Let Me Hold You For Now

Waiting and Wondering

He should have expected good results, since the plan was Ray's after all. Laying low for the next few days turned out to be much easier than he thought it would. He managed a simple break & entry and killed a young college student that lived alone. His rooftop apartment worked well enough. These shitty neighborhoods were far too rundown to have CCTV. This kind of killing wasn't much fun, but it was necessary. He had bigger fish to fry. He wasn't going to let something as simple as not having a place to stay keep him from fulfilling his end of the promise.

How long had it been now? Three days? He sighed and fell back on the bed in exasperation.

He expected the waiting part to be easier. After all, all he'd been doing for the last year or so was waiting, right? Waiting and wondering about her.

He'd never forget the first time he saw her face after going to prison. Excited didn't even begin to cover how he felt when he saw her interview on the news. The prison guards were pissed. They'd told him she was dead when he first got there. He didn't give a shit what happened to him after that.

Seeing her boring face on tv was probably the best moment of his entire. She was alive. She made it. It wasn't all for nothing. Getting her out of that place alive, even if he just barely managed it was the only good thing he'd ever done. That precious, creepy little kid. She deserved a good life even if she didn't know it.

Shit. All this thinking was exhausting. He'd never been much of a thinker, always surviving and acting on pretty much instinct alone, but there wasn't much else to pass the time when you were locked up. It's not like he could read and they even took his pen and paper after he filled up a notebook with graphic depictions of his favorite killings. Most of them were imaginary... Some familiar faces here and there. That probably creeped them out more. What could he say? He was inspired.

A sharp pain in his back made him squirm uncomfortably. Goddamnit. Another fucking piece of glass that he missed. He could really use some of Ray's ace first aid skills right about now. Fuck it. He'd been far less comfortable. Besides, it was his own damn fault for getting distracted and messing up his landing. How could he not though?

Damn... That look on her face... It was burned into his memories.

He had to wonder... Was he the one that made her smile like that? It would have been the first time he made anyone smile... That idea was surprisingly not so bad. It made his chest feel funny though, like something was trying to claw its way out. Ray had a way of making him feel all kinds of uncomfortable things though, so he couldn't be too surprised.

Where was she now? What was she doing? There's no way she was still at that hospital. Tch. A hospital, really? Like she was sick or something. Were people that unwilling to accept that she wasn't interested in talking to them? They wouldn't keep her there if they were expecting him to come back for her, right?

Good. Clearly they weren't taking care of her.

She looked tired, even more tired than he was. He wondered what kept her up at night. Was she worried about him? Or was she worried about him coming for her? Maybe he completely misread the situation. There was the possibility that she really was happy now and she was afraid that he was coming to rip that happiness away.

She said she missed him, but that was probably just her trying to lead him into a false sense of security. It kind of worked. He wanted to trust her. Hell, Ray was the only person he'd ever trusted in his entire life.

He felt a little guilty for doubting her. She hadn't let him down yet.

It would have been too easy for her to lead the cops to him if she really was trying to get him sent back to prison. It's not like he was moving that fast. He even had to leave his scythe behind so he could run faster. He'd miss the damn thing. Oh well. It was fun, but it wasn't as if he couldn't live without it. It was far easier to go unnoticed without a giant blade thrown over his shoulder.

Part of him wondered what he'd be doing if she never showed up. Same old thing, probably. There was a sense of security there that he didn't have anymore, having his own floor and being able to kill all the people he wanted without any consequences.

It was a good run, but it was more fun seeing how famous he'd become.

All the people that came in to talk to him in prison were dumbstruck by how matter-of-fact he was about his confessions. Why bother hiding any of it? People believed what they wanted anyway. Of course, he didn't remember all of his victims, and they even tried to pin some extras on him. He made sure to set them straight on that.

Also, all that shit about him killing her parents and kidnapping her? Ridiculous. Who the hell did they think he was, anyway? Some kind of pervert who kidnapped little kids for fun?

He liked kids well enough. Not like that! But most kids were honest to a fault. It was hard to hate honest people. It's not like he dwelled on it a lot, at least he hadn't before he met Ray. But children were kind of at the mercy of the people who took care of them, right? Or at least, the people who were supposed to take care of them.

If he'd met Ray on the streets rather than as a sacrifice, he would have happily killed her shitty ass parents for her. Where would that leave her though? In a foster home? Once again at the mercy of that creepy eye-freak, Danny? He shuddered at the thought. He didn't want to think too hard about what that psycho wanted from her in the long run. But it was clear that it didn't stop at her eyes. He learned enough in prison to know that he really didn't want details about what those kinds of degenerates liked to do to kids. Ray in particular, seemed to be some kind of ultimate fantasy for a lot of those creeps, a pretty little doll they could do whatever they wanted with.

He chuckled darkly as he remembered what he did to the first guy he heard talking about her like that. He was still alive, but Zack inflicted a decent amount of punishment even after ripping his eyes out of his skull. Okay, so maybe he was venting some pent-up, unresolved feelings with the whole eyes thing. He just really regretted not being the one to kill Danny in the end.

Of course his protective nature when it came to Ray only got everyone asking even more questions about what kind of relationship they had. He scoffed at that. What relationship? He couldn't even really consider her a friend, could he? Ray was more like a precious belonging to him. Something useful and indispensable that he had to take care of.

Some thing? Yeah... She seemed more like a thing than a person a lot of the time, didn't she? Even after her little psychotic break. It was like a switch being turned on and off.

Still... He'd been the one to talk her out of it, right? If you cared enough to try to understand what was happening in that screwed up little head of hers, she'd let you in. He felt a twinge of jealousy when he wondered if she talked to her new doctors about her secrets.

Fuck that.

Her secrets were his. If she did open up to them, they would just have to die.

That cheered him up a little. Anyone who tried to test his limits when it came to Ray was in for a very unpleasant surprise.