I have no clue where this one came from, but it came, hard and fast, and hit my brain until I managed to get it out in writing. It's a death-fic, and implied rape fic. So don't read it if that squicks, though it isn't too bad. Mostly psychological.

I really want to know what people think of this, it's one of the first of its kind I've actually completed.

---

They say love hurts. Hurts like a mother-fucking knife through the heart. And right now, she knows that. She knows the pain love can cause. Because there she lies, on the bed they bought barely a year ago, to replace to old, creaky thing that her grandmother had left in the house when she died, leaving it to her one and only granddaughter. But this night is like no other, not like the first time they lied there, both breathing heavily, having just "christened" the bed as he'd called it, before they both fell giggling onto its soft mattress. This night is the night he raped her. This night is the night he hit her, he broke her, he betrayed all the trust she had put in his hands. But she couldn't help but love him; even as he ripped her arms out of the ropes he'd made from her ripped up long sleeved shirt and threw her on the floor. He laughed at her, curled up on the floor of their bedroom, their bedroom, as he pulled his pants back up to his waist. She cowered as he stood above her, smiling with unspoken glee that seemed to erase everything within him she had married.

"Don't move bitch. I'll be back in a minute. Don't even think about moving,"

He'd growled, before he walked out of the room and she heard the door to the bathroom close with a sudden, sharp bang. But move she did. Quickly, faster than she thought humanly possible, she pulled on random cloths that lay in the stack of clean laundry that she'd been putting away when he appeared, with a strange light in his eye and liquor on his breath. A pair of underwear, her old jeans she'd been wearing when they'd first met, at a rock concert, barely two years ago, and her equally old sweatshirt, bearing the emblem of band she'd seen the week before they met, a band that had faded away, just like all the troubles she'd been having when they ran into each other as the rain fell on what was supposed to be a beautiful.

Crying, she ran out of the room, almost to the stairs when suddenly, it felt like someone had wrapped a rope around her neck. Falling backwards, her momentum slamming her into the chest of the man she used to think would die for, the tears fell even harder, clogging her throat enough so that the cry she let out when he hit her across the cheek was no louder than a whisper.

"I thought I said don't move you whore! Did you think you could leave me?"

He yelled in her face, whipping her around, and holding her by the throat. The muscles she'd once loved to trace as they lay together were now her down fall, as he lifted her up and threw her down the stairs she had been trying so desperately to reach seconds before. She landed with a sickening crack on her right arm. She could feel the bones grinding past each other as she pulled herself back, away from the stranger calmly walking down the stairs, laughing softly, cruelly under his breath. She managed to pull her aching frame up so she was on her knees, a position he seemed to find great pleasure in, because the laughter was louder now, so loud she could feel it shake her bones around in her battered skin.

"That's right bitch. Beg. I want to hear your pathetic voice one more time."

He managed to get out between his laughs as he pulled a gun from his back pocket. Her eyes widened, and she realized just how long he must have been planning this, because that had disappeared a month ago. He must have hid it in the bathroom, god knows when. She shook her head, lowering her eyes to his feet, so she wouldn't have to see the man she loved so much when he pulled the trigger and blew her away one last time.

She steadied herself, praying he would do it quickly so that she wouldn't have to face the monster before her ever again. She thought back to all the time behind her. When they'd danced in the rain the first day they met, to the sounds of the band that refused to stop playing for a little fall of rain. When he'd proposed a year later, at the same park, but with no one there, all that they could hear was the sun in the trees and her tears as she worked out a feeble 'Yes'.

And she let out a long shaky breath, like the ones her friend Jen used to laugh over because it sounded like she was coming down from an orgasm, which she kind of had been. She would laugh so hard, for so long, it'd cut the oxygen off to her brain for a bit, and she would have to breathe like that to stop her laughing. Except now, now it wasn't laughter she was trying to keep in, it was a long, drawn out sob that she could feel right there, in the back of her throat, waiting to be released. She wouldn't cry, not loudly, she wouldn't let that gut-wrenching sob out for him to hear, for him to savor. Instead, instead she'd just let the tears come out, she'd never been good at stopping the tears, hell, when she would laugh like that, she'd cry her eyes out, and laugh and laugh and laugh, as she would cry now, silently shaking until she would breath her "orgasm gasp" and calm herself down enough to look up and see him staring down at her. But it wasn't him; it wasn't the man she loved. This man was different. Her man wouldn't sneer like that; her man wouldn't calmly click the gun's safety off and aim the barrel straight at her third eye. Her man wouldn't pull that trigger; her man wouldn't laugh as she fell.

But this man did. This man pulled the trigger on the .22 he'd bought her last year when all those women had been murdered in their town. This stranger, who confessed not seconds before that all those women were practice, making sure that when her time came, he'd do it so perfectly, so beautifully, that he'd never, ever forget her. She wanted to scream at him, 'would you forget me otherwise? Would you forget how perfect we are together?' but that sob in the back of her throat wouldn't let the words out, she couldn't do more let the tears fall, cradle the arm he broke when he threw her down the stairs, and stare up at him, praying that this was just a fit of insanity, that any moment now he'd drop the gun, and pull her into his arms and life would be perfect again, just the two of them, together, forever.

Time slowed, and heard every second of the gunshot, heard the neighbor's dogs start barking at the sudden sound, and felt as the bullet entered her skull, the very atoms of her skin give way for the speeding, burning metal. Then everything came rushing back, and she felt her muscles give way to death, and just barely heard that sigh, the one her friend used to laugh over, push itself from her body as she felt her soul be pulled away in a burst of bloody, beautiful red.

And then there was blissful, clear, calm silence. Like none she'd ever heard. She knew she was safe, knew that the part of him that had died to give way to the stranger that pulled the trigger was waiting, waiting for her to come so they could live together, in silence, in perfection, forever.

She smiled.

And her body hit the floor with a hard, sudden thud, as the sounds of doors opening and people running the reached unhearing ears of the dead woman on the floor.