§𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 | 𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐬

02.

§tain | chapter two - "hello darkness"

10 years later

Washington, DC

    Dreams are the fantasies of the imaginative mind. Minor considerations scattered throughout the day tucked away in the depths of your mind only to resurface the second your eyes closed. In any case, for Jade, hers was from the past. Those that have become waking nightmares years after.

      She was thrashing about, her legs tangled in the sheets as flashes progressed. First came Big Louie, Gotham's most notorious drug lord, and the echo of his glock going off. Shooting her fiancee in his sack secured head. Jade saw his body go limp, heard herself crying madly, and felt herself desperately slither towards him. Her hand trembling, reaching for him, coming to the same time, her body wounded, and her swollen belly aching.

"P-please ..." she called out until one of his goons picked her up and carried her as she was kicking and screaming.

   Next, she sat on the bed, wearing a dark tunic tied to her head by a scapular with a cowl. Beside her, Mother Mori was resting her hand on the teen's shoulder. Not long ago, she had brought forth a beautiful baby girl, named Ansley after her late fiancee's mother.

   She had been left with her feelings after she had surrendered the child for adoption. They've been bothering her since she met Big Louie. She spilled them to the Mother Superior.

"What are you going to do now, child?" her Greek accent a delicate touch of validity.

"I need to make them pay. Heroes, they 're going to rue the day they didn't come to rescue us."

       That's when the ritual followed. Summoning the devil to give his mark to a poor soul. To trade her's in return for his blessing. The skin of her neck was defaced. Her body felt as if it were ablaze, and her powers went through her to the wild recitation of the Sisters. Until she eventually saw his eyes, dark, undaunted, and completely ruthless. She screamed at him from the unbearable agony and the abominable sight of him.

    Last, stood Dick. Sweet Dick. He held her close to him. His warmth and scent inebriating. She grew drunk from off his kisses, addicted to the delicateness of his lips, and swooned at the tenderness of his touch which sent an all to warm and fluffy sensation all through her body. With him, she felt safe, loved, appreciated.

      Never did she experience torment or misfortune or grief. They were each others universes. Something the two had looked long for just to discover in the wake of confronting hardships and years loaded with affliction. Or so as she thought in light of the fact that the next thing she knew, her lover took a blade dipped in blood and dove it into her mark.

    She folded feeble in his arms, those she once believed secured her, kept her sheltered, now held her. She tried meeting his eyes, beseeching him, reminding him how much she loved him. "Dick, I love you." blood spilled from her mouth blending in with the tears she shed.

   "You thought wrong. Monsters can't love." He left in the wake of saying the very thing she feared since the start. Him understanding exactly what she was. Without even so much as a second glance, he was gone. There she laid, on her back, slowly blurring as darkness came into view. Welcoming her as though it were an old friend.

~

     Adelaide Carter was simply a nonsensical woman. Someone who did not accept foolishness and wanted only the excellence of her children. She had a motto, something that her eldest has lived through, even to this day. "Loose threads are meant to be cut, not worn." Jade believed the saying referred to past memories of those who gave torment. Torment reached the limits of her being gone for a long time. Overlooked and never thought of again. Except that they were manifested in dreams at night. She would wake up, her face dripping with sweat, her throat aching, and her mark squeezing.