Remission [H.S. MATURE AU]

20.

SCARLETT

I didn't know much about Alice Cooper. To be quite honest, I knew practically nothing, but I remember where I had seen her the first time and when I had run out of my room that had been the first place I had to think about. She obviously knows that the police and the FBI are looking for her, so she can't go back home or to any property bought or rented at her name.

While I walk through the branches of thick pines, that scratch and sting my skin, I immediately notice, from afar, a very easily spottable red color of hair. I start cutting the distance between us with long strides, because she can't escape me this time. It's actually scary how similar this situation is, it's just reversed this time; she's the one being hunted and I'm the hunter. When I'm near enough, she must hear the noise of my boots hitting the branches and leaves on the ground and that's when she turns toward me.

When she recognizes me, her eyes open wide, just like her mouth. She tries to back away, ready to run away from me, but I'm fast enough to take out the gun from my backpack and pointing it at her figure.

"Don't you dare!" I glance at her and she immediately stops, raising her hands up. She knows I'm not kidding, but after all... after everything she's done to me and to others, how could I ever be. She's paler than usual and her eyes are red and puffy, it looks like she's been crying.

"Don't shoot, please..." She cries, keeping her hands up where I can see them. Tears are slowly streaming down her face now, but I don't feel the minimum compassion for her. I have desired to be face to face to the person that had held me down there, that almost killed me and killed both my sister and my baby for a long time and every fucking time I've dreamed about pulling the fucking trigger. I've never imagined a different ending. Every happy story ended this way. Spencer is right; revenge is just going to make the world blind, but sometimes it is the only thing you have left.

"You killed my sister!" I scream at her, waving the gun in the air, still pointing it against her. "And when I almost bleed to death and you left me rotting in a hole I was pregnant..." A tear streams down my face, while I scream these words against her. "All the shit you injected inside of me killed my baby!" I sob, forcing myself to keep my arms up, even if I feel the necessity fall down on my knees and crawl on myself, because I'm just exhausted. I'm exhausted of everything.

"I'm so sorry..." She sobs too, hiding her face with her hands. "I can't stop... I'm not strong enough." She keeps crying and sobbing and if I didn't know already it would be very obvious that she needs help. "You and your sister were my prettiest dolls..." At her words, I tighten the hold on the trigger, feeling ready to pull it now, but just when I'm about to I hear some steps coming toward us. I keep the gun on her, but I look behind me to check and when I see Harry I really don't know how to feel. Nobody was supposed to find me before I had done what I had come here for.

"Put the gun down, Scar!" He immediately says, as soon as he's near enough. I can see, by his eyes, how terrified of what I can do he is, and maybe concerned too.

"Don't tell me what to do!" I glance at him, not moving my arm of a centimeter. I keep looking at the woman in front of me, the one that deserves to pay and I try to find in me the courage to pull the trigger as I had promised myself I would do.

"Your father is coming and so is the rest of the team... they're gonna arrest you." He warns me and I find myself hesitating for a second. I didn't want my father to see me shooting at an unarmed person, but the truth is that it doesn't matter anymore. Before I can say or do anything else at all I hear voices and steps, coming from behind and I immediately understand that they've been faster than what I and Harry were expecting.

"Scarlett, put the gun down!" I recognize my father's voice. There's conflict inside of me, between what I want to do and what I know is the morally correct thing to do.