Present

I immediately dropped and rolled away from my spot as I heard a shot echo through the room. Okay, this was it. I either kill her right now or she is going to kill me.

"Stay still." She said.

"Rather not." I replied, watching as she aimed her gun at me again.

"Always so fucking difficult to work with." She said, squeezing the trigger again. I dropped and rolled towards her, dropping my gun and closing the distance between us so I could force the gun from her hands. Knocking it free of her fingers was far too easy, and I was understanding why she never wanted me to know how to defend myself. Without the training I got from Es and Lex, I would have been dead from the first bullet she shot. I pulled the gun away and pointed it at her, but instead of accepting defeat, she pulled a knife from her boot and lunged towards me with a swing.

I jumped back, my grip on the gun loosening as I wondered how the fuck to win this. She was too close to shoot, not when I didn't have her restrained. I had the fantasy of shooting her execution style like she had done to my family, but I saw it wasn't going to work like that. No. I just had to take whatever form of violence I could get.

At an impasse, we stared at each other for a moment, assessing how we could proceed. Her eyes were predatory, but I knew she lacked focus. All I had to do was stay calm and level-headed and I would come out on top. She would fuck up eventually, and I had to be ready for that to happen.

"Come on then, give it a go." I told her, throwing her gun away. By giving her an opening, she would rush at me and I could get the knife. And she did exactly that. With a scream, she closed the gap between us, swinging the knife in a broad stroke that I stopped by catching her forearm. I then twisted her arm behind her, attempting to force the knife from her, but she twisted out of my grasp and kicked my knee, knocking me to the ground, landing on my back with nothing to break my fall.

I groaned in pain and rolled over slowly to stand up, but before I could bring my legs in, I felt a cold jolt of pain in my spine. No.

I screamed.

It felt like fire again, like it had when I broke it but more final. It was the same place along my back, the previously shattered vertebra being attacked with the blade that Queen held. There was the echo of laughter reaching my ears, but I couldn't really hear it over the pain, over the drumming of my heart in my ears.

The pain then shot through me again as she ripped the blade back out of me, causing another scream to tear from my lungs. This wasn't the plan. This hadn't been the plan. Tears were stinging my eyes as she rolled me over. I tried to breathe through the pain enough to focus on my surroundings. The only thing I noticed was the light clatter of metal landing on the floor next to me. I screamed in pain again as Queen kicked the side of my stomach.

"After everything I did for you, for your stupid fucking back, I expected you to treat me better than you have. So, here are the consequences for you betraying me. I'm taking away what I gave to you." She said, and my anger helped me see clearly for a moment through the pain.

"You didn't make me walk again. You just temporarily took the pain away and gave me a debilitating drug addiction." I hissed through my teeth, my fingers slowly inching away from my body.

"Maybe so, but I can take the pain away from you again." She said, pulling a white tablet out of her pocket. Dusk. "I wanted you to try it, to make sure it passed the junkie test." She said, grabbing my cheeks and forcing my jaw open. She forced the tablet into my mouth and then forced it shut. Every struggle that I made against her shot searing and unbearable pain down my back, but I couldn't stop. I needed to fight. I would always fight.

"Swallow it." She told me, so I actioned the movement. I tucked the pill under my tongue, so when she opened my mouth again, she couldn't see it. She was sloppy to not check underneath. She stayed hovering over my face, making me feel weak because I couldn't do a damn thing to get away from her. But this was where I wanted her, because my fingers had finally found their target, the cool handle of the knife.

I took a shaky breath, staring into her eyes as she kept talking down to me, saying how I deserved everything that was happening to me. This was going to fucking hurt.

I moved as quickly as I could, picking my arm up and stabbing her in the throat. While she grabbed the wound in shock, I spat the tab of Dusk into her face, pulling the knife back out of her jugular vein and watching as she stood up and walked backwards a few steps. She didn't make it far, collapsing on the ground facing me as she gasped for air, holding her bleeding wound. But there was nothing she could do. Her eyes just stared at me with anger as the pool of blood grew closer to me.

Then she stopped, trying to breathe.

Her grip on her neck fell.

Her blue eyes glossed over while focused on mine.

I won.

Even if I bled out from my wound, I would have won.

But I couldn't bleed out. I had to do something.

I rolled myself onto my stomach, screaming through the pain and looking at the bed. All I had to do was get to the bed, grab the blanket or something and cover this wound on my back somehow.

I took a few quick breaths and then started pulling myself along the blood-slicked floor. After what felt like an eternity of pain, I reached the bed. Now would come the harder part. Reaching above me to get the blanket. I took another few short breaths and lifted my chest to reach the blanket. But lifting meant I had to bend my back, which shot even more pain through my body.

So much pain that I blacked out, my fingers brushing the blanket in a failed reach.