End of the Line

[VoltTurtle]

Isabel gritted her teeth and stared at Lily with a look of malice.

How dare she say these things? Does she not have any understanding of the proper strategy in this game? Astrid could have been anyone, and more importantly she could have been someone dangerous. Had Isabel not attacked when she had the chance, the both of them could have been bloody smears on the ground. It was unfair to Astrid that she happened to be the victim of Isabel's perfectly logical decision.

And yet Lily went on and on, acting as if Isabel had done nothing but make the situation worse. She was doing what she needed to in order to survive. Did Lily not understand who had the power in this partnership of theirs?

Just as Isabel was about to raise her arm and shut Lily up herself, Lily stopped talking. A smirk formed on Isabel's lips as she saw the look of pure fear on Lily's face. She did understand who had the power. And hey, maybe forgiving someone who had just mouthed off to her would make her look more mature and reasonable to the people watching at home.

Isabel scooted closer to Lily and wrapped her arm around Lily's shoulders, smiling wider as she heard a small squeal of fear come out of her.

"Look, I'm not about to say that what you just said was nice, but..." She paused briefly, enjoying milking Lily's fear of her to full effect. "I guess I can let it slide. You probably don't even understand my decision making process!" She said, her tone blatantly sardonic. "So let me clear some things up for you..."

"For one, I don't kill everyone I come across. You're living proof of that." She said, gently waving the knife in the air. "For two, if I had waited, whoever the interloper was could have killed us both! Sure Astrid probably wasn't a threat in hindsight... but that's 20/20."

She paused briefly again, letting her words and the motions of the knife sink in. "For three, my killing has done wonders when it comes to making people afraid of me. And for the people that legitimately tried to hurt me because of my actions... well, one of them is my friend now..." Isabel nudged the side of Lily's head with her arm. "...and the other is dead."

"Finally, do you really think I don't carefully weigh all of my actions? Prepare for potential consequences? Let's go down the list, shall we?" Isabel smiled a toothy grin, before continuing. "Astrid was an accident, I only attacked her because she could have been a threat, like I've already said. Asha attacked me, and I killed her in self defense. Otherwise, she would have continued living just fine."

Isabel made little slicing motions in the air with the knife in front of Lily's face. "Sickle boy was an easy kill, what with him sitting on the edge of a building. He might have become a threat later, why leave things to chance?" Isabel nudged Lily again, more forcefully this time. "Danny was another case of self defense. He tried to take my weapons, so I killed him." Isabel placed a finger on her bottom lip, making a sarcastic thoughtful pose. "As for Conrad, his death was simple pragmatism. He was dead weight when I found him, and a liability had I let him follow me around."

Isabel quietly ignored the other parts of Conrad's death, instead just moving on as she absentmindedly examined her nails. "And well, that just leaves Tina. I guess I can say that she didn't really deserve it in hindsight, but at the time I was worried about getting the one kill I needed to leave. An opportunity presented itself, plain and simple. Oh, and at the very least she was a bit of competition that I wouldn't have to deal with later."

She leaned in further to Lily, gently making head to head contact, her arm holding Lily in place so she couldn't squirm away. "Does that clear up any misconceptions you had, sugar lumps?"

Isabel twirled the knife once in her hand. "Or do I need to explain further..."

[ViolentMedic]

The squeal that came out of Lily's mouth when Isabel grabbed her was... embarrassing. And Isabel was far too close now. Spending her time getting as uncomfortably close to Lily as she could. Lily wasn't huge on contact at the best of times, and she was struggling to remember the last time she'd been this close to someone. Caedyn, maybe. She never thought she'd think this, but right now she would have given anything for even Caedyn to be there instead of Isabel.

Isabel talked. It was all lies. Lies, lies, lies. Or at least heavy delusions, if Isabel really thought that Conrad was a matter of practicality. Lily could have believed it, perhaps, if she hadn't seen the mess that Isabel had left his corpse in.

And she admitted that there'd been no reason to kill Tina. Tina was just... just a casualty. A stepping stone. Tina was nothing to Isabel. Nothing except... except a bit of competition she wouldn't have to deal with later.

Lily was shaking. She tried to make herself stop, but she couldn't. The anger had been submerged by fear, and she wanted the anger back. At least the anger made her feel stronger. Not this shaky fear that left her drained.

"No. No, you don't need to explain further," Lily said. Her voice came out shaky and weak. "I... I understand."

She wanted to push Isabel out of her space. She couldn't. She didn't dare move an inch. She just stayed curled up, trying to ignore the feel of Isabel's skin, trying to block out how close to her face Isabel was. She felt like if she moved, her words--or even her thoughts--might come spilling out.

[VoltTurtle]

"I'm glad we've reached an understanding."

Isabel let go of Lily, taking a moment afterwards to clean the knife of Astrid's blood with her increasingly blood soaked sweater before sighing and leaning her back against the wall. Killing yet another person and then accosting her "friend" had left her feeling drained. She could have really used a moment to legitimately relax, but knowing the lemmings that were somehow considered her competition, they would all come running one by one until the massive pile of bodies lying out front actually got the message across to them.

She looked back over at Lily, who seemed to have retreated even further into herself. Unsurprising, but still annoying, because Isabel was still bored. She wished she had a book to read, or perhaps a Sudoku puzzle to fill out. She could probably make a puzzle of her own if she had some pen and paper, but even something as basic as that was hard to come by in this place. Lily obviously wasn't going to talk in her current state, so trying to generate conversation was out.

All she had was her thoughts, for right now.

----

Some amount of time had passed, Isabel didn't know how much time exactly, but it had felt like an hour or two.

She looked over at Lily, still balled up, although this time lying on her side. Isabel knew that talking to her would be futile, but she decided to speak anyway. "So... I don't know about you, but I'm still pretty damn bored. Wanna talk about... shoes or something? Anything at this point, really."

...

She wasn't up for it. Figures that she would only give a bare bones response.

"Well, guess I can't say I'm surprised." Isabel paused for a moment, blowing a lock of her hair out of her face. "You know..." She began, the gears in her head spinning. "I've been wondering. Why exactly did you want to kill me so badly anyway?"

"Don't think I've forgotten about that..." She said, while twirling the knife. "You seem like a good kid. I must have done something that really hurt you to make you want to kill me even in spite of that." She looked at Lily, examining her movements intently. "It's hard to trust you if you won't even give me a chance to make amends for whatever happened."

Isabel tapped her finger against the bench. "Well, go on. Speak up."

[ViolentMedic]

Isabel let go of her. Lily wanted soap so badly, to scrub where Isabel had made contact until the skin was gone and only red meat remained. But she didn't have water to waste, so she just curled up and sat there.

Time passed. It was mostly silent. Isabel eventually had to ruin that, too. Still trying to make conversation. About shoes. Who talks about shoes?

"No. I don't want to talk about shoes."

And then Isabel asked the million-dollar answer-wrong-and-you-die question.

God, was that knife-twirling uncomfortable. Lily was getting a distinct vibe that 'no reason' or 'it's unimportant' just wouldn't cut it here. But she was sure Isabel really would kill her if she said what she was thinking, which was 'you killed my cousin and the only way you can make amends for that is if you cut your own throat right here, you moronic psychopathic bitch.'

Lily looked at Isabel, and at the knife. When she spoke, her voice came out terse.

"You were a bit of competition that I didn't want to have to deal with later."

[VoltTurtle]

"Oho! I guess we're not so different after all, huh?"

Isabel could tell easily that Lily was lying, or at the very least that she wasn't telling the whole truth. If she only wanted to kill her because she viewed her as a threat, then why would she still be holding so much animosity towards her? Certainly once Isabel had demonstrated that she wasn't a threat, Lily wouldn't have felt the need to be cold and distant. There was something else going on with LIly, but Isabel decided against pressing the issue, at least for a while. Still, Isabel could take the opportunity to twist the metaphorical knife a bit. Lily wasn't about to get away with her insults.

"Although if that's the case, I'm not sure how you could possibly take the moral high ground off of that." Isabel wiggled her fingers in front of her own face. "Murder is murder after all, even if you're killing someone who quote, deserves it, unquote."

Isabel suddenly hissed as pain flared up from where the bolt had embedded itself in her arm the day before. The exertion of killing Astrid had presumably torn open a few blood vessels, as her blood was starting to soak through the bandages. Ignoring Lily for the moment, Isabel ripped open her bag and quickly cut away the bandages from around her arm, wrapping it back up more snugly with fresh bandages and taking a few ibuprofen pills for good measure.

Downing a bit of the dry, tasteless food that she had available to her along with some water, Isabel turned her head back to Lily to see that she was silent, and covering her face. Not in the mood to respond, obviously. For once Isabel was alright with that, it let her get the last laugh in knocking Lily down a few pegs.

She leaned her head back against the wall once she was done, staring at the ceiling as light scattered off of the dust particles floating in front of the flashlight.

...

After some time had passed, Isabel decided that she was done with being bored, even if it was safer to stay where they were.

She grunted as she picked her bag off from the ground and slung it over her shoulder, taking hold of her weapons once again and slipping her knife into her pocket. Turning to Lily, Isabel told her that they were leaving before flicking off Astrid's flashlight and walking out of the locker rooms. She stood, carefully keeping her gaze facing away from Astrid's corpse splayed out on the ground, waiting just outside for Lily to move herself. She didn't want to think about how that corpse could easily be herself in the future.

Once Lily actually came out looking as tired and fed up as ever, they left the gym for somewhere else.

((Isabel Ramirez continued in The Virgin Sea))

[ViolentMedic]

Lily had no response. Not even one to hold back. She just returned to silence.

Isabel was wrong. She had to be. Lily might not be proud of the things she'd done—or hadn't done—but she wasn't like Isabel. She wasn't a psychopath. Lily could hold the moral high ground for as long as she wanted.

They spent some time sitting there. Then Isabel decided they were leaving.

They had to pass Astrid's corpse on the way. Lily looked at the body for longer than she needed to. The smell was still awful, but the sight of these bodies was starting not to matter. There were just too many of them, and it was becoming increasingly hard to feel anything but the disgust one felt when scraping something unpleasant off the sole of their shoe.

Shouldn't she feel other things?

No. She was fine. Anyone would stop feeling shock after so many bodies.

((Lily Caldwell continued in The Virgin Sea.))