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Silence is thick in the air, a blanket of stale quietness that smothers the dim hallways.
The wire fencing is cold and cutting when she hooks her long fingers in between the spaces, using her many limbs to grapple herself upright. Ruvik has yet to visit her down here, so she crawls around on the large, cylindrical fencing, spending most of her time peeking at the various open floors just outside of the wiring.
She could break through; she could break through easily , but there’s no reason to. It’s just her down here now-- no haggard detectives or nasty doctors in sight. So, for now, she crawls around to occupy the time, unbothered by any prospect of needing to be busy.
It’s impossible to know how long she spends making those rounds, just sinking her clawed fingers in-between rusted wire, and peeking around every dark corner she cares to turn towards. She’s not bothered by the cutting metal, or the cold air that flits across her mottled skin, in fact, she hardly feels a thing.
---
Fire burns and seeps down, far past her skin, and sears her veins as she shrieks, her limbs scuttling across the cold tile-- now a relief when she presses her sizzling palms to the surface. She tries to ease her rapidly melting skin, and her eyes snap to the face of that grisly detective, his hands still gripping some sort of valve-- the cause of her suffering.
She leans her head back, and screams at him, pushing herself down into a puddle of blood before exploding out of a nearby corpse. The man curses and makes a mad dash for the open elevator at the other end of the hall. She feels herself burning, and knows she cant take much more of this.
Still, she chases, and even though the doors close before she can reach them, two of her arms slip through the bars and grab the man by his throat. He struggles against her hold, and she wants to tear him to pieces. She doesn’t let go, not even when the elevator starts to descend.
Two of her arms are sliced clean off, and she can tell the man has gotten away again. She lets out a blood-curdling screech, more from frustration than pain as the sound of splintering bone fills her ears. Her shoulder blades jerk; and two more long arms burst forth from the stumps that were left, spewing blood out in a splattered puddle surrounding her body.
Her stomach rumbles, and she gurgles in disappointment before shaking her head.
Oh well. She would get him eventually.
Laura turns in one fluid motion, her arms roving across the dirty concrete before continuing back down the hallway she came from. This place was starting to collapse anyways.
---
Smooth, wood flooring was the first thing she registered to feel ‘nice’ against her skin, singed and sticky as it was, she loved how it felt to slide against it. The grain was soothing, and the walls of the Victoriano estate were a known comfort, the windows lining the hallway letting in gentle wafts of light.
She stares down at two of her hands, planted firmly against the wood grain, and slides them forward until her back is bowed, and she’s stretching like some sort of languid cat. A pleased gurgle bubbles out of her throat, and she clicks. The series of sounds resembling something like garbled laughter. Her spine cracks; and she flexes, hearing her joints click and pop in a way that satisfies her. She shakes her head, moving until one of the windows cast a ray of light over her. The warmth of it coats her skin pleasantly, and she arranges herself in something like a sitting position before bringing a clawed hand up and running it through the tangles peppering her greasy hair.
No frustrating detectives to bother her, here.
Laura lets out a bothered huff anyways, and tilts her head side to side, her neck popping as well. She sets out to comb her fingers through her hair again, and after a few minutes, her scalp tingles from where her claws had caught on so many knots.
She settles again after a bit and finds herself moving from the warm patch of light in favor of scuttling down the hallway, back to wasting her time exploring.
Dust clings to almost every inch of the floors and walls where Laura has not disturbed it with movement, and she finds herself clambering into what looks like a proper foyer. She gurgles, and thick globs of blood push past her lips, pouring down her chin and splattering against the wood floors. She looks down at the droplets, slightly perplexed, before continuing on her way with a series of clicking noises.
A grand piano has her nosing all over the keys, jolting away like a frightened animal when she accidentally presses one and hears a loud sound emit from it. There's a red smear left on the key afterwards.
Of course she knows what a piano is, but the sight makes her feel strangely negative, and she decides to inspect the stairs instead.
She crawls up against them one at a time, sliding one of her hands over the bars holding the handrails up as she goes, leaving red-smeared fingerprints in her wake. Her next interest is in the nearest hallway, and she finds herself crawling over the walls and ceiling just to get an eyeful of whatever she can.
A series of open doors down a narrow hallway greets her, and though she cranes her neck to peek inside each room, she doesn't see much aside from the occasional haunted stumbling around. There’s beds, nightstands, dressers, a bunch of this and that in each room, none of it stands out very much.
The haunted seem to be staying away from her, and though she barely notices, she’s itching to do something with her hands, she’s itching to stumble across that detective again, to get revenge for the pain he caused her. Maybe, she’s also hoping to see Ruvik.
Monsters aren't supposed to hope.
Laura climbs off the ceiling, landing on the floor in a tangled mass of limbs with an audible ‘thud’ sound. She untangles her limbs and rights herself before finding another hallway attached to the one she was just in, and before she can start exploring, she hears a sound outside of the normal creaks and grunts she’s used to.
It sounds like someone whispering. She cranes her head back up, listening closer. Her nails dig into the ground like talons, and she readies herself for another fight, quietly slithering down the hallway until she reaches a closed door. The whispering sounds more like muddled muttering the closer she gets, and she places one of her hands against the door, pressing her ear to the frame and realizing the sound is coming from in there .
Without waiting for anything else, she tries, at first, to use the doorknob, but her fingers are stiff, and her nails clack against it loudly when she rattles the handle. She can’t tell if it's locked, but that won't stop her even if it is.
The muttering inside goes silent, and instead the person hiccups a sob, and they sound like a young boy. Her chest aches and she is fiercely thrown back into a memory, recalling herself with just two arms instead of four, opening a door similar to this one without hardly an difficulty, and finding a small boy curled up in his bedsheets, wiping tears away from his face before glancing up at her with wide, saddened eyes.
Ruben?
It lights a fierce, protective fire inside of her chest, and she braces her many arms against the frame before all but ripping it off its hinges. She shakes her hair out of the way and looks around with wide, deathly pale eyes. Inside is just another bedroom, a king sized bed in the middle of the room, with a lush, maroon colored rug at the front of it. She scuttles inside, hearing nothing but deafening silence as she tries to locate the source of her earlier worrying.
Her body slinks across the ground, and she eyes the half-open wardrobe, not seeing any movement from inside. She looks along the nightstands on either side of the bed, and the desk pushed against the far wall. Her body is strung tightly, every one of her nerves on high alert when she hears something-- it sounds like the shifting of fabric.
Slowly, she looks towards the bed again, and she lets her whole body sink down to rest on the ground before she checks underneath.
‘ There! There! ’ She thinks when she spots a pale foot, clicking in delight as she reaches a long, clawed hand out, and grabs hold of the mystery person's ankle.
They jolt in her touch, and she hears them let out something like a loud wail. The sound startles her, and she scuttles back, raised like a cat on its haunches as she watches two legs seemingly scramble to push away from her. She doesn’t want to cause them pain-- she frets silently, and slowly, when the wailing calms into gentle sobbing, she eases forward again.
This time, she reaches out, and gently taps her nails against the wood flooring just beside their foot, and watches with interest as their whole body seems to flinch. She scuttles away from the bed, and instead climbs on top of it, the mattress groaning with her weight. What's the best way to approach this , she wonders, before leaning over the opposite edge of the bed, her hair spilling out onto the floor like a puddle of stringy yarn as she peers underneath, and sees a mop of dirty white hair, and equally pale hands covering the mystery persons face.
They’re shaking, not even looking up at her when she slowly pulls back, returning to the other side of the bed. She shouldn't grab their hair, she reasons, because that would be too painful.
She recalls the way her scalp tingled when she tried to comb through her own tangled locks, and another frustrated gurgle escapes her.
She lets herself scuttle off the bed, and onto the floor again, before reaching back under the bed and grabbing their ankle. When they jolt and wail again, she doesn't let herself be deterred; and is careful of her claws as she slowly pulls the person out from under the bed, confident she’s not causing harm by making sure she doesn't grip too tightly.
The mystery person is... white . White all over, to say the least. Laura watches with interest as they try to wriggle out of her grip, crying and shaking while their hands scrabble over the wood flooring. Their hair is as white as the clothes they wear, and their skin isn't far off from a sickly shade of ivory.
Laura lets go of their ankle and watches as they turn to lay on their back, looking up at her with tearful, pale blue eyes, all while trying to scuttle away. Before they can reach the bed, she grabs their shins again, keeping them in place even as they let out another wail.
Their face is deceivingly young, and their lip trembles when she tilts her head to the side, surveying them.
They seem like a young boy, and when she sees tears dribble down their cheeks, she is once again thrown back into that memory of the small boy, shrouded in bed sheets, looking up at her with tearful eyes. It blazes through her in a way that makes her lean closer, clicking at the boy in a way she hopes is soothing.
“N-no-- No, no, no..” The boy whispers, over and over as they shake their head. Laura keeps two of her hands on his legs and lets one of the others come up to gently touch the patch on his sweater. He flinches, and Laura, strangely enough, is reminded of a rabbit.
She can’t even recall a time she’s ever seen a rabbit in here, before.
He’s clutching at his sweater now, too, and his fingers twist the fabric while Laura recalls the strange symbol.
Beacon. Beacon , and that nasty doctor that never left Ruben alone.
She tilts her head to the side, moving her arms to reach for him. The boy flinches, and presses back against the bed frame as if he thinks she’s about to eat him. Laura clicks a few times, and wraps her arms around him. He yelps, and wriggles against her, trying to escape even when she lifts him up completely; and pulls him up onto the bed with her.
“N-No! No! No! No! Le-Leslie-- Leslie wants to go home!” He wails. Laura commits the name to memory and watches as he digs his fingers into some of the pockets of mottled flesh that covers her arms, and she doesn't really feel it, so she only waits for him to settle.
She pins him down against the mattress and lets out another series of clicks, resting her chin on the top of his head even as he continues to wail and thrash. His hair tickles her skin while he kicks his legs at her, and she lets out a bubbling sigh before letting her instincts take over.
One of her hands slides down his back, feeling the many points where his-- sweater? Jacket, maybe? Is tied together, and she marvels at it when Leslie stills against her, snuffling and gasping for breath in between quiet sobs. Laura watches on, still perplexed by the sight of tears on his fair, and bruised skin.
After a few minutes, Leslie seems to realize that the monster above him isn't trying to cause harm, and he blinks up at Laura with teary eyes. She coo's, gurgling something like hesitant encouragement before he reaches up, and touches her head with a kind of child-like curiosity. She tips her head forward, and her hair spills over her shoulders. For the first time, Leslie makes a genuinely startled sound, as if he’s afraid of agitating her in some way.
It takes a few minutes, but slowly, pale fingers tangle into her long hair, and start gingerly combing through it. Leslie sniffles, and wipes his nose on his sleeve while his other hand is busy.
She settles against him, swaying slowly so as not to startle him. He reminds her of a frightened animal, not unlike the ones Ruben was so fond of experimenting on. Her mind is strangely soothed by the thought of this boy being another defenseless animal in a sea of predators, although she isn't sure as to why.
Her mind trails back to the detective, how every inch of her seethed with hateful want-- if she could just catch him, he would have had to suffer.
But now, as pale fingers gently untangle her inky locks, and transfixed doe-eyes stare up at the strands with wonder, she feels something far from the want to cause suffering.
Laura makes another pleased clicking sound, before relinquishing her hold on the smaller boy. Leslie seems to visibly startle at this, but she only readjusts herself to curl around his back, letting him rest against her stomach as she settles her chin on top of his thigh. Leslie lays against her like a pillow and seems to have stopped shaking enough to continue combing the tangles out of Laura's hair.
She feels immensely pleased with herself, knowing she’s calmed him down. It gives her a sense of accomplishment that smothers the fire in her chest, and she purrs approvingly, letting her long nails drag against his back in soothing motions.
Soon enough, her eyes flutter closed, and the tension leaks out of her arms and shoulders in a way she hasn’t felt before. It’s as if she’s never been relaxed until this moment, and she wraps her mottled limbs around Leslie, silently promising herself to protect this small comfort, even if it kills her again.