Chapter Text
Victoria Javadi is not a violent person. Despite everything she's done, this is a basic truth that she holds at her core: that she doesn't take pleasure in any of it.
If anything, when blade meets flesh and she pushes past its weak resistance, Victoria feels nothing but a sense of awe (and then, inevitably, she feels queasy, but she'll conquer that eventually. She's sure of it. Well, maybe not sure; rather, she's determined to make it so.)
She just needs to practice.
But she has made her promise to Cassie, and for two weeks so far she has made good on it.
So she hasn't been practising. But —hey, at least she's been good.
It gets hard to be good, though, when she's always around so much blood. She's constantly battling light-headedness, constantly pushing through tunnelling vision, the roller coaster blood pressure spike and sudden drop. It does her in every time.
"You're not planning on specializing in this, are you?" Joy asks, impassively watching as Victoria braces herself against a monitor. She's just walked in on a particularly bloody open femoral fracture. "That vasovagal response is a bitch already when it's coming from patients, but when it's the medical team…"
Victoria flattens her irritation as Joy trails off. She vacuum seals it and packs it away and swallows the warm spit that has pooled under her tongue. "Emergency psychiatry."
"Oh," Joy keeps staring at her for another beat. "Have you considered just regular psychiatry?"
Victoria knows that Joy is right about one thing: the vasovagal response is a bitch. But it can be mitigated or muzzled or whatever. It's all a matter of control. Even perceived control counts, according to the research that Victoria has pored over during late nights, trying to solve for herself.
She refuses to let Joy be right about the other thing, about abandoning emergency psychiatry, about walking away from emergency anything. She knows, in her heart, that it's where she belongs.
It's an easy choice, then, to kill again.
Cassie just doesn't need to know.
Usually, when Victoria kills, she dresses up for the occasion. Strappy heels, slinky dress, makeup tutorials to make her eyes look even bigger, make her mouth look poutier, anything to make her look like biddable prey. This time, she's leaving straight from work, with just a hoodie and jeans. Scuffed up running shoes. Hair pulled back. Fingers fidgeting with her folded-up knife, slipped into the kangaroo pocket of her sweater. It sits heavy and reassuring against her belly, bouncing just a little against her while she walks.
She takes herself to a seedier bar than she's used to, sits down and orders tonic water with lime, and waits.
It isn't long before someone slides onto the stool next to hers.
"They let you in here?" He says. He flags down the bartender and signals for him to make Victoria another drink. Victoria turns to him, holds his gaze so he doesn't watch the bartender fill her cup with tonic water and ice and nothing else. "How old are you anyway?"
"Old enough," she says, hating how scripted she sounds. But it is a script; it's what she knows he wants to hear. Like magic, he laughs and Victoria knows she's got him hooked as long as she doesn't creep herself out.
Later, in an alley just far enough from the bar, she lets him corner her against a wall. She doesn't turn her face away, even though he's breathing in her face, even though his breath smells like fried onions and beer.
She bites her lip prettily and pulls the knife out of her sweater pocket and unfolds it. She holds his gaze as she plunges the blade into his gut.
Every time before has been easy, her victim being too drunk or too surprised to react right away, letting her go in for the killing blow and more.
This one isn't like the ones before.
He moves fast, and catches her cheekbone with an elbow. Her head rocks backwards, the brick stopping her from falling. Her vision flashes white. The pain is sudden and shattering, but when she touches her face with ginger fingertips, nothing seems fractured.
"Bitch," he spits, hands pressed against his bleeding belly. Victoria scrambles to her feet and launches herself at him, knocking him off-balance, before he can get away, before he can hit her again. He hits the ground hard and she straddles him, slicing into his throat like she should have in the first place. The blood is pumping, arterial, and it gets everywhere. Victoria feels faintness closing in, worse than she's felt it in ages, and she fights to keep consciousness like she's riding a mechanical bull. It takes a second, maybe two, but she loses her grip. Her brain and body throw her off into darkness. The last cogent thought she has is that it's so unfortunate that she's still on top of the body.
When she comes to, she's being half-dragged, half-carried through the alley. She doesn't need to look up to know that it's Cassie; her gold chain is digging into the side of Victoria's face as it presses against her chest.
She lets herself be carried, doesn't do anything to help Cassie along. Her skin feels tight in places where blood has congealed and dried. She can't bring herself to say anything, let Cassie know that she's conscious. It's not the violence that makes her feel near-catatonic, it's the crushing sense of failure.
Cassie folds her into the backseat of her car. She makes sure to buckle her in.
Cassie keeps the lights in her bathroom low while she runs a bath. She peels off Victoria's sweater and jeans, Victoria barely lifting her limbs to help. She leaves her in her underwear and helps her step into the tub.
Victoria sits with her knees pulled in against her chest. The water only comes about halfway up her shins. A shiver runs through her, even though the water's warm, bordering on too hot. Steam lifts off the surface. Condensation fogs the mirror.
Cassie kneels next to the bathtub. She unfolds a washcloth and dips it into the water, wrings it out.
Cassie's hands are patient as they move over Victoria's skin with the cloth, scrubbing the layers of dried gore from her limbs, the blood flecking her cheeks and chin and forehead. When the water turns rusty she drains the tub and refills it with Victoria still sitting there; she holds a palm under the running water to make sure it's not too hot, not too cold. She works quietly, the only sound coming from water dripping: from the faucet, from the cloth, off of Victoria's body as she lets Cassie move and adjust her position.
"I had to do it," Victoria says, and she's surprised to realize that she's crying. Cassie lifts her hair up off of her neck, gently combs her fingers through it.
"No," Cassie says, "you didn't." But her voice is low. Soothing.
Victoria doesn't want to talk about about why Cassie is right.
"You followed me," she says instead. Cassie hesitates, sits back on her heels.
"I did."
"How did you know?"
Cassie considers before answering. "I didn't," she says carefully. "Not really. You just had a look about you that I recognized. That I've felt before. I followed you just in case."
"A look," Victoria said dully, feeling miserable.
"Like, want," Cassie clarified. "Or, no. Not like seeing something and wanting it. More like… have you ever had a dream that you're driving a car but you're sitting in the backseat and can't quite reach anything?"
"That's very specific, so, no," says Victoria, who mostly dreams embarrassing dreams of Cassie lately and, when she's not dreaming that, it's just endless scenes of her teeth falling out. "But I can guess at what you're getting at. The car is going to crash and you want it to stop."
Cassie nods. "Wanting something to stop, or go right, or go differently."
"Um. Sure."
Cassie's fingers stop combing through her hair. Victoria waits, wishes she'd start again. "You said you weren't going to do it again."
"I know," Victoria turns to look at Cassie, feels her hair slip out of Cassie's hands. "Why are you doing this?"
"I don't know," Cassie laughs, and it sounds different than it usually does. Soft. Hollow. "Trust me. I wish I knew."
"You're helping me."
Cassie laughs again, the sound still soft. "You know what?" she says, and she sounds sad. "I'm not so sure that I am."