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The air was a miasma of sweat and blood and loud with the groans of the dying. The spread of the Scourge had been swift - and just like that - the most powerful race in the universe had been crippled overnight.
Mountains of bodies followed, the streets were ripe with the stench of decay. There weren't enough Viltrumites left alive or well enough to fly cruisers out to dispose of the corpses, leaving them to rot. The pillars of white uniforms and contorted faces standing tall, as if a morbid testament to Viltrum's arrogance.
However, in the middle of it all, one Viltrumite stood in the midst of the ailing and bedridden. Poised to attention, her braid hanging from around her shoulders as she regarded those around in silent judgement. Thula had been one of the first to recover from the Scourge and in an ironic twist of fate had become a unique scourge of her own as she puttered around the room. Going from body to body as if to send the message that if she could fight it, so could the countless others that lay at her knees.
Anissa heard her footsteps approach, and then felt her presence regarding her from above. Every evening like clockwork since her recovery, Thula would scout for her among the masses, and every evening, Anissa would wish she wouldn't.
She looked up at her, her eyes glassy and severely bloodshot, her face was smeared with her own blood, and she said nothing. She couldn't. But it didn't stop Anissa from using what little strength she did have to scrunch her face into her signature frown, even if just for a moment, in hopes it would be enough of a signal to ward her off. But it never was...
"Still just as weak as the day before, I see." Thula began, tauntingly. "If I didn't know any better... I would almost assume you were all bark and no bite this whole time."
Anissa tried to respond, hell knows she tried, but speaking felt like shards of glass in her throat. What should have been a retort at slander, came out as a hard rasp of breath that quickly worsened into a coughing fit.
Thula watched as Anissa convulsed on the bed, the rage in her eyes dying as the jostling motion of her body unceremoniously sapped her of all of her remaining strength as a thick trail of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.
Thula, with near complete nonchalance, knelt down and took Anissa by the shoulder, pulling her onto her side, causing the blood to spill from her mouth onto the bed. She kept coughing, sending a spattering of blood across Thula's uniform and face.
She blinked, but otherwise remained unbothered. Confident that she could not catch the Scourge a second time. She had already won, and wore that fact proudly.
"Look at you." Thula cotinued, wiping the little flecks of blood from her face with the back of her hand. "You've proven yourself an asset to the empire before, so I implore you to do it again now. It's clear you hold a great strength, so if you value the survival of our species you had better keep drawing breath."
Anissa's face had gone placid, her expression uncharacteristically soft, her rage having been reduced to mere lines on her pale skin. Thula couldn't tell if she had even heard her. It felt like she was talking to a shadow...
She gritted her teeth, grabbed a bottle of water that was sat off to the side and she opened it hastily, "You did not survive the Great Purge just to be finished off by some lowly malady."
Thula pushed Anissa onto her back and slapped her once in the face to rouse her, eliciting a whine that was mercifully silenced as she brought the bottle to her lips. The hand that had shocked her now held Anissa's head up by the back of her neck so the water wouldn't choke her.
"Drink." Thula commanded. Anissa huffed but still did as she was told with little in the way of complaint. She hadn't actually realised how thirsty she was until she felt the water hit her tongue. She drank greedily despite the shame that brewed within her from being un-wantingly doted on by this old hag.
But the shame more came from the fact that she didn't find it unpleasant...
The sensation of Thula's hand on the back of her neck recalled a memory to her that she hadn't thought of in a very long time. When she had returned as the sole survivor during a training exercise in her youth, Anissa's mother had knelt before her, hands on her shoulders, and pressed her lips to the top of her head.
It warmed the inside of her chest, a sensation she had since gone without. Until now. It fed the warmth into her from the point of contact before travelling down and coming to rest somewhere inside that was both simultaneously painful and euphoric at the same time.
Neither of Anissa's parents survived the Great Purge. It wasn't something she ever dwelled on. Yet, even after years of battles to keep her mind occupied from such meaningless reflection, even when she had long since forgotten their faces. Here, laying in her own blood and sweat, she found herself trying to reconstruct in her mind what they looked like, and when she couldn't, her euphoria faded, leaving only a dull ache in her blackened heart.
Anissa was pulled back to reality after she felt her stomach begin to churn. She had drank too much too fast and now a nausea was starting to build. She abruptly turned her head away from the rim of the bottle, causing it to spill over her neck.
"All of it." Thula's voice was clear-cut and she raised the bottle up to her mouth again. Anissa set her jaw and glared up at Thula defiantly, but, once again, her strength generated from her frustration quickly faded from her, and she could already feel herself going slack.
She was in no condition to fight with her. Anissa could only avert her eyes from Thula's icy gaze and steel herself as she begrudgingly gulped down the rest of the water.
"Good." Thula lowered Anissa's head back down onto the bed, her forehead pinching as she watched Anissa hold her tongue between her teeth, her breathing slow and deliberate as she tried to control her nausea.
Thula let out a sigh through her nose, and Anissa heard the tink of the empty bottle being placed on the floor next to the bed before a new sensation enveloped her; the feeling of gentle fingers methodically raking over her abdomen, soothing her stomach and letting her relax without fear of spilling her guts.
"Don't be so pathetic." Thula scolded, still caressing her as if she was her own flesh and blood. "If you have any worth left you'll pull yourself together quickly..." Her stony expression didn't match her actions. In the most recent days when Thula would visit Anissa's side she'd usually just sit with her. Just park herself on the edge of her bed and keep her updated on the state of affairs outside before leaving when it suited her. But as days passed and Anissa showed little in the way of improvement she had begun staying longer than usual.
It went from just checking in on her to make sure she was still alive, to overseeing her for a short time, to sitting with her. It went from staying for as long as it suited her to only leaving when she was inevitably called away.
Thula's head perked up, her attention averted to someone across the room that Anissa couldn't see because it hurt to move. Her doting quickly stopped, pulling her hand away in such a manner that it gave the impression she was caught doing something she shouldn’t. She steadily raised to her feet, casting a final glance down. “The next time I see you, you had better be standing.”
Anissa listened to the sound of her footsteps fade off into the distance, a few voices carried along down a hallway somewhere, the echoes bouncing before being synced up with the sounds of the rasping, murmuring, and groaning of the other victims of the Scourge around her.
Anissa brought her hand to rest on her stomach and solemnly began trying to recreate the feeling that had made everything just slightly more bearable.