[2009 – October – Friday]
Seeing Laura trapped like one would a wild beast, the scent of her blood almost dominating my sense of smell, I could feel my darkest urges awaken in the deepest recesses of my mind, the incomparably pure Darkforce flowing through my soul churning fiercely as it responded to my emotions.
A horrifying hunger for light and life spread through my veins, flowing along with my very lifeblood as the shadows of malevolence appeared in my eyes.
The human part of me was not one to spread wanton destruction and claim the lives of the innocent, and it had been a conscious decision of mine to not let the very nature of Darkforce corrupt my mind and spirit.
But as wrath rose in my heart, I drew on the instincts of the Darkforce without losing my rationality and decided that in this moment, I very much wanted to cause destruction, to rip the life from those who had attacked someone that I loved.
And so, for the second time since my ascension as a higher being, I assumed the spirit of Darkforce, turning myself into a reaper.
Ripping off the head of my first victim, I felt warm blood splatter against the right side of my face but remained unmoved as I tore the memory from his dying spirit too so that I could learn who was responsible for this.
The savagery that followed afterwards merely served to calm my anger, though it wasn't any less brutal or inhuman. But then again, I wasn't human anymore.
…
"I will enjoy what I will do to you."
Barely had Elijah spoken those words when not only the alloy bolts locked in her flesh crumbled and the aerosolized knockout gas vanished but also the firing started.
The HYDRA agents fired bolts and live rounds at him en mass while Laura felt her flesh mend itself, her eyes fixed on Elijah's figure.
But as if his skin was made out of the hardest of metals, the bullets shattered upon impact while most of the bolts just bounced off. A few bolts got stuck in his coat and tore at it but Elijah's expression remained glacial as he stood there unharmed.
Laura distantly felt a sudden burning cut on her cheek, caused by one of the bullet pieces that ricocheted off of his indestructible physique, but she didn't care nor flinch back.
She wasn't even sure if she breathed at that moment, but even that didn't matter as she watched with wide eyes as Elijah's form turned into a mass of shadows and vanished just before she heard a dying scream sound out behind her that likewise abruptly cut off.
Accompanied by another horrible noise, Laura turned her head fast enough to see Elijah rip out a man's heart with his bare hands. And what followed after that wasn't any less of a terrible bloodbath.
Laura watched as Elijah ripped the spine from another one of her attackers and used it as some sort of gruesome soft blade to behead and kill the third assailant before literally tearing a fourth one in half, his expression never changing as he danced amongst her attackers like a god of blood and shadows.
He was all destruction, all malice and cold wrath as he descended onto those humans and enacted savage violence in a brutally simple fashion.
And yet, Laura she saw no frenzy, no loss of control.
Instead, she saw that Elijah had consciously unleashed the beast inside of him. By his own choice, he had turned into the ruthless life-reaping demon that had been hidden under the surface all along, finally fully revealing the monster that had been sleeping in his heart to her.
But then again, from the first moment that they had met, Laura had already known that it had been there, that it existed.
She had felt the darkness in him like she felt it in herself. Like she was a killer by nature, her animalistic instincts and cruel upbringing making her a predator in human form, Elijah likewise carried an immense capacity for darkness within him.
He had an untamed heart that would be willing to see the world crumble for his freedom and those he cared about. She knew that he wouldn't hesitate to enshroud himself in the deepest darkness, to become a demon in the eyes of the world, just to walk his own path at own his conditions.
Uncaring of the possible words of judgement and damnation that might fall on him, Elijah acted only on his own beliefs, his mental fortitude far beyond what most humans could ever hope to even imagine.
But while Laura had no love lost for humans, especially not some that attacked her, even she had never been witness to something more gruesome than the ongoing brutal slaughter of those men.
And yet, she remained largely unfazed because she saw beyond the horrific violence.
Laura didn't see a blood-crazed demon but someone willing to forge his darkest instincts into a lethal blade, its edge pointing at all those obstructing his path.
Like toy soldiers, Elijah plucked the fully armed men apart with his bare hands, every measure of resistance proving utterly useless in front of him. There was no escape for them either as he had placed a black barrier all around the different entrance ways.
Out of despair, a few of the two dozen men aimed their weapons at her again and fired, which only served to free her from her somewhat dazed state without doing any actual lasting harm.
Ripping out a bolt that had lodged itself in her upper thigh, Laura did the only thing that came to her mind in this situation – she unsheathed her Adamantium claws and threw herself into battle.
With a threatening cry that was half-hiss and half-growl, her upper lip pulled back to reveal her right canine as she weaponized her animalistic instincts. She felt the rush of adrenaline and sharp violence cursing through her blood while she lunged forward.
Proving just how deadly a combatant she was, she sliced through nearly half a dozen men in the same time that Elijah used to kill the remaining dozen and a half. And considering his utterly dominating strength, her own number was damn impressive by any comparison in her book.
Breathing in deeply with blood dripping from her claws and staining her clothes and face, Laura turned to see Elijah stand between the corpses of over a dozen men, his attire soaked dark red, his face similarly stained.
His eyes also still had their demonic look and were glowing brightly with a rich shadowed green as he looked at her too, his expression calm.
Laura saw him close his eyes for a second and take a single breath, which somehow brought the shadows in the dimly lit warehouse to life.
Hungrily, they devoured the remaining vitality of the bodies that were lying all around him, draining them dry until they were nothing but ashy husks before winding around Elijah's form and sinking into his skin and flesh.
Laura understood that this was a manifestation of his Darkforce, which caused darkness and shadows to be at his beck and call.
She saw him open his eyes again, still possessing blackened sclera as he took a few steps in her direction until there was hardly a few inches of distance between them, causing her to look up at him.
Hesitantly raising her hand, Laura said nothing as she placed it above his heart, uncaring for the blood that soaked his shirt.
She could see the warmth and care that appeared in Elijah's glowing green eyes as she did so, his cold and indifferent expression dispersing like clouds in the wind, before he raised his hand to softly cup her cheek while letting out a quiet sigh filled with all kinds of emotions.
"Are you alright?", he asked with concern and Laura could see the suppressed cold wrath in the depths of his eyes. Undoubtedly, the massacre he had just unleashed had not been enough to fully clear away the anger in his mind towards those that had dared to attack her.
Feeling a strange sweetness rising in her heart when hearing those words, their tone intimate while Elijah's gaze was filled with a certain tenderness, she replied while quietly nodding and leaning against him: "I'm fine."
"You have to stop seeking your own destruction, Laura. Stop punishing yourself.", Elijah suddenly stated with graveness and unmistakable affection, his words causing her body to tremble involuntarily while deeply suppressed pain tore at her heart.
"I-I can't.", she whispered, her eyes almost glittering with unshed tears, memories of her past surging in her mind.
With gentleness in his eyes, Elijah leaned down and rested his forehead against hers for a few moments as he replied with a sigh: "I know. And I am sorry."
He then withdrew before she could ask why he would apologize to her, and took a few steps back as he added after hesitating for a few long moments: "But maybe this will help you."
His hand reached forward and Laura could see it piercing into the void of space as nebulous darkness spewed forth from where his hand vanished, only for Elijah to take back his arm and drag a man out of the void by the back of his neck.
The man had short dark hair, haggard features, and a terrified pair of eyes while his mouth was forced shut by a black mask-like muzzle. Laura didn't recognize him but she could see that fear had almost broken him, his eyes carrying a haunted look.
She wanted to ask who that man was and why Elijah thought that he could help her but before she could, Elijah's voice already sounded out with an explanation, his tone distinctly neutral.
"This is Malcolm Colcord, the leader of the Facility and the man responsible for all that has happened to you.", he said and Laura's eyes couldn't help but widen as she froze for a moment.
"I know that you have been training all these years since you escaped the Facility to kill Kimura, and I am sorry that I took this away from you. It has left you restless and you're hurting because of it.", Elijah continued with a trace of visible heartache in his eyes and expression before he forced the man to his knees in front of her despite his struggles with his inhuman strength.
"I kept him in the Darkforce Dimension to extract intel on the Facility from him and he now has served his purpose, so may you do with him as you please."
"But let this be the end of your revenge, so that we can go home together."
Elijah's last few words reverberated in her heart, the warmth they summoned fighting against her suppressed pain and grief, as well as a deep-seated rage and hatred that seemingly boiled the blood in her veins.
Still, Laura knew which side she wanted to let win, which side she longed for to win.
And so, in the next moment, her claws viciously tore through the flesh on her knuckles again as she struck out with all the anger and hatred that was left within her, the Adamantium blades piercing straight through the eyes right into the brain of the futilely struggling man that was responsible for all the suffering and loss that she had endured.
Laura had no intention of speaking to the man or demanding an explanation, she simply wanted him dead and forgotten, to free herself from a past that haunted her even now.
Stumbling backward as she retracted her claws and saw the lifeless body slump to the side, Laura felt the world spin for a moment as if the pillars on which her world had been built up until now were crumbling, something incomparably hollow replacing it.
Those pillars had been filled with large cracks long before, amongst which several had appeared when she had witnessed her mother's and had heard of Kimura's death respectively, as well as when she had fallen for a certain black-haired teen, but now they had shattered in their entirety.
Her desire for revenge had pushed her forward for so long that Laura had difficulty facing a reality where she had to finally let go of it for whatever reason.
But when a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist, she was reminded that she didn't have to figure out how to move on all by herself. At long last, feeling as if she could let go, Laura couldn't help but shed a few of silent tears while trying to bury herself in Elijah's embrace.