RAPTUROUS ENDS

The blood was warm under my back.

My eyes rolled dazedly, straining to focus on him in his most glorious moment and at the peak of his ability. He furiously struck out with the handle of his gun, using it as a blunt weapon against his target.

There was little else he could do-- his dagger was thrown by the wayside and he had no bullets left in the cartridge. His right hand, too, was mangled beyond repair, barely recognizable under a sea of red. I wanted to cry at the damage, but all I could manage was to cough violently again, that metallic taste drowning me in its intensity.

I wished that he had just killed me.

“D wouldn’t know. Not if I could help it.”

There. That voice-- I knew it better than my own. I choked in surprise, startled by his entrance. I looked up with shock that shouldn’t have been there, shock that was unwarranted considering how long I had expected him to come for me.

Like a person just out of a coma, I said his name.

“Cache?”

That disgusting, leering smirk surfaced on his features. I wanted to gag.

“That’s right, darling. I know you’ve missed me.” He paused, looking to the side in disdain at him. “Who the fuck are you?”

He looked just as disgusted to see Cache, though he sat still next to me on the bed. I could see the hairs rising on his neck, his hands dangerously close to his holster.

“I see no purpose in telling you,” he replied calmly, though the malice lacing his tone was obvious. I watched him from my paralyzed stance, speculating over his possible plans of action. Cache had come to kill me-- surely he had to have known that by then.

Cache just grinned at him, his arms crossed as he leaned against the doorway to my apartment. His gaze flickered over to me, and my breath got caught in my throat as I met it.

“You sure know how to pick ‘em, D,” he remarked amusedly, chuckling as the prickling on his neck became worse with each passing second. It was all a game to Cache; it always had been, and he had always been the victor. I was afraid that he would win even then.

I glowered at the comment, gripping the sheets in fury. I felt weak and defenseless without my blade or my gun, literally a sitting duck.

“Don’t fuck around, Cache,” I seethed, my eyes narrowed in on him, “If you’re gonna do it, just fucking do it.” It was a taunt, and he took it as such, that same infuriating, sleazy sneer on his bastardly face. He watched in intense awareness of the situation, caught between an old lovers’ quarrel that he really had no part in. He didn’t have any responsibility towards me anymore; all he was concerned about then was if this stranger was going to attack him before getting to me.

Nevertheless, I hoped for the impossible. I wanted him to protect me-- to kill Cache. The adrenaline of the moment rushed through my veins, flooding my senses with a bloodlust that only that arrogant prick could inspire.

Cache instantly saw my rising anger, and, to my surprise, his simper faded, replaced by a strangely rueful expression. He drew his gun from his holster and pointed it directly at my head. I didn’t falter at the gesture, sitting like a statue. Prepared for that moment, I accepted it as my death; I was never one to run away from the inevitable.

Yet a part of me desperately wanted him to knock away Cache’s gun and save my undeserving person-- an action I knew he would never dare to take on my behalf. My eyes, however, betrayed me in those last few seconds. They traveled over to where he sat beside me, his form rigid as stone and just as unfeeling as the day I had met him. He stared holes back into me, knowing that I, in my last, pitiful act, asked the unthinkable of him:

Save me.

I wanted to pry my eyes off of him, to let him be as I faced my death. But they didn’t leave his stare, and they certainly didn’t attempt to look any less pathetic. I kept them from watering, though. It was the least I could do to salvage that last scrap of self-respect.

Cache saw it all.

In a split second, his gun shifted from my head to his firing hand, shooting it point-blank.

It was a perfect hit. He fell back in a moment of decidedly unprofessional, uncharacteristic paralyzation-- a moment of humanity. I would have reveled in it had I not been shot a second later in the stomach, right where the blood tended to pour out slowly and painfully.

What a motherfucker.

As he was still trying to regain his composure and I was lying on the bed coughing up that crimson claret, Cache stood over my prone body, his face expressionless except for his eyes. They watched me in pity, in fucking pity. I looked up at him through one eye, and with that one eye, I displayed all my rage and formerly dormant emotions, now exploding before him. A smile broke out on his lips, his gun again aimed at my head.

“I really loved you, Deana,” he said sadly, cocking the gun one last time as his smile turned into a scowl. “Now go to fucking hell.”

I felt nothing-- no impact from the shot, no pain, nothing. When I cracked an eye open, I could see why.

He was shooting the hell out of Cache in all the target areas-- stomach, neck, chest, head-- and when he was out of bullets, he just used the handle to beat Cache into the ground. He looked like a man possessed, a beast savagely and mercilessly ripping its prey apart.

I was deliriously happy at the sight.

By that time, I was already partially insane from the loss of blood; my incoherent thoughts ran amok, and I started to think that maybe, just maybe he had intervened as a last-ditch effort to save his precious 4991. It was a stupid idea, but I was dying anyway, so what the hell? It was nice to dream.

He stood triumphant in the end, his clothes sprinkled with blood and his right hand, though destroyed, glistened like liquid fire. He threw the gun onto the bed near my feet, ignoring my splayed form as he grabbed a spare cartridge from his belt, using his one good hand to reload the gun, his actions slow and deliberate. I stared in awe, my arms still wrapped protectively around my abdomen.

The pain was beginning to swell as I laid there, soaked in scarlet. I felt it more acutely than I had even when the bullet had first pierced the skin; there were sharp, stabbing pangs that would not ebb as the minutes passed. There was no ignoring it anymore-- the sensation of imminent death was all too clear.

He wore no expression when he finally looked at me again, his stance stony. At the same time, however, he seemed undeniably angry, as though I was to blame for his humiliation.

And maybe I was. After all, he had stared at me without acknowledging Cache’s presence, acting as if we were the only two people in the room. It had been bizarre of him to be so careless and distracted. Truthfully, though, the mere suggestion of me being the source of his distraction only helped to feed my growing hallucinations.

He stepped towards me slowly, cautiously, in the same manner that he had loaded the gun. I saw the speckled blood on his gaunt cheeks and his proper nose, in his dark hair, spattered on his pink lips and in his clear blue eyes; those empty eyes reflected the blood that was smeared across the white covers.

But that pure red in his irises-- the one that swallowed him whole when he grew thirsty-- didn’t appear. Instead, he remained the same, the color glinting but never taking over his senses like it always had before. I would have been confused at the change had I not suddenly gasped in pain, choking for air as my life agonizingly drained away between the sheets.

He looked on remorselessly, his left hand clutching the gun with a passionate sense of personal possession. He was calm as he lifted the mechanism of death, his eyes aligning themselves with his weapon. They were as one then, man and gun; both were brutal and lifeless in that moment.

Dread crept over me, but was soon replaced by a delightful illusion of euphoria, the loss of blood having entirely incapacitated my mental and physical functions. I felt the haze of a pleasant dream wash over me, broken only by his face in the dark corner of my mind. He stared with his gun, which in my mind’s eyes melded with and became his left arm. He was deformed, but still beautiful.

The barrel of his gun felt cool against my feverish head, and I could have sighed at the very welcome feeling. My eyes fluttered open, barely able to stay that way for longer than a few seconds. It was difficult to see his expression around the black metal between my eyes, but I managed. He steeled himself against my stare, the barrel coldly pressing down against my skull. I closed my eyes at the sensation, leaning back even further on the bed. After he steadied his hand, a glimmer of resolution passed over his features, and he spoke.

“Goodbye, 4991.”

I smiled.

Author’s Note: ...the end! Yes, really, that’s all, folks! Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve been envisioning this for a while, sooooooooo...yeah. Not too much else to say about this except that I’ve had a lot of fun with these stories, and I’m glad to get such good feedback from all my reviewers! Thanks very much! Please REVIEW!!!