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Your name is YESHIN LAEVIS. Your kismesis has just left you unattended in her hive after slicing your face open.
You had watched her turn from you to shrug her coat on. Her indifference to you had made your blood boil. It was like a switch had been flipped in her. Like she didn’t have time of day for you anymore. Not now, at least. She would come back around. She always did.
Before, the two of you had danced around her career. Not this time. It almost made you nervous how serious she was taking this case. But ultimately, it didn’t. She was clearly in one of her moods.
You had watched her leave, despite your impaired vision. Told her you loved her. It had been deeply sarcastic, but a part of you still meant it. A large part.
Once the door slammed behind her you huffed. Now you were left to lick your wounds. Alone. You head to her sanitization block again to go deal with the mess of your face.
After some scrubbing, the blood is mostly gone from your face and neck. Stains of it still dot your shirt, but right now you can’t be fucked to worry about your outfit. At least the blood blends in with your jacket.
You watch, with your now single good eye, as blood begins to pool up and drip from the cut again. You wipe it off.
The wound is squarely down the center of your eye, extending from your forehead down to your cheek. At least she had left your mouth untouched.
It fully settles on you that it’s not going to heal. You huff.
The least she could have done was help you patch it up, but she doesn't have the tact. You bandage it yourself. It doesn't look pretty, but you’ll have to live with it for now. You just wish the pain would subside.
You go to get another drink, not bothering to clean up after yourself. The drips of blood on her counter feel fitting.
Once the pain has subsided into an alcohol induced thrum, you pick your phone up from where she had left it on the table. Groaning, you look through it, seeing just how much of your information she had deleted in her little spree of justice. You roll your eye. It won’t be too difficult to get back, at any rate. You did just fine getting it the first time.
You text her about getting you an eyepatch.
It would be fitting to have her sigil embroidered on one.
You snoop around her hive for a few minutes, but quickly grow bored of that and settle down on the futon, already wishing she was still next to you. It was far too early for that, you remind yourself. Especially after what she had done to you.
You spend a few minutes swipping through social media. Then the TV flicks on. You’re nowhere near the remote. It confuses you for a moment, until you look up, and no longer care why.
You feel yourself grinning at the television. It’s her .
Immediately the screen has your full attention.
You eat it up.
You’re sure she has reasonings left and right for every one of the deaths. She always does. She’s far too concerned with her own self righteousness to not consider every one justified.
But no one's first thought after seeing that is going to be to ask her why. They’re going to see her as trigger happy and ruthless. They’re going to see a criminal. Like you. It’s fitting for her, you muse.
You watch her run out of the square like the barkbeast she is.
For a while after, you feel giddy. You send her another message, chiding her about her impromptu television appearance.
The night goes on, and you still don’t hear anything back from her. Whatever. If she’s too busy with her precious case to give you any attention she doesn't deserve your energy.
Eventually you fall asleep on the futon again, wanting to get a few more hours of sleep in while you wait for her to come back.
You wake up late in the morning. Light filters in through the window shades, coating part of the floor in a dull yellow-pink haze.
You spend a while longer on your phone before deciding to go back to your own hive. There isn’t enough to entertain you here. Besides, it would be better if she had to come to you anyway. You should have her crawling to your hive to apologise to you. Oh how you would love that.
You head to the sanitization block once again to rebandage your eye, making it a bit more presentable this time. Still, you fix your hair into place to where it’s mostly covering the patch up.
You’re at the door when you feel a twinge of pain that nearly makes you double over. A groan escapes your lips. It’s a deep seated pain, both low in your gut and in your chest. It feels almost like withdrawal. You're no stranger to the feeling, often waiting it out just to force Secily to cave to you. But it's far too early for you to be feeling any now. And there's something different about it. It's a deeper ache than you've ever felt before.
You force yourself to shake the feeling, deciding it's probably related to your injury or hangover. Probably a combination of both. You head back to your own hive.
Still, the feeling sows a seed of doubt, but you refuse to pay any mind to it in the following days.
Said days are a blur, much to your dismay. You try to fill the time with your usual activities, but everything feels… dull. It’s like you’re still hungover. You don’t understand why you’re missing her so much. It’s odd. Normally you’re fine being without her. Some days barely even thinking of her. Why should now be any different. If anything, it should be the opposite. You shouldn’t even want to see her.
The ache of withdrawal persists.
You send her a few messages. At a point it's near hourly. Every time you open the app you get angry at the extremely one sided conversation. Really, it's just a long string of barely related texts begging her for attention. You hate when she makes you look desperate.
You don’t quite know how long it’s been since that night, something you aren’t proud of. All you feel able to do is care for your wound and send her the occasional, progressively more frustrated, message.
It's the middle of the day when you immediately perk up to the sound of a knock at your door.
You don't bother looking through the peephole, expecting to see her there.
When she isn't you can't help but deflate slightly. You pout. In front of you stands a small indigoblood. He looks slightly younger than you.
??????: Miss Laevis?
YESHIN: What doth u need?
You can't help but be annoyed in your disappointment. Plus, you have no idea why anyone would be here. Unless...
??????: I'm a TEMP wɸrker, I've been assigned-
The second the words register you feel your chest tighten. Your eye widens.
The wail you let out makes him flinch.
You barely realise it's escaped your lips until you see him recoil.
You also barely realise the tears beginning to sting in your eyes. You practically slam the door in his face.
You know it's not his fault but there's no one else you can take it out on so you can't find it in yourself to care.
The tears fall, the feeling irritating your cut, but you can’t care.
Your hive is a blur around you as you turn, trying to find somewhere to sit. You can't breathe.
You let out a sob that almost sounds like a choked laugh.
The last time you had seen her she had permanently wounded you. You should abhor her. But you don’t. You do hate her. But you also miss her. So much.
Everything feels unreal.
You sit down on your chaise, head spinning. The plushness of it offers you no comfort.
You curl in on yourself, allowing yourself to sob, burying your face in your hands and paying no mind to your eye stinging. Your nails dig into your scalp.
You're finally able to place the ache you've felt since the morning after she disappeared.
You had known from the start that the hurt was different than just the pain of withdrawal, different from anything you had felt before, but you had ignored it. Ignored this being a possibility entirely. She couldn't possibly be gone. But she was.
You couldn't lose her. She was all you had. All you wanted. You both knew well that you could have nearly anyone you wanted. But no one had ever compared to her. You knew no one could.
Eventually you sit up, sniffling as you lay your chin on the back of the chair.
You hadn’t ever understood when she had talked about losing Ahlina. It was rare, but some nights it slipped out of her. You tried to be sympathetic, but it was difficult when you had no idea of where she was coming from.
Now you do.
You understand the ache. The hole that nothing could ever fill. The spot next to you that would never be warm again.
Nothing that TEMP worker could say to you would mean anything.
You let out a shuddering breath.
She's gone.
You force yourself to stand, face wet. You need a cigarette.