Blood on the Snow

Participants:

avi_icon.gif eileen2_icon.gif francois_icon.gif

Scene Title Blood on the Snow
Synopsis When the angel on your shoulder is the devil, too.
Date December 23, 2019

???


Francois Allegre is dead or dying. From the sky, it’s impossible to know which.

There’s blood caking on the wool blanket slung haphazardly across his middle, blood on the gurney, blood on the snow. Eileen thinks she knows by now how much of it is supposed to course through a person’s veins to sustain them— and how much someone can lose before there’s too little left for their heart to process.

His face is so lumpy and pale, like Teodoro crafted it from memory out of wax with his bare hands. If he’s still breathing, she cannot see it.

Intermittently flashing red lights belong to an emergency response vehicle parked outside of a building she recognizes as the Bunker, despite never having set foot inside. Through the owl’s eyes, she sees the familiar shape of Avi Epstein conferring with the paramedic, his own face hardened into a stony expression that befits the man he was before Madagascar.

There is fury behind his eyes.

"He was fucking stabbed," Avi shouts at the paramedic, "exactly how much more detail do you need? Do you need me to put a finger in each one of the stab holes for you? Or can you take your fucking dick out of your hand and do your fucking—"


Sunken Factory, Pine Barrens


"—job!"

The last word leaves Eileen's gaping mouth as a moan that's loud enough to jolt her awake, and she buries her face in both her hands before it escalates to a scream.

It isn't like this when she dreams of Kara (which is most nights except, apparently, this one). She's still struggling to temper her breathing when the white raven keeping watch at her bedroom window turns to regard her with eyes that are a little too milky and makes a suggestion that only the Englishwoman can hear.

"No," she answers in a small, haggard voice that she'd be ashamed of if anyone else heard — so it's good there is no one else around to hear. "I can't."

You shouldn't, the raven corrects her mildly, but you will, because you always do.

As Eileen drags herself up into a sit, she peels the bedsheets off her skin like she'd pare a fruit. She looks in the raven's direction with a flatter expression, saying nothing.

You'd like me to justify it for you? the raven asks. It isn't actually a question. Think of what else you could learn. Yi-Min has turned over ever last stone in the Barrens. It's time you both looked elsewhere, and you don't know a better place to start.

Eileen takes that in. Then, gently: "He's there."

All the more reason for you to go.

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