Save Me | K.TH *COMPLETED*

Identity

I wake up to a bucket full of ice cold water, enough to make my teeth chatter and my lips tinge blue. My clothes are completely drenched, hanging off my body like heavy weights.

The part where I was struck hurts, but I bite my lip against the pain.

This is not a time to worry about my own injuries.

Something cold is encircled around my wrist and my ankles, and I realize my arms are above my head, forced into that position by manacles attached to chains. My lower body is crumpled on the floor, in contrast to my raised upper body.

I open my eyes to see a man hanging over my body, with an empty bucket in his hand. "Wakey wakey, pretty lady. It's time for justice." His feet swings back, and I know what's coming before it hits. I can only brace myself as his boot slams into my chest, making stars explode in front of my eyes. I can't even scream at the waves of pain afterwards because my throat is too raspy.

Then I see V, and the smell of blood immediately hits me so hard I convulse violently. It's so powerful, so repulsive I want to cut my senses off, one by one, until I'm nothing but just an irrelevant piece of dust.

Skies, what I would give right now to just become a particle of useless lint.

It's V's blood, and that makes everything so, so much worse.

Through the red haze, I can only find solace in V's slanted, large eyes, filled with pain and worry. When his gaze meets with my crazed ones, his mouth moves rapidly, like he's trying to communicate something to me.

But that's soon covered in scarlet as well.

I can feel the man's confused gaze on me as I twist and writhe in agony, drowning in the deep waters of blood he won't ever see, ever understand.

It's pain beyond anything you've ever dreamt of, beyond imagination. How would anyone even understand something like that?

When I look up and squint through the red, I can see V saying something to the man. But I can't hear a single word he's telling him, and frustration sweeps through my brain.

That annoyance only lasts a brief
second before the pain comes again, along with the never ending smell of blood, hot and thick against my nose.

Everything feels distant, empty.

Am I going to die?

It seems like I'm trapped in the prisons of my own mind, helplessly losing against my fear, and that makes me afraid.

I'm afraid to die, to let myself go from this torture. It was more than easy to just simply loosen my iron grip, to let myself get swept away with the soft lull of death.

But that would mean that I won't ever get to see him again.

And the idea somehow seemed worse than death itself.

I try to imagine V with his crooked smile, an expression he hadn't shown much lately. I try to paint his face—which is art itself—in my mind, even if it's the very last thing I do.

It's dark at the background, but his skin glows ethereally against the black. I picture his bandanna, his locks pushed back so messily, yet so beautifully. I try to remember his delicate features- but I can only get to his eyes before I find that I can't recall how the rest looked like.

Then red drips down at my unfinished canvas, reducing his face into a blob of scarlet.

I desperately move on to remember the comforting touch of his hands against my shoulder, his lips against mine.

But there's nothing there.

I can't remember anything.

My heart sinks. My memory is stripped down to the point where I'm struggling to even remember his name.

V.

V for valiant. V for vulnerable.

V for victory.

Then I close my eyes, giving myself up to the endless ocean of blood and tears.