cash-stone:
[ PRIVATE F2F ]
This isn’t Cash. Something’s wrong. It’s in his voice and his face and his anger. But the words he says aren’t untrue. That he never would have been lost if not for what had happened that day at the Compound attack. Victoria doesn’t have time to parse it though. The fear in her wife’s voice, the overwhelming sent of blood as it drains far too quickly from Aurora’s body are all far too powerful a distraction. Moll’s behind her, and reasonable. Moll can heal Aurora, as long as they can get her away from Cash. Victoria’s jaw tightens. She’d never choose her own feelings over the pack, but she’ll take him out in a heartbeat if she has to. “Cash, I won’t let you hurt her.” Victoria speaks even and determined, eyes focused, jaw tight. “You have five seconds to let her go. Whatever you’re trying to do here, you can still take back. But I won’t let you kill her. Five seconds. Your choice.”
[ PRIVATE F2F ]
Moll can’t tear her eyes away from the wound and the slick spill of blood around clenched fingers. Cash doesn’t sound like himself - not just the words and the temperament, but the rhythms and patterns. Compelled by some spell or magic gone wrong, or the unlikely scenario that he had snapped from the stress. The why doesn’t matter with Aurora in immediate danger. Wolves have always been grenades, primal magic woven in waiting to hurt others. “We were just kids.” There’s a steel edge to her voice that she tries to soften. Like there’s anything at all she can do that he won’t see coming. Victoria, her favorite grenade, is the one with the real power. “We were kids blindly following Brigid’s orders. Same as you. Go after who you’re really pissed at next time.” Victoria delivers the ultimatum and Moll doesn’t even have to turn her head to know she means it. She tries desperately to focus. If Victoria manages to launch Cash back somehow, she has to be prepared to rush forward and catch Aurora before she hits the floor and does further damage. She repeats the instructions to herself, over and over. That means staring at the knife wound and ignoring the terror clawing at her throat. It means pretending she isn’t about to witness another powerful young witch snuffed out by the hands of a trusted wolf.
[ PRIVATE F2F ]
Right now he seems calm, collected, and set on a singular path. Chaos has no part in his revenge, only calculated torment for the witches in the room. “Being a kid is no excuse when that kid pretends she has any business keeping wolves. Both of you had responsibilities. Both of you failed. Either you had those responsibilities or you were kids. You can’t fucking have both.” He adjusts the knife further up Aurora’s throat, just enough so Victoria and Moll could see the cut that had been made as they were standing there talking. “There is nothing I want to take back,” he snaps back through gritted teeth, growing annoyed, and tightens his grip on the knife. “That’s the whole point. I want to see the look in your eyes when I gave you a fraction of a taste of what you put your pack through. You have no right to stand there with your power, Moll, and shirk off your failure to someone else. And Victoria has no right to be anything that she’s parading around pretending to be. So you’ll watch the life leave her eyes…” His tongue darts out to wet his lips as the energy builds and he gets closer and closer to tasting his vengeance. “…Slowly, or quickly. This is for me and all the wolves you killed on that day.”
[ PRIVATE F2F ]
She can’t just stand here and do nothing, bleed out in someone’s arms and not fight back. She can feel her strength slipping and she guesses it must be the blood loss, because she feels the grip on her abdomen slowly giving out and a wave of discomfort that she recognizes as nausea. It reminds her of the time she was sick with whatever Noah had accidentally brought into the manor, before she started throwing up blood, but she keeps her slowly closing eyes on Victoria, eyelids only half open, and decides -- against her better judgement -- to drop her hands from the gushing knife wound and close them altogether. It brings her focus away from her body and towards her magic, because whatever is wrong with Cash, she hopes to find before its too late. It pulls every bit of energy she has left, finding it, trying to push herself through the barrier in his mind against his will -- she knows Victoria will know she’s using her magic -- except she finds, not the mind of Cash Stone, but something far more otherworldly, something her magic can’t push through, something... Eerily spiritual. Angry. When she opens her eyes she’s bleeding far more profusely, and her fingers are trembling, white as a sheet. “Its not...” Her voice shakes. She feels cold. Her teeth chatter. “This isn’t Ca-Cash”. Its the last thing she chokes out before she faints, the side of her neck pressed against the blade.