Hello again,
I still can't remember how this all began.
You can't undo;
It's okay though because I've got a gift for you.
I still can't remember how this all began.
You can't undo;
It's okay though because I've got a gift for you.
AN: The song says it all.
Slowly, slowly, slowly.
Before she leaves, she's got one more thing left to do.
She passed through the metal doors, heels clicking on the tiled marble floor. Really, the security there was so poor. It had been too easy to hack the system and tranquillize the guards. Now her white latex clad form made her way to where the person she was looking for worked. Glass doors, lots and lots of weird looking mechanisms, beds,white and blue walls, everything you would find in a research center, except the humans working there. It was well past the working hours but she knew she would still find her there; she always worked over the schedule. Finally, the Histopathology lab.The automatic door opened and she stepped inside. There was a woman with brown hair pulled back in a bun bent over the microscope; she wiped her head back in a instant, startled by the sudden intrusion. As the researcher eyed the all too familiar woman clad in white, her expression was one of utter confusion. Before she had any chance to speak, the other one engaged in the discussion first.
"Hello again, Lady Doc. Remember me?" A smirk spread over her lips, but her golden eyes showed no emotion.
"Of course I do-"
"Sasha.You can call me that."
The Doctor knitted her brows in bewilderment; she knew the woman before her eyes and Sasha wasn't her name. Long time ago they were friends, almost like sisters actually. But life happened and bonds broke and now here they were, staring each other down, one with a blank, yet eerie expression, the other lost in a haze of reminiscence. Sasha began speaking again, not giving her any chance to bring about memories better left forgotten.
"I have a gift for you."
Lady Doc didn't notice the carefully wrapped package in Sasha's left hand until the woman raised it before her eyes. A medium sized box, large enough to fit a book perhaps, covered with a purple paper which had golden stars all over it. The ghost from her past approached and put the present in the Doctor's gloved hands. A vague thought crossed her mind briefly: she had to finish researching the bacterias before they died on the microscope's glass. Sasha leaned over and silently kissed both her cheeks; she smelled like amber and chemicals. After the sudden display of affection, she backed away to her spot by the door and eyed the Doctor with unsettling interest.The package felt slightly heavy in her hands, the paper was smooth and cold. Looking at her old friend, she analyzed her appearance with suspicion in her brown eyes. On her right hipbone a long and thick syringe was attached.The belt that tightly circled her hips had various pockets and on her left side a long, ivory pistol gleamed in the cold light of the laboratory. It must have been custom made as no known brand was written on it and it had some details engraved on the handle that she couldn't clearly make out because of the distance. Her searching eyes turned back to the parcel in her hands.
"Don't worry, it's not a bomb. I'm not suicidal." The Doctor could tell her uninvited guest was smiling even without having to raise her head to see it. So the Doctor ripped the paper with jerky movements and let it fall to the floor as she stared at the big book in her hands: Stephen King's Apocalypse, how predictable.
"Uh, thanks, you didn't have to get me anything. We haven't seen each other in a very long time..." She was finding it difficult to talk to this strange woman.
"Open the book, there's more." The laugh she gave was cold and sharp. A shiver slithered along her spine and a sickly foreboding made her stomach fret. With shaking hands, she moved aside the cover to discover a gun in a rectangle made of cropped pages. A fake book, she thought mindlessly as she regarded it in shock. What happened next unfolded too fast for her to react in any way other than staring dumbly at the white creature inches away from her body. Sasha had the syringe from her leg unclasped and pointing at her stomach and a toothy grin reigned on her face. Time seemed to go in slow motion as the long, thick needle pierced through her flesh and right in her celiac trunk. Coldness seeped in her upper body along with the pain of having been stabbed.
"It won't hurt. Much." said Sasha as she quickly withdrew to her earlier position, closer to the door this time. "It's poison, if you're wondering what I had just injected in you. Deadly poison, hehe. I predict you'll die in 20 minutes but, who knows, maybe you'll have the guts to save yourself. Don't give me that look, of course I'll give you the chance to defend your life, I've not fallen that low. I wish for you to have an artistic death; you were my dearest friend after all."
Terror settled in the Doc's body and the damned grin on Sasha's face didn't help ease it. She had to calm down and look for a way out. That woman couldn't have poisoned her for real, surely it's just a joke. She had always been all talk and no action.
As if sensing her thoughts- or maybe she was that easy to read-, Sasha said while laughing:
"Oh but it's reaaaally true, all of this. Do you ever watch the news? I've become famous, Sasha Winterhound, poisonmaster, mercenary to the core, insane murderer.Those shitty journalists always exaggerate. And they're dumb too. Can you believe they related half-assed, gory and clumsy crimes to my flawless assassinations? Outrageous, I tell you. Oops, I'm blaberring while you're slowly dying from the inside. Go ahead, shoot me. That's the purpose of that gun in your hands which, by the way, is sister to the one I have. It will be such a privilege for you to kill me with such a fine gun and for me to die because of it."
Calm down, calm down for fuck's sake. Pull yourself together, you can't have a panic attack now. This woman is insane, truly, absolutely insane. She can't be my old friend, one doesn't change so much. Lady Doc was trembling, the pistol now in her hand, heavy and cold. The psychotic grin on Sasha's face combined with the fact that she was asked to kill her while she never once touched a gun, nevermind take a life with one was driving her over the edge.
"You know, if you don't hurry, you won't even have this chance. Let me tell you a little about this poison currently ravaging your body while you shake like a leaf hopefully gathering the courage to erase me from this world. I've made it myself, hence the title of poisonmaster the Netherworld gave me. Custom made just for you, hehe. Brodifacoum, Black Mamba venom and a combination of diazepam and fentanyl. Lovely, aren't they? And because I bet you have no idea what these do, I'll explain. First of all, the brodifacoum will reduce the amount of vitamin K in your body, thus leading to massive internal hemorrhaging- your blood will leak from the smallest vessels. It's a lethal anticoagulant, I usually use it for targets that have to die after a certain period of time and belive me when I tell you that it always did its job. Then comes the Black Mamba venom- it's a snake-, one of my favourites because it kills fast and because my acquaintances have an annoying habit of comparing me with one, even though I despise snakes. Hmm, let me remember, how did they describe me...Ah yes,'her combination of speed, unpredictable aggression, and potent venom make her an extremely dangerous creature. She has a reputation for being very aggressive, but like most snakes, she usually attempts to flee from humans unless threatened.' Blah,blah,blah. I'm not that aggressive, just a little and looks like I'm blabbering again. Oh, oh, oh, back to you, my dear. This venom is what will actually kill you, the brodifacoum was for the artistic part. Severe abdominal pain, pallor- which you already display-, erratic heartbeat, fever and, if you're lucky, a heart attack. But you won't be, I made sure of it. What will happen for sure is muscular and respiratory paralysis-you'll die asphyxiated, hehe- oh and lots of convulsions. But because the later symptoms are reaaaally unaesthetic, the diazepam-fentanyl combo will make sure you're paralyzed. You'll die beautifully; that is if you don't kill me and take the antidote off of me. Hahhaha, looks like I finally caught your attention. Didn't I tell you that I'll give you the chance to defend yourself or, in the worst case, at least avenge yourself? And I'm afraid that if you don't make haste, you'll have neither of chances. Once paralysis settles in, you're done, obviously." Sasha took a deep breath as if to emphasize the effect of speaking so much and so fast had on her. Her golden eyes stared right into Lady Doc's dark ones. Satisfaction swam in ones, fear in the others.
"You really did become a psychopath", the brown haired woman said aggravated, through gritted teeth.
"Perhaps" a sly grin spread across Sasha's face.
She wasn't a coward, nor a weak woman. Lady Doc had few things in life that scared her and killing somebody wasn't one of them so why couldn't she pull herself together and shoot? Or maybe that's what she deluded herself into thinking, that taking somebody's life was easy if she was faced with no other solution. How much time was it since she was poisoned? How much did she have left? The existence of an antidote was somehow keeping her clouded mind from falling but what if that woman was lying? And this gun, was it really loaded? Her leg muscles felt strained and she was having a difficult time breathing; her insides were burning and sweat was leaking from her pores. She had to do it now, she had to fucking do it now. Gripping the gun with both hands and pointing it at Sasha, she eyed the unfazed woman. Smug expression, hands crossed in front of her chest, hip cocked to the side, no worry in the world. It was really disturbing to see her so relaxed when a gun was pointed at her. Did she believe she won't shoot? Lady Doc squeezed the cold metal in her hands tighter and after a few more seconds of hesitation, she pulled the trigger. The recoil sent her tumbling down; the bullet didn't reach its target, but the metal door which had now a hole the size of her fingers.
"Seriously, Doc, you disappoint me. Unmoving target three meters in front and you miss? C'mon, try again."
Horrified by the others' lack of fear, the brown haired woman screamed and shoot all five remaining bullets that were loaded in the gun, yet only one managed to graze her ghost. The fabric on Sasha's shoulder began to redden, yet no expression of pain showed on her face, not even a twitch. She started to clap while widening her smirk, as if the bloody injury was merely a scratch.
"Bravo, my dearest friend, you used up all of your ammo, yet you didn't succeed in killing me. You really are amazing. In ten more minutes you'll be dead, thought I should remind you."
No, no, no, fucking hell no, I don't want to die, I don't want to die yet. "You bitch, what the hell did I ever do to you for this to happen? Wasn't I your friend? Did you really become a soulless monster with nothing to lose?" She was shouting, her voice having caught an hysteric edge from all the rage and fear she was feeling. The fact that her lungs couldn't quite get enough air was only adding more fuel.
"Hmm, never did something to me, you say? Dear, did you really forget how you so easily threw aside my friendship and forsake me? Me who treasured your friendship more than anyfuckingthing on this world? You really have guts to look me in the eye and say you didn't do anything wrong. And it looks like you didn't learn this important detail about me all that time long ago when we were oh so close. Never fucking go on my wrong side, never! Because I'm an extremely vengeful person. I may have looked like I forgave and forgot you, but no, nu-uh, I never forget that which hurts me. You did something unexcusable. And now you pay." And then she laughed, a cruel, hollow sound from deep inside her chest.
On the floor, Lady Doc listened, horrified both at the reminiscence of their younger years and the the fact that she couldn't feel her body anymore. Panic was making her pulse fasten and thus leaking inside. She was losing blood and her mind was becoming numb; her lungs also, seemed to constrict painfully, leaving her without enough air. She laughed bitterly to herself. The brodifacoum wasn't for "an artistic death", it was for her passing to be painless. Before dying by asphyxiation, she will lose her consciousness and she won't feel anything. A hasty thought crossed her mind for a split second: from their teen years when this woman always used to say that she hated the idea of torture and if someone had to die, it should be fast and without much pain. Her brown eyes lifted to meet her murderer's hollow gaze. That psychotic grin again, she sighed. How can someone become so heartless to the point of killing someone without even flinching? So I'm not as coldblooded as I alleged.
"You never thought that I'll really do it, did you?" Sasha said in a low whisper, picking on her nails.
Lady Doc's vision was becoming blurred and she was gasping for air like a fish out of water. This was it, the end of everything. Aah, what a pointless life I've lived. Am I really dying? Just like this, everything goes poof for me? Why, Dear God in Heavens to which I always prayed in times of need and never got an answer, am I leaving so soon? I wanted to at least-
Sasha's golden eyes watched her old friend's brown ones shut close. In just a few more minutes she will be dead. She crossed her hands in front of her chest again and she waited. The wound in her shoulder was stinging but her mind was too focused on long forgotten memories to register the pain. Moving over Lady Doc's body, she picked up the black gun and strapped it back in its original place, where the antidote sat neatly. Unclasping it slowly, she took the syringe to the porcelain sink in the room and pushed the clear liquid out until nothing else was left. She put the empty vial in one of her belt's pockets and moved to stand before the Doctor's body. Her chest was barely moving, her skin getting a bluish tint. The wall clock's ticking was echoing in the silent laboratory.Tick-tock,tick-tock,tick-dead. Sasha laid the still warm corpse on the tiled floor and put on her chest a blue paper rose; she placed a kiss on her forehead and straightened up.
"Farewell." She said with an empty voice. Turning on her heels, she headed for the exit. The fluorescent light was making her eyes glint like a spectre's, her boots were clicking loudly on the floor and her lips were twisted in an emotionless smile.
Outside the research center, in the freezing winter night, Sasha looked back at the building once more before disappearing in the shadows. She could have blown up the place,get rid of the corpse, but that wasn't how she worked.Truly, it would have been a glorious ending for her old friend, but she wasn't into pointless victims and wasted resources. No, it was better this way. Finally done.
"Hello again, Lady Doc. Remember me?" A smirk spread over her lips, but her golden eyes showed no emotion.
"Of course I do-"
"Sasha.You can call me that."
The Doctor knitted her brows in bewilderment; she knew the woman before her eyes and Sasha wasn't her name. Long time ago they were friends, almost like sisters actually. But life happened and bonds broke and now here they were, staring each other down, one with a blank, yet eerie expression, the other lost in a haze of reminiscence. Sasha began speaking again, not giving her any chance to bring about memories better left forgotten.
"I have a gift for you."
Lady Doc didn't notice the carefully wrapped package in Sasha's left hand until the woman raised it before her eyes. A medium sized box, large enough to fit a book perhaps, covered with a purple paper which had golden stars all over it. The ghost from her past approached and put the present in the Doctor's gloved hands. A vague thought crossed her mind briefly: she had to finish researching the bacterias before they died on the microscope's glass. Sasha leaned over and silently kissed both her cheeks; she smelled like amber and chemicals. After the sudden display of affection, she backed away to her spot by the door and eyed the Doctor with unsettling interest.The package felt slightly heavy in her hands, the paper was smooth and cold. Looking at her old friend, she analyzed her appearance with suspicion in her brown eyes. On her right hipbone a long and thick syringe was attached.The belt that tightly circled her hips had various pockets and on her left side a long, ivory pistol gleamed in the cold light of the laboratory. It must have been custom made as no known brand was written on it and it had some details engraved on the handle that she couldn't clearly make out because of the distance. Her searching eyes turned back to the parcel in her hands.
"Don't worry, it's not a bomb. I'm not suicidal." The Doctor could tell her uninvited guest was smiling even without having to raise her head to see it. So the Doctor ripped the paper with jerky movements and let it fall to the floor as she stared at the big book in her hands: Stephen King's Apocalypse, how predictable.
"Uh, thanks, you didn't have to get me anything. We haven't seen each other in a very long time..." She was finding it difficult to talk to this strange woman.
"Open the book, there's more." The laugh she gave was cold and sharp. A shiver slithered along her spine and a sickly foreboding made her stomach fret. With shaking hands, she moved aside the cover to discover a gun in a rectangle made of cropped pages. A fake book, she thought mindlessly as she regarded it in shock. What happened next unfolded too fast for her to react in any way other than staring dumbly at the white creature inches away from her body. Sasha had the syringe from her leg unclasped and pointing at her stomach and a toothy grin reigned on her face. Time seemed to go in slow motion as the long, thick needle pierced through her flesh and right in her celiac trunk. Coldness seeped in her upper body along with the pain of having been stabbed.
"It won't hurt. Much." said Sasha as she quickly withdrew to her earlier position, closer to the door this time. "It's poison, if you're wondering what I had just injected in you. Deadly poison, hehe. I predict you'll die in 20 minutes but, who knows, maybe you'll have the guts to save yourself. Don't give me that look, of course I'll give you the chance to defend your life, I've not fallen that low. I wish for you to have an artistic death; you were my dearest friend after all."
Terror settled in the Doc's body and the damned grin on Sasha's face didn't help ease it. She had to calm down and look for a way out. That woman couldn't have poisoned her for real, surely it's just a joke. She had always been all talk and no action.
As if sensing her thoughts- or maybe she was that easy to read-, Sasha said while laughing:
"Oh but it's reaaaally true, all of this. Do you ever watch the news? I've become famous, Sasha Winterhound, poisonmaster, mercenary to the core, insane murderer.Those shitty journalists always exaggerate. And they're dumb too. Can you believe they related half-assed, gory and clumsy crimes to my flawless assassinations? Outrageous, I tell you. Oops, I'm blaberring while you're slowly dying from the inside. Go ahead, shoot me. That's the purpose of that gun in your hands which, by the way, is sister to the one I have. It will be such a privilege for you to kill me with such a fine gun and for me to die because of it."
Calm down, calm down for fuck's sake. Pull yourself together, you can't have a panic attack now. This woman is insane, truly, absolutely insane. She can't be my old friend, one doesn't change so much. Lady Doc was trembling, the pistol now in her hand, heavy and cold. The psychotic grin on Sasha's face combined with the fact that she was asked to kill her while she never once touched a gun, nevermind take a life with one was driving her over the edge.
"You know, if you don't hurry, you won't even have this chance. Let me tell you a little about this poison currently ravaging your body while you shake like a leaf hopefully gathering the courage to erase me from this world. I've made it myself, hence the title of poisonmaster the Netherworld gave me. Custom made just for you, hehe. Brodifacoum, Black Mamba venom and a combination of diazepam and fentanyl. Lovely, aren't they? And because I bet you have no idea what these do, I'll explain. First of all, the brodifacoum will reduce the amount of vitamin K in your body, thus leading to massive internal hemorrhaging- your blood will leak from the smallest vessels. It's a lethal anticoagulant, I usually use it for targets that have to die after a certain period of time and belive me when I tell you that it always did its job. Then comes the Black Mamba venom- it's a snake-, one of my favourites because it kills fast and because my acquaintances have an annoying habit of comparing me with one, even though I despise snakes. Hmm, let me remember, how did they describe me...Ah yes,'her combination of speed, unpredictable aggression, and potent venom make her an extremely dangerous creature. She has a reputation for being very aggressive, but like most snakes, she usually attempts to flee from humans unless threatened.' Blah,blah,blah. I'm not that aggressive, just a little and looks like I'm blabbering again. Oh, oh, oh, back to you, my dear. This venom is what will actually kill you, the brodifacoum was for the artistic part. Severe abdominal pain, pallor- which you already display-, erratic heartbeat, fever and, if you're lucky, a heart attack. But you won't be, I made sure of it. What will happen for sure is muscular and respiratory paralysis-you'll die asphyxiated, hehe- oh and lots of convulsions. But because the later symptoms are reaaaally unaesthetic, the diazepam-fentanyl combo will make sure you're paralyzed. You'll die beautifully; that is if you don't kill me and take the antidote off of me. Hahhaha, looks like I finally caught your attention. Didn't I tell you that I'll give you the chance to defend yourself or, in the worst case, at least avenge yourself? And I'm afraid that if you don't make haste, you'll have neither of chances. Once paralysis settles in, you're done, obviously." Sasha took a deep breath as if to emphasize the effect of speaking so much and so fast had on her. Her golden eyes stared right into Lady Doc's dark ones. Satisfaction swam in ones, fear in the others.
"You really did become a psychopath", the brown haired woman said aggravated, through gritted teeth.
"Perhaps" a sly grin spread across Sasha's face.
She wasn't a coward, nor a weak woman. Lady Doc had few things in life that scared her and killing somebody wasn't one of them so why couldn't she pull herself together and shoot? Or maybe that's what she deluded herself into thinking, that taking somebody's life was easy if she was faced with no other solution. How much time was it since she was poisoned? How much did she have left? The existence of an antidote was somehow keeping her clouded mind from falling but what if that woman was lying? And this gun, was it really loaded? Her leg muscles felt strained and she was having a difficult time breathing; her insides were burning and sweat was leaking from her pores. She had to do it now, she had to fucking do it now. Gripping the gun with both hands and pointing it at Sasha, she eyed the unfazed woman. Smug expression, hands crossed in front of her chest, hip cocked to the side, no worry in the world. It was really disturbing to see her so relaxed when a gun was pointed at her. Did she believe she won't shoot? Lady Doc squeezed the cold metal in her hands tighter and after a few more seconds of hesitation, she pulled the trigger. The recoil sent her tumbling down; the bullet didn't reach its target, but the metal door which had now a hole the size of her fingers.
"Seriously, Doc, you disappoint me. Unmoving target three meters in front and you miss? C'mon, try again."
Horrified by the others' lack of fear, the brown haired woman screamed and shoot all five remaining bullets that were loaded in the gun, yet only one managed to graze her ghost. The fabric on Sasha's shoulder began to redden, yet no expression of pain showed on her face, not even a twitch. She started to clap while widening her smirk, as if the bloody injury was merely a scratch.
"Bravo, my dearest friend, you used up all of your ammo, yet you didn't succeed in killing me. You really are amazing. In ten more minutes you'll be dead, thought I should remind you."
No, no, no, fucking hell no, I don't want to die, I don't want to die yet. "You bitch, what the hell did I ever do to you for this to happen? Wasn't I your friend? Did you really become a soulless monster with nothing to lose?" She was shouting, her voice having caught an hysteric edge from all the rage and fear she was feeling. The fact that her lungs couldn't quite get enough air was only adding more fuel.
"Hmm, never did something to me, you say? Dear, did you really forget how you so easily threw aside my friendship and forsake me? Me who treasured your friendship more than anyfuckingthing on this world? You really have guts to look me in the eye and say you didn't do anything wrong. And it looks like you didn't learn this important detail about me all that time long ago when we were oh so close. Never fucking go on my wrong side, never! Because I'm an extremely vengeful person. I may have looked like I forgave and forgot you, but no, nu-uh, I never forget that which hurts me. You did something unexcusable. And now you pay." And then she laughed, a cruel, hollow sound from deep inside her chest.
On the floor, Lady Doc listened, horrified both at the reminiscence of their younger years and the the fact that she couldn't feel her body anymore. Panic was making her pulse fasten and thus leaking inside. She was losing blood and her mind was becoming numb; her lungs also, seemed to constrict painfully, leaving her without enough air. She laughed bitterly to herself. The brodifacoum wasn't for "an artistic death", it was for her passing to be painless. Before dying by asphyxiation, she will lose her consciousness and she won't feel anything. A hasty thought crossed her mind for a split second: from their teen years when this woman always used to say that she hated the idea of torture and if someone had to die, it should be fast and without much pain. Her brown eyes lifted to meet her murderer's hollow gaze. That psychotic grin again, she sighed. How can someone become so heartless to the point of killing someone without even flinching? So I'm not as coldblooded as I alleged.
"You never thought that I'll really do it, did you?" Sasha said in a low whisper, picking on her nails.
Lady Doc's vision was becoming blurred and she was gasping for air like a fish out of water. This was it, the end of everything. Aah, what a pointless life I've lived. Am I really dying? Just like this, everything goes poof for me? Why, Dear God in Heavens to which I always prayed in times of need and never got an answer, am I leaving so soon? I wanted to at least-
Sasha's golden eyes watched her old friend's brown ones shut close. In just a few more minutes she will be dead. She crossed her hands in front of her chest again and she waited. The wound in her shoulder was stinging but her mind was too focused on long forgotten memories to register the pain. Moving over Lady Doc's body, she picked up the black gun and strapped it back in its original place, where the antidote sat neatly. Unclasping it slowly, she took the syringe to the porcelain sink in the room and pushed the clear liquid out until nothing else was left. She put the empty vial in one of her belt's pockets and moved to stand before the Doctor's body. Her chest was barely moving, her skin getting a bluish tint. The wall clock's ticking was echoing in the silent laboratory.Tick-tock,tick-tock,tick-dead. Sasha laid the still warm corpse on the tiled floor and put on her chest a blue paper rose; she placed a kiss on her forehead and straightened up.
"Farewell." She said with an empty voice. Turning on her heels, she headed for the exit. The fluorescent light was making her eyes glint like a spectre's, her boots were clicking loudly on the floor and her lips were twisted in an emotionless smile.
Outside the research center, in the freezing winter night, Sasha looked back at the building once more before disappearing in the shadows. She could have blown up the place,get rid of the corpse, but that wasn't how she worked.Truly, it would have been a glorious ending for her old friend, but she wasn't into pointless victims and wasted resources. No, it was better this way. Finally done.
An ending to begin...
AN:Woot, woot, I'm finally done, phew.
