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Elizabeth watches as the blood drips down the edge of her dagger. The body blurs off the edges of her vision, and the red spreads to the floor. She hears a crack of a gun, and it clicks back. The bullet whizzes past her face and into the skull of the man behind her, and he crumples into the ground unceremoniously. Elizabeth doesn’t bat an eye.
Nerissa sighs, stepping over the dead body and towards Elizabeth.
“That could’ve been better, sorry.”
Elizabeth laughs. She doesn’t seem to care. “That’s quite alright, my raven. It was right on time.”
She flicks the blood off her knife, and she turns to leave. She spots flecks of red on her gloves, and hums.
“It got on your hands again?” She hears Nerissa ask from the spot behind her ear.
Hands grasp her own, bloodstained ones, and Nerissa pulls herself over. The red spreads to Nerissa’s hands, too.
“I don’t mind, my raven. We can wash that later, can’t we?”
“Of course, my rose. Whatever you say.”
Elizabeth finds that her partner has been getting braver. Her hands no longer shake, and her shoulder pops out a little. She doesn’t look too terrified anymore. What Elizabeth especially likes is that her raven pulls out her– their gun faster than she’s ever had. Today, Nerissa has shot another governor, and she watches as he slides down the wall, lifeless. Brilliant. I didn’t even need to tell her. She taps Nerissa’s shoulder twice, and she turns away to throw her dagger into an officer’s chest. Nerissa shoots him too.
Blood spatters from the wound into her face. She furrowed her eyebrows. She grabs the dead man’s face and snaps his neck. Elizabeth hears the sickening crack of bones and lets him drop into the floor. She looks at Nerissa, who lights up considerably. Nerissa almost tackles her, and she hears her back hit the wall as her raven stares daggers into her eyes. Elizabeth sees the barely concealed want in those wine red eyes, and a silent plea. She nods, chuckling a little. You don’t even have to ask.
The thread snaps, and immediately she feels lips upon her forehead, and her cheeks, and on the bridge of her nose. She feels teeth graze the spot behind her ear. I didn’t know I had blood there. Nerissa kisses all the blood away from her face, and she finishes, finally, with a little peck on the corner of her lips.
Her raven hums, and Elizabeth can’t help but smile.
“You’re pretty in red.” Nerissa says.
Elizabeth brings Nerissa’s hands into hers, and intertwines their fingers. She kisses Nerissa’s wrist, chaste and short. She sees her partner freeze, and she barks out a chortle.
“What can I say? I am an artist.”
Murder is an art, and Elizabeth is an artist. The world is her stage, and her canvas, and she paints it all in red. She slits off a man’s neck, crimson spraying onto the white drywall. It splashes over like snow, drenching the white in colour. The blood stains her coat.
Nerissa, too, is learning to paint. Blood pools around the body and it moves, staining her heels. She spins her gun and shoots, hitting true. The bullet drives into the heart, and she watches the fire disappear from the corner of his eyes. She grunts, spitting at the floor. At least it hit his heart.
“That wasn’t bad at all, my raven.” Elizabeth remarks, wiping the red off her knife like a brush to water. Red seeps into the man’s blouse in an instant. She hears Nerissa click her tongue– she’s annoyed, and Elizabeth spins around, grabbing her partner’s arm and pulls her over with one swift move. She knows her power, and she will use it. Her eyes crinkle, and she sees her raven break in real time.
She laughs, and it pierces Nerissa’s ears like a deep cello string.
“Why the agitation? Is there anything you forgot to tell me?” Elizabeth drawls, and she’s acutely aware of how Nerissa’s neck constricts in morbid anticipation.
Nerissa tries her hardest not to look away, and it’s taking all her willpower to not fray at the seams. Her thumb grazes over the engravings on Elizabeth’s– their gun in hopes her nerves stop short-circuiting. It fails miserably, and she whines like a kicked puppy.
Elizabeth is hit with a revelation and she laughs, caressing her partner’s face like she would a porcelain statuette. She’s beautiful. I would kill for her.
“You’re jealous, sweetheart? Are words of affirmation no longer enough for you?”
Nerissa snaps her eyes shut, and her grip on her gun tightens. If she looks at her Rose for even a second longer, she will fold in half. A gloved hand pushes her over the edge, and Nerissa almost growls. Her eyes fly open and she stares daggers at Elizabeth, who simpers lightly. This woman is the end of me.
“Tell me, Nerissa. Answer me. What do you want?”
I want you. Can I want you? Can I have you? Please– Nerissa grips the gun so hard her knuckles turn white. The blood has to have dried by now.
“Elizabeth.” Nerissa says, through gritted teeth. She tastes iron in her mouth. “I beg. Not now.”
Elizabeth straightens up and pulls her into a brief hug. The body lay forgotten in the middle of the floor. Nerissa finally relaxes, and she feels delirious. What was that? And her Rose leads her out of the room, hands intertwining. A small thing, but it keeps Nerissa sane enough to not crack. Life is hard, but Elizabeth is her bastion, so strong and unbending in the face of a sea of crimson. With her, Nerissa feels she can shoot anything in the face.
They find themselves in the alleyways behind the industrial area’s factories. There are at least four men in front of them, all handling guns bigger than the length of Nerissa’s forearm. Elizabeth has her own hand on her knife for the ready, eyes trained. She might die here, but she knows Nerissa won’t let her. She feels a hand on her shoulder– Move back, Elizabeth– and three gunshots ring across the sky and she sees her raven dodge two bullets and she’s free and safe and Elizabeth takes the opportunity to kick the last man in his face. She guts his stomach as a safety measure, and red splashes onto her like a bucket of paint. She straightens up, and she sees her partner covered in crimson, too. The blood runs off her heels, and the black of her dress is stained in deep crimson. Oh, she’s beautiful in red, too.
She watches as Nerissa runs a mile a minute and tackles her, and Elizabeth deftly sheathes the knife and spins her around to stabilise their position. She knows what’s coming next.
“Liz– Are you okay? Hurt anywhere? No wound? No nothing?” Nerissa kisses all the blood away, and Elizabeth can only laugh at the sensation. It tickles pleasantly. In the back of her mind somewhere, she wishes her raven would do this more.
“No– no, I’m quite fine, sweetheart– You were a little too fast for their eyes.” Elizabeth pats her partner’s back twice, and Nerissa understands the signal, planting one last kiss on her Rose’s forehead before taking a step back to admire her work.
Nerissa smiles, and the caked blood near her mouth cracks and flakes over. Elizabeth likes that, too.
“Am I just right to you, then?” She asks, and Elizabeth wants to kiss her with teeth.
“Yes. Of course. You’re my perfect little darling raven.”
Elizabeth gifts Nerissa a knife. The blade is wider than her own, and it’s very simple in nature. The handle is mahogany and engraved with gold. Her partner grins, giddy, and she examines the knife like a treasure.
“This is for me?”
“Yes. For you. I decided you should have your own knife.” Elizabeth laughs. "You deserve it after all we’ve done." She looks at how her partner’s smile curves up at the ends, and how her shoulders lift as she tap dances around the room, and she can’t help but think that Nerissa is all she wants to see.
“Use it well, will you?” Elizabeth chuckles, and she feels Nerissa nuzzle against the crook of her neck. She smells a little like roses now, too. Nerissa hums, bringing Elizabeth down to the floor. Of course, yes. I will try. For you, I will do it. Elizabeth doesn’t stop her.
“Is there anything you want, Nerissa?” She says, laying down on the floor with her partner, who shifts and pulls Elizabeth over to her. Warmth overtakes her senses immediately, and she feels feather-light.
Nerissa hums. “Anything? I can have anything?”
Elizabeth laughs again, and Nerissa almost soars to heights unseen.
“You can have anything. I will give you everything.”
Nerissa takes up carving, at some point. Elizabeth spots her grating letters onto a wall of a known spy’s bedroom. The spy in question lay dead in bed, shot before he could even react. This gives them a lot of time to lay low. Elizabeth spins her own knife, and she joins Nerissa in front of the wall. The orange is faded and peeling.
She pats Nerissa’s shoulder once, and her raven looks up. Nerissa smiles, and goes back to carving. It seems to be a little raven. The edges are jagged and square, but Elizabeth thinks it’s cute.
“You could carve on the weapons, too, you know.” Elizabeth signs the wall in cursive, and ends with a flourish. She skillfully sheathes her knife, and looks over to Nerissa, who finishes too.
“The weapons? At home?”
Elizabeth nods. “Why not? It’s cute.”
Her partner does just that. She carves into a mug, and she gifts it to Elizabeth. Words, written in a messy attempt at cursive, read ‘World’s best Rose’, if Elizabeth can read that right. She decides she likes the mug better that way. Today is an off day, and she’s back to reading the paper with a glass of lemon fizz. The room was quiet, save for the sounds of metal scraping against wood. Nerissa carves into the handle, engraving her own name painted in blue. Elizabeth thinks that maybe Nerissa could paint her in that colour, too.
Nerissa wants to carve her name into a man’s neck. Blood seeps into the carpet from the gash across his chest, and it stains red, crimson blooming across the cotton. Elizabeth finds the idea intriguing, but she doesn’t let her. It’s a little too obvious, my raven. I don’t like that. Her partner answers with a single grunt, twisting her knife into his gut one last time.
She carves her name into Elizabeth instead. Nails dig into her like a hot iron brand, and it stings a little. Next time, Elizabeth hopes, it’s engraved permanently into her skin.
Elizabeth finds a little joy in the art of painting. She drives a knife into a man’s heart, and she yanks the chest open, and crimson spatters onto her, the walls, the frame, across the painting, onto the floor. She smiles at her work. The painting looks better in red. Nerissa admires her Rose from afar, and she bashes an attendant in his face, watching him sink into the floor as blood pools around her heels. She agrees too, that the walls are better in Scarlet.
Blood smears into Elizabeth’s gloves. She hums, painting a bird on the wall. Nerissa quiets, bringing her knife down, and Elizabeth motions for her to come over.
“You can draw too, if you want.”
Nerissa giggles. She takes some of the blood on the floor, scarlet staining her fingers, and she tries to draw a rose. It doesn’t look too great, messy and jagged as it is, but at least the red is striking.
“That’s a lovely rose, my darling raven.” Elizabeth says, and she brushes off a stray hair away from Nerissa’s forehead with a smile.
“No Rose is as beautiful as you are, I would think.” Her raven blurts, before she can even stop herself.
Elizabeth laughs sweetly, and Nerissa feels the air rush out of her lungs.
“You’re getting bold, sweetheart. I like it.”
Nerissa tries painting, one day. It’s not as easy as she thought it would be. She wonders how Elizabeth paints hers. Maybe there would be a lot of reds in hers. She swishes her knife around like a paintbrush already, anyway, why would she not paint a pretty picture? Elizabeth walks into Nerissa’s struggle, and she kisses the crown of her head before painting her name into the paper. Nerissa hopes that name seeps deep into her skin.
They live like binary stars, Elizabeth thinks. Her and Nerissa. They circle and revolve around each other and they pull back the other when they get too far, and if they ever collide, Elizabeth thinks they’re going to bring themselves down to ruin. She doesn’t mind, though; danger is not something unfamiliar, and Nerissa burns like a supernova.
Elizabeth wants to bite into Nerissa, wrest her heart away from her chest cavity, and hear the blood in her veins run in overdrive. Nerissa is gorgeous, and Elizabeth has never been so sure in her life like she is now. She must taste delightful.
Elizabeth doesn’t know when it started, but Nerissa has started getting a little more touchy. A brush here, a touch there. Nerissa hugs her from the back, sometimes, head nestling in the space between her neck and shoulder like a cat. Elizabeth can only laugh; she doesn’t mind at all.
“Sweetheart?” She says, and Nerissa hums, the rumble travelling down her spine like water down a stream.
“You said I could do whatever I wanted?”
Elizabeth chuckles, nuzzling the side of her raven’s head. “Sure, Of course. Whatever you want, you can have it.”
“Can I have your heart, then?”
Elizabeth almost chokes out a loud guffaw, and she’s sure Nerissa can feel the sound build up her throat. The idea of having a heart is just simply too funny to fathom. How can something so simple and obvious still be asked? She answers, anyway, as simple and obvious as it is.
“Nerissa, my sweet, my beautiful, my most dearest raven.” She starts, and Nerissa waits as patiently as she always has. “You already have it.”
They come into a dinner party under fake identities. Lady Maria, the Sanguine Queen, and her attendant, Miss Blackfeather. The party goes quiet in a heartbeat, all fifty-two people dead and gone. Many shots ring across the ballroom, and life spreads through the floor. Crimson stains the marble walls, and red seeps into the white. The hall burns in Scarlet, and Elizabeth thrives inside the fire.
Nerissa holds on to that flame, and she doesn’t care if she burns dead with it. It’s not a bad way to die, she thinks, and she would gladly set herself ablaze if it means she gets to witness a magnificently majestic wildfire. They dance a waltz to music unheard, stepping all over the bodies strewn across the floor. Blood sticks to their shoes and they’re covered in red, red, red but they simply don’t seem to care. It’s just them two, and they will dance until they drop if the night permits. Nobody’s alive to shoot, anyway.
It’s been a long time. They have been doing this song and dance many, many times. There is a considerable amount of words left unspoken, but they’ve stayed long enough to understand the other, to read them like an open book, a nice bedtime story with crooked and yellow pages.
Nerissa has become a very forthright person, and Elizabeth does not mind the change. She’s a little more independent now, and she goes out on her own murder sprees, too. Today she comes home drenched in so much red, ichor dripping off the ends of her dress and staining the floor. Elizabeth comes over and spins Nerissa into a hug, and kisses the blood off. She pushes her into the bath. The water stains red, and Elizabeth frowns a little because that means she hasn’t finished. She nudges her partner and nuzzles into her neck in hopes of finding something that she wishes is there. Nerissa chortles, it tickles, and Elizabeth has to hold her down because she’s thrashing around and the water is spilling out.
“Stop moving, sweetheart– I can’t wash the blood off you!” Elizabeth grunts, forcing Nerissa against the porcelain bathtub.
Nerissa doesn’t stop giggling.
“Darling, my Rose– You’re tickling me! I simply can’t–”
Teeth sink into Nerissa’s neck and she gasps at the action, immediately quieting down. By the Lord, they’re sharp– and Elizabeth hums, licking the wound off.
“Mm. Should’ve thought about that earlier.” Elizabeth drawls, and Nerissa wants to stab herself in the gut. Oh, she’s insane. I like that.
They decimate an entire mansion, this time. Nerissa barks out a laugh, shooting a man in the head. And another, another, and another– and red rushes across the room like the sea. Elizabeth straightens up, crimson smeared across her face and her neck and her chest and her arms and shoulders. She doesn’t blink at the carnage; for some reason or other, all the scarlet seems to excite her. It looks like the best art piece she’s ever painted.
Elizabeth chortles, looking at her raven, who grins from ear to ear like a sick and twisted maniac. She doesn’t mind– she’s like that too. Elizabeth starts laughing, and Nerissa titters delightfully. They stride briskly towards each other in a manic haze, lip and teeth crashing at each other like hungry beasts to a piece of meat. Elizabeth feels the iron in her mouth and she gives in– canines sink into a pale neck, and with a burst of strength she pushes Nerissa to the ground. She’s gained the strength of a thousand lions and Gods, she’s famished. Nerissa will do. She will always be enough. Her favourite meal forevermore. Nerissa lets her take until she’s satisfied, and so they lay on the bloodied floor tearing into each other’s hearts like they’ve never done before. Elizabeth loves her like a feral animal, she realises, and she hopes Nerissa does too.
Something bad happens. Elizabeth doesn’t know where she’s messed up. She never makes mistakes. Is it her? Is it Nerissa? She vaguely remembers a splotch of blue somewhere. What was it? No time. She has no time to waste.
Six people died, stabbed and cut. They’re in a police station. Bad place to be. Elizabeth never wanted to be here, and neither does her partner, it seems. They’re stuck in a room, and the guards are breaking in. Elizabeth’s mind runs a mile a minute and she tries to look for a way out. There is no way she’s dying here, isn’t she?
The door breaks down and the guards run in and Elizabeth sees the gun point right at Nerissa’s head and the finger curls and her senses kick in like a spreading wildfire and she doesn’t know what she did.
Elizabeth shoves Nerissa out of the way. The bullet drives into her head, and she knows that this is her last. Red bleeds away from her forehead and crimson blooms all over her skin and she feels herself slump down and her vision leaves her, the ends of her vision blurring and she can’t hear anything anymore and she spots her raven screaming and shooting Officer– is that Officer Ceres? On the chest? And the neck and the head? She can’t see anymore. She’s done for good. Was this a fail– fail? For once she has failed. She smiles regardless.
One shot. That was all it took.
This is Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame’s last murder. A great show, right until the end. Fine. That’s fine. She’s done so much. She trusts her dear darling raven to pick her gun up. And so, she exits unceremoniously, stage left, a trail of Scarlet following her feet.
Nerissa picks up the revolver from the ground. She’s changed greatly, and she doesn’t know how real she is any longer. Is she still Nerissa Ravencroft?
She dons Elizabeth’s beloved maroon coat after her death. There is a little blue somewhere in the coat now, in the inside of the left breast pocket, closest to her heart. Nerissa has never seen that there before. Has Elizabeth added that recently? She’s lost her liking for blunt force. She shoots and she knifes and she kills, so careful and meticulous, unlike how she used to be.
She realises, sometime after shooting a man dead, that she’s become Elizabeth. Red stains the ends of her hair, and she thinks it’s just like her love. It’s the exact shade of Scarlet she used to have.
She stops wearing black and blue, finding herself more inclined to reds. It’s like Elizabeth is still here, with her. There is a Rose pinned to the spot above her heart. She hopes that’s enough. She doesn’t think it is.
She keeps the revolver clean and pristine. The red on the gun has faded, the once vibrant colour muted and muddy, like its owner. Nerissa can’t tell the words on it anymore. She knows, though– and recognises– that it’s her Rose’s handwriting, in that same beautiful cursive. ‘N.Ravencroft’ stays bright and blazing, and she swears she sees a little bit of Scarlet on the ink.
She laughs, soulless, and she shoots the man with a gun behind her in record time, expression blank. She watches as he crumples to the ground, and she wrests out his fire away from him, and for herself. You’ll be the end of me. My Rose, Always, Forever. She hums, looking at the smoke billowing out from the muzzle. She cracks it open, closes it.
There are no bullets. An empty magazine, just like her heart.
A flame crackles to life in the vacant space in her soul, and it glows Scarlet. Nerissa takes one last look at the bloody floor and leaves, her spirit a blazing inferno. She leaves a Rose on the floor, and it bleeds liquid red.