Starry Night Thoughts

more to 4k words thing from earlier

I wanted to write more of it but then just wound up wanting an excuse to think up a whole character conversation that never made it into a written out form. Go figure. Does it end? No.  It just kind of trails in and trails off. But, I'm apparently posting ideas to think that'll likely never get written so here it is.
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Katya had been awake for a few days. She just never moved.

She figured they knew too-- the Bonestealer and his deadman. They didn't heal her anymore, either because she needed nothing or he simply couldn't. Faking sleep or unconsciousness, she heard some of those comments. Tail ends of sentences.

Complaints.

After those comments though, it wasn't brought up again. Just Bonestealer talking to her. Ordering.

It wasn't ordering. Suggesting.

Asking.

Things Katya responded to by keeping her eyes shut so they wouldn't make contact again.

She didn't want to talk, least of all to him.

If anything, she nearly wished she could not. Not anything. Not be. Not think -- because if she thought, she thought of it -- not feel or...

It wasn't quite as harsh as die. She didn't want that, deep down, proven to her by her own body going to this place for a sliver of a chance. She didn't want death.

She just didn't want.

So here she was. Again. Still on the hard metal table they lay her on initially, only now covered by a sheet she could pull close to her head. The darkness clung to her, the only light the two others left her from a small night lamp on the table beside her.

Katya shut her eyes and tried to reach for the night. Shadows touched every corner of the room thanks to the light the Bonestealer left, shadows that should be hers. Hers to hold. Hers to feel their surprising warmth. Their comfort. They were as much a part of her as her arms and legs.

When she opened them again, those same dark corners hardly even flickered.

They'd never refused before. Never made her wait, even when she was--

The word refused to come, even though it'd graced the back of her mind moments before. She saw everything up to that point, the front door; oddly a near pristine clean; the light above them she flicked her fingers at for it to leave her in the dark. The Bonestealer in his costume first before a mix of confusion, fear, and determination pulled him to the face she knew. She knew blood-- a lot. Too much of it.

The pain that never dulled. The shadows that welcomed her home.

Yet, she couldn't bring herself to think, to say, or acknowledge the word. What was happening in those moments was all too clear. Why it happened, even clearer.

Her home, destroyed. Furniture in splintered segments around the room, glass shattered to thousands of shards that cut into her own skin.

Jackson...

She saw his smile when he came home. How that smile stretched up one side of his face more than another, how his eyes that shone at every little speck of joy sparkled there. How they laughed together at some random story he told over dinner.

How her own blood dripped off her body to the floor. How her shadows dragged her away before it finally came.

Now, that same blood held to her. Even in the dim light it wasn't hard to tell, with how it stuck on her skin and rubbed when she moved a strange way. How the dried rivers showed where every cut or hole was before.