, how terrified she was. "You wanted to be in charge.", Joey completed his sentence and Frank nodded. Frank let himself fall onto the run down sofa across the room. Joey reached for two beers he had just placed in the frigde and opened one for himself, the other one for Frank. "She'll hate me.", Frank said after taking a large sip from the bottle. "She won't. You just need to fix this." "How am I supposed to do that?" "Tell her the truth. She will understand. I don't know much about her but she seems to have been through quite some shit herself. Try it Frank.", Joey gave Frank an empathetic smile after taking a sip of his beer aswell. Frank's posture was slumped foreward, he rested his head in one hand while the other dangled towards the floor, lazily holding his bottle. "Can I sleep on the couch aswell?", he finally asked and Joey tried hard to hold back a laugh. "Sure thing.".

The stench of blood filled the crisp winter air. The girl ran, she didn't know what she was running from but her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her vision was blurry and she saw everything through a red filter, the only thing she could recognize was the man running in front of her, he sounded like he was already out of breath but she relentlessly chased him, her hyperfixation on him not allowing her to stop. Suddenly her rush of adrenaline stopped and she came to a halt. Her whole body ached and she let out pained groans. As she raised her hands to her head she realized that she was clutching a knife in her right hand. It was the knife Frank had gave her as a gift, but one thing about it seemed off. She inspected it further, twisting and turning the object in her hand before her movements froze: The knife she held was drenched in blood, and so were her clothes. Especially her left sleeve - it looked as if she had wiped off the excess blood from the blade on her clothing.  The soft rustling of fabric accompanied by the crunching of steps on fresh snow pulled her from her thoughts. She turned her head to the direction the noice came from and crept up towards it. Before she had a chance to find the cause of the sound she got distracted once more: "... Snow... Snow wake up...", someone was calling her name.

"Finally, you're awake. .." Snow slowly opened her eyes, her body felt heavy and every movement ached as she raised her hands up to her head, rubbing her face to wake herself up more.  She felt herself getting pressed closer to someone elses chest, before realizing that it was Frank's voice that brought her back from her dream. "Frank...", she whispered as she buried her face into his shirt. Frank in return run his hand through her head, gaining a small whimper of pain from her. "I'm so sorry, pumpkin. You don't know how sorry I am...", he murmured into her hair. "I had a nightmare...I... I chased some random person around our old hut. But - ", Snow trailed off as the memories of her dream flooded her mind once more " - I tried to kill them. I had your knife and the mask.", she finally said. Frank released the girl from his embrace to look her into the eyes "It was only a bad, bad dream. It's alright. Now you're safe...kinda." Frank used his thump to wipe away the tears Snow didn't even realize she had shed. He ran his thump down her cheek before his hand trailed off and came to a rest on the bed. "Fuck...", he muttered "How do I start this? I wanted to talk to you about yesterday." Frank averted his gaze. He was nervous on how she'd react to it, would she refuse to talk to him again? Would she be mad? Or would she break up with him? Frank could accept it when she gave him a silent treatment, he could live with her being mad but if she broke up, he didn't know if he would be able to live with that. "I fucked up pretty bad. I did things I shouldn't have. It is not your fault, I had this feeling again, I felt weak, like I needed to be in charge of the situation. I - I -", Franks sudden flood of words got cut short by the butterfly kiss Snow placed on his lips. "Damage's already done.", she whispered as a bitter smile graced her features. She slowly got up and slouched towards the bathroom "I'll take a shower." "Hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.", Frank said with a wink but Snow decided not to turn around again. 

When she exited the shower she felt a bit better. Snow had used the time to sort her thoughts through and made a plan on how she'd approach the whole ting that had happened between Frank and her the other day but as she entered the room Frank was nowhere to be found. She saw a paperplate placed on the nightstand with a few slices of pizza on it and a bottle of blue Powerade. Snow couldn't help but smile at this, she loved this drink and Frank seemed to have remembered this small information about her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and munched her still warm food. As she put down the plate on its original place she heard muffled noices from the hallway. Her interest was now raised, so she went out, her bottle in hand, to find her friends standing in a circle and discussing their plans. Joey and Suzie smiled when they saw Snow exiting the room, Frank walked up to her and wrapped his arm around her waist, which gained Snow a nasty glare from Julie. "We're going to explore the area a bit!", Suzie exclaimed excitedly. "Sounds fun.", Snow responded with a smile. "Suz and I found an old villa a few minutes into the woods.", Joey added "When are we going?", the girl asked "We'll leave after sundown.", Frank answered as he placed a small kiss on her forehead.