Chapter Text
You fiddled in your pocket, trying to dig out your phone. You had shoved it there earlier when you had left work, on your way out in a rush, trying to leave before any more was put on you. That is, on top of what had already been dumped on you today, forcing you into overtime when you really just wanted to go home. You really didn’t want to be heading home any later than right now, with all of the creeps coming out soon to prey on young highschoolers hanging out in the city after classes, or single women like yourself getting off of work late. The time was already squarely at sundown, which meant you were making it out just in time.
The sun was setting to the left of the platform already, the golden haze casting an orange glow over everything it touched. It was a nice change, you admitted to yourself. Usually when you were leaving, the sky was still a misty shade of blue, the evening only just barely peppering the surroundings with its presence. The platform was also so much busier at that time, with crowds of people trying to shove themselves onto the train, filling every gap they could to shave just a few extra minutes off of their travel time rather than wait for one of the other coming trains. Last you had checked, you were one of very few standing on the platform- the only others being a small group of highschoolers chatting with each other a ways down to your right, and an elderly man dozing off on a bench near the stairs, leaning against his cane as he snored quietly. He didn’t seem like he was waiting for a train though, there being benches much closer to the boarding area that he wasn’t anywhere near, so you had decided to leave him be after you had noticed him initially.
I’ll leave the waking him up to whoever he’s waiting on. You muse to yourself as you pull your phone from your pocket, unlocking it and giving your missed notifications a scroll.
There were a few texts from Tara, asking about this coming weekend. She hadn’t sent too many, having seen the pile of work still sitting on your desk by the time of her own clocking out. You felt bad. You were working the next weekend, again, and you felt bad turning her down so often. You didn’t want her to feel as if you were avoiding her, or that you didn’t want to continue being friends, but you were just… busy. You sighed to yourself, deciding to shoot her a call later on tonight. You figured it would be easier to avoid her taking anything to heart if you spoke to her directly.
You thumbed over the rest of your notifications, swiping away most. A few advertisements, some updates from your mobile games, some social media follows and suggestions, an email or two- nothing particularly eventful. It was almost like magic, though, as you were mulling over one of the emails you had gotten, a name with a heart next to it popped into your dropdown menu. Instinctively, you clicked it without even pausing to read the sample text.
You couldn’t help it, as the messenger loaded. It was automatic at this point. Or at least, it felt automat-
“Oh hey! I know you-!”
Your head snapped up from your phone at the sound of a familiar voice, the hairs on the back of your neck standing boldly, a scatter of goosebumps forming across your skin. The elderly man hadn’t woken up, no one had come to meet him yet either. The highschoolers were still deep in conversation at the other end of the platform. None of them had spoken to you, and none of them had seemed anywhere near as recognizable as that voice was.
You glanced over to your left, where your eyes fell on a man who was waving, his hand comically high in the air, as he quickly made his way directly towards you.
Your feet turned to stone.
The breath in your throat hitched, and you didn’t even realize you weren’t breathing anymore.
Why?
Why was he here?
Why was he in front of you?
Why was he approaching you?
How had he found you?
Why was he-
He had closed the distance between you before you had even processed him approaching you fully, you freezing up making it easy for him to pull you into a hug that made you feel like a thousand ants were crawling across your skin. Your shock and disbelief had taken over, overriding any thought in your mind that was telling you to run . You weren’t even sure you would have been able to listen to it even if your feet weren’t frozen. The pounding of your heart had become loud enough to drown out any coherent thought you could have come up with.
He squeezed you, and you wanted to slip down into the ground so desperately.
You were in danger. You were in danger. You were in danger.
You were a Hunter, you were proficient in hand to hand combat, a decent marksman, and pretty good swordsman. You’d killed countless Wanderers, and come and gone from the N109 zone with barely a scratch on you after your countless visits. You were fully capable of protecting yourself from anyone and anything, and if you didn’t seem like you could, you would manage.
But you couldn’t protect yourself from him.
You couldn’t take back what he had taken from you. You couldn’t stop as your mind was slowly regressing backwards, back to where it had been.
Back to the memories.
He pulled away, but the respite was shorter than a breath, as the train approached the platform. It felt like time was moving in slow motion. His smile, the people deboarding, the lack of people entering the car that he was pulling you into- Something about going the same way? - his hand gripping the upper part of your arm. But it wasn’t gentle. It never was. It never was. It never was.
“What have you been up to? Is that a name card from the Hunter’s Association?” He asked, his tone cheerful as you felt your heart dropping through the very rails the train was sitting on. He sounded so friendly, but you knew he wasn’t being friendly. He wasn’t asking you a question, he was making a statement.
He was saying ‘ I found you~ ♪ ’.
“I-...” You take a small gasp of air, finally processing how little you had been breathing up until the point. He flashed you a little smirk, his hair falling across his eye as he tilted his head at you. Had his hair always looked like that? You didn’t know. You didn’t care. You couldn’t-... remember.
God, you couldn’t remember a lot of back then.
It was horrible.
It was scary.
Why was he still gripping your arm…?
It hurt.
It made other spots hurt, echoing with pain you had forgotten- no, not forgotten about. Pushed away. Tried to not remember. But still, ghost feelings that would sneak into your mind whenever something made you flinch, whenever someone tried to give you an over-enthusiastic high five, whenever you were trying to please yourself alone in bed, whenever someone raised their voice- be it out of happiness or anger, it really didn’t matter. The anxiety would pound into your chest like breaking a door down, like breaking you down until you were tiny little pieces strewn out across the floor, sobbing alone to yourself because no one else could help you. You were alone. This was your cross to bear. You had gotten yourself into this mess, it was up to you to get through this. It was up to you to get yourself out of this.
“Wipe that shitty fucking expression off your face, you’re making people think I’m doing something wrong.”
His voice was dangerously low, and sinisterly similar to how he used to speak to you. It was nice to see that nothing had changed, so much longer later. That the same circumstances that led to the bloodied sheets strewn out across the bed and floor were happening again. That the same knuckles that had made forceful contact with the high of your cheekbone were gripping so tightly, they were turning white across the top of your upper arm. You pressed your lips into a thin line, trying to appear as neutral as possible, as the only other patron in the train car with the two of you- tucked back in the corner but raising an eyebrow at the situation, nonetheless- watched.
He gave you a small shake, and you let the corners of your mouth turn upward in a smile that didn’t reach your eyes. You were just two old flames meeting again, goofing around. Reignited that old flame once more.
But to you, that flame was a bomb. And it was going to go off the second you were alone with him.
There hadn’t been any closure when you had left, there couldn’t have been. You could have left with bags secretly packed without so much as a goodbye thrown into his messages while he was at work, or you could have spent three hours talking to him trying to get through to him one final time. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Men like him, were men like him for a reason. They didn’t change, they didn’t find what they were doing as something wrong , and they never would. At least, that’s what everyone had told you. That’s what you had learned at the end. But standing here as the train rocketed towards another new location for him to find out about, you were finding it harder and harder to remember everything you had taught yourself just to get away from him.
“Are you going to be ungrateful again? Going to run away because you think for some reason you can get better, despite being some fucking whore who runs her mouth? With a bodycount?” He practically spat the words at your face, turning to face you and keeping his back towards the other patron, who had closed their eyes with their head resting back against the seat, waiting for their stop and avoiding getting involved.
“After everything I’ve done for you, you can’t offer me even the littlest bit of appreciation that you didn’t want to show me back then? I thought you had changed. That you were different.”
You let out a deep breath, trying to keep your mind steady, but it was hard. You’d gotten used to the word disassociate ever since you’d learned about it. You’d slip into dissociation even on your best days, at random. Talking to Tara, riding your bike, fighting Wanderers, avoiding Luke and Kieran’s pranks- it didn’t matter. It just… happened. And it came on worse when you were reminded of things that had traumatized you. Or were faced with the very things that had caused that trauma- as you were finding out right now.
He reached up, grabbing your other arm into his other hand, the grip matching the vice-like pressure of the first one that still held you. “You listen to me, you little bitch. I still fucking own you. I don’t give a shit if you’re living in some fantasy land where you think you’re moving on, but you will never find anything as good as me.” He hissed. “Not for what you’re worth. I treated you so well, and you think you can keep treating me and people like shit? Fuck off.”
He gave your arms a yank to emphasize his words. You just stared straight at his chest, stumbling slightly as the train stopped at the next station, but his grip kept you relatively upright. The time between now and the last stop wasn’t anything you could remember clearly, and you could already feel your mind slipping from your body slowly. You couldn’t stop it. You didn’t want to. It was something you couldn’t explain, but it acted like a muffled fast-forward button on situations like this. You couldn’t say you liked it, but you liked it more than being present for what your ex had to say.
But it was horrible, because no sooner did you start to slip away, did the doors to the train open, and the only bystander that had been seated in the corner left. Whether this was their stop, or they wanted to avoid the situation, you didn’t know. You didn’t care. In your heart though, you knew that was just how it went. You’d be lucky if they called the police, but wouldn’t do anything. There was no proof of anything happening. You didn’t have any.
You knew he was right.