RP: I Used to be on Fire
Everything had changed. Everything. The once strong woman was domestic, married to the only person who’d never left her, not a man she loved. Not happy, but alive. Rilla’s rise up the ranks had been too swift, although 6 years had passed since she had risen through the ranks of The Fold far more quickly than should have been allowed, especially given her age. Even now she was only 27. The former leaders abandoned her long before she could have handled it on her own. Truthfully, she settled. Settled for stability instead of love, and calm instead of passion.
One of her first orders of business was ensuring that even settled into her new home she could find some way to keep her skills sharp. Too much had happened over the years to ever truly let her guard down again. She left her former occupation in favour of murder for hire and thievery, a path she had been shown how to walk over and over. It wasn’t easy, playing like she was an upstanding citizen by day and a shadow at night, but she’d long accepted that those two parts would never really be fused. She couldn’t be a warrior and a lady, but no matter how hard she tried she could never just set the blades down and stop fighting. Rilla was well aware that she’d done this to herself, and she crept in the window of her darkened home once more in the wee hours of the morning, lit a candle and moistened a cloth from a glass to wipe the crimson flecks from her porcelain skin. She didn’t kill good people; she had reasoned to herself. A kind of excuse for what she did. Never women nor children, never without a good reason. She stood firmly on the line of right and wrong in her mind, although in the minds of others she would have long fallen away from what was ‘right’ or ‘good’. She set the cloth aside, freed loose mahogany curls from the knot atop her head and she looked up for the mirror although her gaze was quickly interrupted, a bag slipped over her head by someone stronger than her, her heart racing as hands were bound too before she could react. So much time spent focusing on being silent and fast, she wasn’t near as adept at fighting back as before, and though she struggled against the ties, soon she was being led to the bedroom and settled down on a chair.
No words were ever exchanged, she recognized the scent of blood before the bag was lifted. Her heart hammered wildly in her chest as she looked at the body of her husband. She did not cry, did not gasp, did not react. As soon as she’d smelled the cooper she knew, it was all too familiar for her. Crystalline gaze simple settled on the scene with a calm resolution. Perhaps it was her lack of reaction that set off whatever figure had captured her in her own home, perhaps it was always the plan, but as her head turned to try to get a look at her assailant, full lips curled into a sneer as if to challenge him, a hand tilted her head and fangs sank into the soft skin of her neck. That was the moment she decided she was too tired to fight, arms wrapped too tight around her to support her and keep her from fighting as the vampire drank it’s fill and then some, and when he was done she collapsed, her vision long dark as she fell to the floor, still and drained entirely.
When she awoke it was still and she was alone, the body was removed though the blood remained, a wild panic rose in her throat like a fire when combined with the thirst. She strained against her restraints only to find there were none, whoever had done this expected her to stay, and with that there was a wild thought, a way not to be here when they returned. She jumped up, rummaged through dresser drawers for her sheathed dagger, strapped it to her thigh as she left through the window, pulled herself up onto the roof like she’d done many times before as a human, although it was easier now despite the clumsiness she felt with her own strength and she was off, out of town, away from the people she had grown to care about. Back into the forest that she’d run to before, her feet bare, still dressed in black leather as she ran.
And run she did, certain that whatever it was had wanted her. Surely she had killed someone they wanted avenged? There had to be a reason why someone had waited for her in her home, why they’d cared for her when she turned. No reason she came up with was ever quite enough for her to stop. A woman who had spent such a large chunk of her life standing and fighting had been reduced to someone who ran, and ran, and ran until her hair was long, constantly braided as neatly as she could, until her feet were calloused, until the forest began to look the same. Rilla ran for at least two years, stopping to feed on those she could get away from others, any easy meal, but never settling. Contact with others was rare, it was safer that way and Rilla had become almost wild, constantly looking over her shoulder and expecting to be face to face with that shadowy figure once more, or worse someone who remembered who she used to be. She ran until she found herself padding barefoot back into familiar territory, unsure exactly when she’d come to know the ground she walked on, only that she did.
Despite everything she had once done and been, Rilla took solace in the familiar forest. Hadn’t she had fun here? Hadn’t this place been safe more often than not for her? The decision to stay wasn’t an easy one, but didn’t she owe it to herself to try? And with that it was off to find water, to clean herself up enough to be as presentable as she could.. Even if just to try to find a sliver of a life for herself again instead of spending the rest of eternity running from a monster she wasn’t even certain was following her. A monster that she had become too though by no fault of her own, and a monster that she did not want to be.