Who: Stood Up What: Reveal Where: Paris then back through the door When: Dawn Warnings/Rating: Blood, trauma
The sun had been rising, fading the sky above from dark denim to cornflower as she had sobbed her way through pain and blood and fear in the small alcove on the roof of the hotel, but all she could see through the tears that dripped down to the ground below her face was a gradual lightening of the world around her. At times it didn’t matter though, as her vision threatened to darken with the beat of her heart. Twenty minutes wasn’t a long time, but it dragged on for lifetimes of pain and fear. His weight continually kept her pinned, though at some point her body couldn’t fight anymore and her mind stopped trying. Dress ruined, slick red spreading beneath her on the roof, she wondered if she was going to die there. With the things that had been done to her, she almost wanted to die there. After everything else she’d lived through, she thought this might be the worst.
But then the weight was gone from her back, a sickly sweet threat was being whispered into her ear, and the sun was cresting over the horizon, washing Paris in light for a brief second before it was gone.
And he was in the flat. In the kitchen. On the floor. Thankfully without the heavy weight of another body on top of him. The blood still spilled from dozens of cuts, seeping sluggishly through clothing that had returned, and onto the floor beneath him. His first thought was to wonder who would clean it up. As that thought passed, he realized that the fuzzy, strange feeling was the familiar sensation of blood loss and shock, carrying over from what had happened during the night. He laid on his stomach, blinking at the floor, and staying still until the sharp thought invaded the fog that he was likely going to lose too much blood if he didn’t take some sort of action.
The flat was silent as a tomb, the phrase sliding in his mind and making him shudder, but he held out hope that he wasn’t alone. He opened his mouth to try to yell, but his throat was dry and the name he tried to call caught sticky in a throat that held the scent of blood that he’d breathed in. Desperation warred with exhaustion and apathy, and he tried again, only to have similar results. He closed his eyes, hoping for strength but finding a grey comfort instead. He wasn’t sure how long he remained that way before he shook himself from the drifting cocoon of shock again, uncertain if the spread of rust across the floor that he could see in his peripheral vision was growing or not. His voice still refused to work, and he wondered again if this was going to end up being his anti-climactic death. He knew he carried the notebook in his pocket though, and with a great deal of effort and pain, he drew it out and opened it. He’d thankfully had the foresight to tuck a short pencil in the spiral, and was able to wrap cold, shaking fingers around that as well.
His fingers were slick and nerveless though, unable to coordinate to get the pencil to move. Covered in his own blood, they landed across the page at a crooked angle, leaving a nearly perfect print of part of his hand. Closing his eyes again, he began to drift, unable to keep himself awake any longer, and waited for a friend or his last breath. Next to him, the notebook lay open, the handprint being recorded as a public message, leaving itself to be seen by anyone.