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“I’ll liberate you, from your wild curiosity.”
The Hunter is quick, but Maria is quicker this time around. The Hunter falls, and sees the shining boots come into her periphery.
“Just like him,” Maria says, almost wistfully. “And she falls just as easily.”
The first time the Hunter returns from the Dream to face Maria, she starts with throwing a bottle of fire before Maria has even taken her first step. The Molotov cocktail whines through the air, and bursts into a cataclysm of light just before the Hunter darts in to rend skin to ribbons with the business end of her saw cleaver. Just like the time before, Maria laughs and dodges. Just like the time before, the Hunter goes down within a minute.
The second time the Hunter returns, she rubs a strip of bolt paper across her weapon. It lights in sparks to her relief, lightning crashing across the teeth and halfway up her arm. She can do it this time. Just like the time before, Maria laughs. Just like the time before, Maria dodges. Just like the time before, the Hunter goes down.
The third time the Hunter returns, Maria is there at the door. She doesn’t laugh this time, as the Hunter’s eyes betray a relentless will even beyond how tired she seems, and the lightning illuminates the set of her jaw. Just like the times before, though, Maria dodges once more than the brave Hunter. And just like the times before, the Hunter sees bloody boots before it turns to black.
The fifth time the Hunter runs back from her lamp, she hesitates at the door to the clock tower. Something feels different. The nightmare doesn’t appear any different, though. The ground is wet and the corpses of the Living Failures have long since faded away. Maria gets up from her chair, seeing the silhouette against the night. A sigh, and she unsheathes her Rakuyo.
“A corpse should be well left alone,” she says tiredly, not even looking up yet.
“You said that already,” the Hunter replies.
Something changes in the air, then, and Maria laughs again. This time, the laugh is bitter. Just like the times before, the Hunter falls.
The sixth time, the two women parry back and forth for more than twenty minutes, before the Hunter stumbles over a broken shelf. Panicking, caught off balance, she staggers, tries desperately to right herself. She’s backed against a wall, and there’s no escape. Maria takes the chance, and comes in close. The Hunter screams as her chest is pierced and sternum shoved aside. Maria takes her heart, and rips out the aorta, breathing against her mouth in a parody of a kiss. Red is everywhere. And that touch…. Oh that touch.
The seventh time, the Hunter doesn’t know if she wants to win anymore. She stands almost still as Maria fells her.
The ninth time the Hunter returns, she fights. Parries and slashes and more scratches to match the scars already on her face. There’s so much blood, and it’s somehow not enough yet. She stabs a vial into her leg, and stands still in the way of an attack. She does it again, twice more, and Maria notices. She’s noticed everything.
The Hunter recognizes her own quickened breath, half-blurred vision, the cold heat in her chest. Maria has stopped slicing at her, and the Hunter takes a leap back, preparing for some kind of transformation, maybe. Her jacket flaps with the movement, and she has to pull down her mask so that maybe it’s not so hot on her neck with the way she’s gasping for air.
“Why are you not fighting, Hunter?” Maria asks, and the room is silent except for the steady rhythm of the great clock.
The Hunter swallows, tasting ashen blood and the scent of those pale, pale sunflowers. Petals fly up in a cloud as she rushes Maria again, trying to derail suspicion. Of course the living corpse dodges, and finally, oh finally her smirk is back. She laughs, again, but this time, instead of killing the Hunter, she aims her gun right into her gut and shoots.
The hunter staggers, chokes on her own spit, and she knows she’s done for. She wishes she were done for.
“Why are you not fighting, Hunter?” Maria asks again. She doesn’t end it, and the Hunter groans in frustration. Growling, she spins, throwing the heel of her saw cleaver into the space where the Lady’s neck should be. A flash of teeth, so small she could easily miss it, and a dash of glistening, bloodied blade before she is taking it into herself. One blood vial left, and she’s running on the fumes of her surfacing desires.
“Oh, my dear,” Maria gasps, sweetly. “Oh, my,” she continues, and it’s as if a whirlwind of red and light passes before the Hunter’s eyes, and she’s tripping again. This time, Maria is there, pulling her close.
“I see now,” a soft, mocking tone sings into the Hunter’s ear.
The Hunter sighs, relenting to herself. Going limp if only to feel it better, she relishes, this time, in Maria’s gloved hand shoving violently into her chest. The leather squelches on the Hunter’s ribs, muscle screams as it’s ripped, and the pain is such exquisite ecstasy. Maria yanks on the bones twice, once not being enough, and the Hunter falls in a spray of hot blood.
On our Hunter’s tenth return to the Astral Clocktower, she and Maria stand across the room from each other. Neither move, neither make a sound. Petals fall, dust reflects light in the air, and the distant sound of screams from below hearkens to them. Drip, drop.
Both move at once, almost synchronized. They meet in the center. Maria goes high, the Hunter goes low, and Maria is sent reeling at last. The Hunter has an opportunity to go for the kill, but she hesitates. That split second of hesitation allows Maria chance. Before the Hunter knows it, there’s a gun at her shoulder, and her opponent is pulling the trigger. Blood splatters the floor, and she stumbles back.
Suddenly the Hunter is prone, with the sharp toe of a boot pressing gently into her new gunshot wound. Finally, she’s pinned again. She groans, though this time, it’s not in the tenor of frustration. Maria leans over her bent leg, coming just close enough to see the Hunter’s flushed cheeks. It’s not exertion, either.
She laughs.
“Oh, Hunter,” she teases. Mocks. Sneers. And the Hunter drinks it in. “Didn’t I tell you? A corpse should be well left alone.”
The Hunter gets frustrated. This isn’t what she wants, to sit there and be mocked. She manages to struggle enough to get her feet under her, and roll to standing, away from Maria.
“You keep repeating yourself,” the Hunter snarls at her.
“The fire in your eyes, dear Hunter,” she says to the panting figure. “So similar to the heat I felt so well inside you.”
The Hunter’s face feels hot, too hot. She pulls her mask down, to spit out a tooth. It stays down. She’s embarrassed, torn, too warm under her skin. The moment of pause gives Maria ample time to get into her space, again, dashing at unbelievable speeds to wrap one gloved hand, still slicked with her blood from earlier in the day, around the barely-there curve of her waist just inside her coat.
The Hunter startles, confused, when Maria’s other hand comes up to her face. Where is the Rakuyo if not in her grasp? Where is the saw cleaver? Wait, she dropped it before, when she was knocked prone. The hole in her shoulder, still pulsing and full of bullet, sings when fingers are dug into it. A deep hole, a source of intense pain, but the way Maria touches it is almost profane.
“See, Hunter,” she says, pushing her fingers in, then dragging them up and out over the rim of the wound, “I know very well.”
The Hunter can only make a high noise, somewhere in the vicinity of her own being. Those same three fingers that pushed into her flesh, draw up and around the lapel of her jacket. Slow, purposeful fingers. The Hunter can’t move, fixated on the location of the digits, and the knowing smile on Maria’s careful moue. The fingers trail up the Hunter’s neck, and to her chin. A rapidly cooling trail of blood follows, thick and sinuous.
The Hunter sucks in a breath through her teeth as the blood-tipped fingers find her lower lip, and drag it down. Maria’s mouth is so close now, her body smelling of flowers and dust and the must of something left alone for far too long. Like wet ash. In a breath, she has the Hunter stilled and intoxicated. Her knee moves forward, to press between the Hunter’s thighs.
“How the secrets beckon… so sweetly,” Maria croons, voice cracking on her drying vocal chords. “And what secrets they are, indeed, Hunter.”
One leather fingertip paints a line of red on the Hunter’s lip, and she sighs weakly onto Maria’s palm, into her mouth. Maria consumes the breath, and lets her next words trace the Hunter’s mouth, drawing ever closer.
“What secrets they are, indeed.”