#hod wp

Instantly she sits bolt upright, her eyes darting to the orange watch on her left hand before she lets out a sigh of relief. 5:00 a.m. She had at least thirty minutes before her fellow interns started showing up, and almost three hours before she’d have to leave for class. She slumps back in her chair and runs a hand through her messy hair, letting her eyes slip closed once more. Just a couple minutes to rest her eyes, that’s all, and then she’ll go get herself cleaned up before anyone else shows up.

At least, that’s what she thought, but then a loud – much louder than necessary, in her opinion – call of “Rise and shine, Reynolds!” has her jumping in her seat, eyes flying open once more. There’s a loud laugh, and the next thing she knows there’s a tall, lanky blonde guy leaning casually against her desk, looking much too well-rested and sure of himself and put together for five in the morning. “Wow. You’re not very cute in the mornings, you know that?” He flashes her a smirk and Darcy just glares at him before she straightens up and runs another hand through her hair. Not that she cares if he thinks she’s cute or not. “And not very pleasant, either.” His voice is far irritating for this hour – or any hour, if you ask Darcy – but before she can retort he’s speaking again. “Though I wouldn’t be very pleasant either, if I was up all night working on a story that the Times is never, ever gonna run.” 

“What do you want, Harris?” Darcy finally snaps at him, leaning forward and slamming her notebook shut, effectively hiding her progress from Michael’s prying eyes. If the comment stings she keeps it to herself, because as far as getting a full-time position goes he’s easily her biggest competition among their intern pool, and she likes to think she’s his, too. He’s just trying to get under her skin, and she isn’t going to let him, hard as it may be when she’s been struggling with this particular piece for weeks. If she can expose the business professors at her own university that are helping students cheat, that’s top news, she’s sure of it. And she’s been collecting evidence for weeks, interviewing students, but it’s still not enough and she’s not sure it ever will be. 

She’s not at all ready for is the cup of coffee Michael offers her in answer to her question, and Darcy eyes it skeptically for several seconds, waiting for him to pull it back or maybe even for it to explode. But that doesn’t happen, and he just lifts an eyebrow at her until she takes it from him. “Uh…thanks?”

“Anytime, Reynolds. And…you might want to stop by the sixth floor, if you get a chance. Talk to Brooks – old guy, glasses that are way too big for his face. Just…you know, if you get a chance.” He shrugs and walks off, and Darcy watches in confusion as he settles into his own desk just a few ahead of hers. If she didn’t know any better she’d think he was giving her a tip. Or maybe it’s just some big trick, some way to throw her off, but nevertheless she forgets about making herself look more presentable and scoots her chair closer to her desk, taking a big sip of coffee as she pulls her computer screen back up and opens up the employee database. Callahan. The guy was real. And he was an NYU graduate. A slow smile spreads across Darcy’s lips, because maybe, just maybe, he knew something she didn’t. And maybe he’d be willing to talk about it.

April 14th, 2013

"Fifteen thousand dollars." Thomas stated coldly into the phone, face impassive as the cup of coffee in front of him began to cool. There was no evidence on his features, no hint to tell other people that he was discussing a fee for his services. No tell-tale sign that he was stating how much he charged for the job the other voice was hiring him for. It was standard procedure, so when the caller told him the money would be wired into his account when the job was finished, Thomas continued drinking his coffee as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

April 17th, 2013

The capture had gone surprisingly smooth. The subject had been quite afraid when Thomas had been waiting for him in his apartment. Completely shocked, in fact, making it easy for Thomas to lurch forward and knock him unconscious before he could cry for help. Not like any was coming. The security guard had been paid to go on a bathroom break, and every other person that lived in the building had no love for the man. 

There was little to be said for Ricardo Cordero. He was 5'8", 120 lbs and fairly skinny. He had a history of beating up his girlfriends and raping the neighborhood women. Quite simply, a misogynist that had finally taken it to far with the wrong people. Thomas knew little about his client as well, only that he had demanded that the man be taken care in a way that hopefully made him suffer with the same intensity his sister had. Thomas was only too happy to oblige.

There was a special place Thomas took people when they would make a lot of noise. It was far away, a couple of hours into a desert, in an abandoned house that was fairly easy to clean when he was done. It gave him the freedom to do whatever he needed in order to extract information, or in this case, to simply make his victim suffer before putting an end to their life.

It had only taken a few hours for the man to wake, first uttering a low groggy sound before blinking several times. "Quién eres? Qué querés conmigo? Por qué estoy aquí? Contéstame, hijo de puta! Voy a matarte, malparido! Vas a arrepentirte de este día por el resto de tu miserable vida." Thomas blinked slowly, bored as the man continued to threaten him in Spanish. He offered no explanation, and as the man realized he wasn't here to give information, the anger in his eyes quickly transformed into fear. 

That was the moment Thomas knew to start.

He did not waste any time showing off the various instruments he had stashed here over the years, nor walk around him like a predator. No, Thomas was here to carry out a job, and if that job didn't mean psychological torture, he wouldn't waste his time. He did, however, decide to start with the simpler forms of torture. A shallow cut down his chest, a fist directly to his nose, a kick to his genitals. Fairly predictable, really, and it inflicted only a fraction of the pain the man would feel later on.

Blood dripped and dried, cries echoed through the house only to be interrupted by intervals of silence. All in all, a fairly common environment for this kind of task.

Nevertheless, Ricardo was not begging for his life yet, and until that happened, Thomas would not stop. He gradually amped up his techniques. First, he broke two fingers, making the man cry out, but not much more than that. It was obvious that this man was used to pain, or at least the most common forms of it. He probably thought himself powerful despite the situation, thought that he might be able to get out of this one way or another. He was wrong, of course, but sometimes watching the hope die out in someone's eyes gave Thomas a burst of satisfaction.

Eventually, it did die. But only after Thomas had removed several of his nails, shot him in the foot, strangled him into near-unconsciousness and pressed a live wire into his stomach. Blood, burning flesh and piss were all poignant smells inside the room, but Thomas had a lot of experience, and thankfully none of those substances were on his clothes. The victim was quietly crying with his chin tucked toward his chest, shaking uncontrollably as several parts of his body swelled and throbbed. He had begun muttering nonsense in his native tongue about half an hour before, and when he had refused to shut up, Thomas had had no choice but to remove his tongue. He had vomited several times since then, each time throwing up a new pool of blood to go with the foul-smelling stench of the acids no longer in his stomach. There was hardly anything else left to do, and Thomas simply refused to castrate him. Whatever infection he had growing in the area of his groin was disgusting enough to make Thomas grimace when he had laid eyes on it.

Holly sat alone on the floor of the Family Christian Bookstore. There were several shelves of books around her, a small alcove she had made for herself so she could work in peace. And work is what she had come here to do after all. That small moment in the afternoon spent with Jack should have gone into finding something so she could make herself useful. She shook her head. Concentrate, Holly. You've gotten nowhere.

In her hands was a watermelon seed. Just a single black seed that had the beginnings of a root peeking out from the cracked shell, but it was tiny and barely there. Pathetic really. It was difficult for her to think that such a small object could potentially feed a single person, much less be enough for the entire group. With that single seed she had to make a watermelon that would later provide seeds for the rest she would have to grow, until eventually she had enough fruit to go and put in the supplies. It was up to her to make sure this group had enough to eat, at least something small every day.

Deacon had been clear during those months she had spent with him. it was her duty to help them, make sure they got to where they needed to be, make sure they were strong enough to deal with the obstacles they would face. He had worked her to the bone, and made her feel like she wasn't good enough anyway. It was how she had gotten to be this efficient. Without it, she would still be passing out after growing a couple of tomatoes. She remembered those days with mixed feelings now. She would only eat if she could grow enough for both her and her brother. All the weight she had been trying to lose for her wedding melted away in a few weeks.

Once more, Holly sighed and told herself to focus on the matter at hand. She couldn't just leave the group to the canned supplies now, not when she and Kimi have been working so hard to make meals every day. They had come so far. Closing her eyes, the blonde let the energy flow from her to the little seed in her hands. The feel of having vines twine around her arms made her smile and put more magic into the plant.

This is what would make Deacon proud. This is what she was meant to be doing. Only... Why did her arm hurt? Holly opened her eyes. She was no longer sitting up. Instead, her head was on the floor and her left arm was dripping blood. Scared, she dropped the watermelon, and quickly unraveled the vine from around her upper arm, crying as she tugged the thorns from her skin. She had gone too far, making herself pass out from the sheer amount of effort she was putting into her work.

Motels sucked. They always did, which is why they rarely stayed in them. They weren't incredibly far from home, but driving all the way back only to drive all the way back out here in a few hours seemed pointless. Duncan was staying in the room next door, though right now he was sitting on the lumpy bed with Jen, eating chinese food and going over what they knew about the guy they were tracking. At least that had been what they were doing, now they were watching bad infomercials and laughing about something she couldn't quite remember.

"I'm serious, you should find a guy and settle down." Dunc said, using chopsticks to pop a piece of General Tso's chicken into his mouth. Jen, who couldn't use chopsticks to save her life, twirled some lo mein around her fork and smiled again. Oh yeah, the idea of her settled down. That's what had been so funny.

"I'm working on it." she says, reaching back to grab her small plastic cup of wine off the nightstand. It wasn't the classiest meal she'd ever had, but it wasn't the worst.

"No, you're not." Dunc said, with a little smile. "Just because you've quit being a club rat, doesn't mean you're looking to settle."

"Club rat? Fuck you, man. Can't a girl just like to get her dance on?" Jen asks, but there's a smile on her face. She knows how she had been and there's a chance she would have stayed that way if not for Isaiah Duncan, though he would never take credit for guiding her towards something better. Jen wipes at the edges of her mouth and her smirk fades. "Seriously though, Dunc. I know, okay? It's not like I wanna die old and alone or anything. I don't even like cats." she says, trying to make a joke out of it.

"So then what's the problem with him?" 

"With who?" Jen asks, sipping her wine and feigning ignorance.

"Tony. That's who we're talking about." Duncan said, giving her a look.

"Oh, it is?" she asks, being obtuse now to get a rise out of him, but she was stopped with a look. Jen groaned and rolled her eyes, and in a effort to make this conversation a bit shorter and a bit less painful she opted for the truth. He would get it out of her eventually anyway. "He's not the problem. I just have some things I want before I even think about dating someone."

"Like what?" Dunc asks, sounding confused. Jen's eyes widen and she laughs.

"Like what? Like, trying to find a way around my goddamn record. Getting it expunged, seeing if I can't find some kind of... loophole." she says, and the frustration begins to show on her face, a bitterness and exhaustion that came with trying like hell to be a better person when every time you turned around your past prevented you. "That's all I want right now. I don't have enough space in my head for anything else."

Duncan looks at her for a moment, studying her carefully before speaking. "It's not about having space in your head, Jenny. It's about having space in your heart." he says. Jen stares back at him for a moment, and she doesn't know how to respond to that. There was a very short list of people she could say she loved, and one of them hadn't even been worthy of that emotion. Duncan and Val were probably the only people in the world she truly loved.

"Alright, Oprah. Settle down." Jen says, shaking her head, trying to diffuse the intensity of the situation. Duncan sighed, seeing that the woman was shutting down.

"They won't all be Aaron." he says quietly. Jen gives him a look, but she's not angry that the man had mentioned him. She knows that. She knows that she isn't the same naive, headstrong girl she had once been. She was smarter and stronger now, careful and she'd like to think more responsible. Jen's not sure even her luck is that bad that if she ever wound up with someone else they'd also overdose and leave her sitting on a pile of felony worthy heroin.

"It's not about them, Dunc. It's about me." she says. "There are things I need to do, and once they're done, then I'll worry about all that other stuff. But for now..." Jen says, moving the food off the bed. "We should get some sleep. Early day tomorrow. Catching the bad guy and all that." she says. Duncan looks like he wants to say something else but he just sighs and picks up his food. For a minute he looks down at Jen and she looks up at him, but he doesn't say anything, just tilts her chin up to look at her more carefully, making sure she's really as okay as she seems. 

His eyes closed easily. He knew where he was going and and why. He went there almost every night, but the days before his birthday were always worst. At times he thought it was almost worth it, a chance to hear the rumble of his laughter and the smell of her floral perfume one more time. Then he would remember what it felt like. Then he would remember Hell.

At first he didn't know he is dreaming, as it usually was with those things. He would look around and frown at his surroundings. A beautiful home, warm and inviting in everything from the warm color of the walls to the noises coming from the kitchen to his right. He'd smile. A genuine smile as effortless as breathing. He would take a single step forward, but the wood beneath his foot was rotten and he would fall. His stomach would stay a few feet above him while he fell endlessly into some unknown danger below. The ceiling of his old home was the last bit of light in his life and his dreams, from there, darkness would be the main protagonist. There was never really an ending to that dream. It would simply fade into the next.

He was wet, covered head to toe in a liquid he would think was water until he took his first breath. Metal and salty sweetness would invade his mind, his arms would start feeling weaker and weaker, until he could no longer stay above the surface. But he would not open his mouth. Not to scream, not to breathe. It would not enter him if he could help it. Even if his lungs screamed at him with the power of a bulldozer. Thomas would stay in that endless state of not being able to save himself but not dying either. No, his mind wasn't merciful enough to let him die. Eventually he would reach the bottom of the lake of the blood he had spilled, and the only plants that lived on the floor of this nightmare were the hands of the people he had killed. They would grab at him and drag him to the next scenario.

Bright lights would annoy his vision for only a moment before the pain would kick in. A blonde man with hollows for eyes would be the last thing he saw, aside from the glint of metal made by the light's reflection on the steak knife he was holding. It wasn't so bad, having his eyes sliced while they were still inside his skull. The discomfort was strong, but it would fade as soon as the man left. All that was left was for Thomas to grab the blade the man had left behind and slit his own throat with it. The knife would always be in a different place, making it especially difficult to find it in the unfamiliar location. Sometimes it would be inches away from his head, other times it would be at the bottom of a boiling pot of water and once, it had been buried inside another body. It didn't matter to him. Blood was blood. Whether it mixed or not did not matter to Thomas.

Someone was looking at him. They made indecipherable sounds near his ears, but when he'd turn to see them, nothing was there. Or, that's what he thought since the entire room was cloaked in darkness. A force would draw him closer. No, not a force, a sound. Something happy and promising. A deep chuckle. But no matter how long he walked toward the sound, it was always just out of his reach. Then the smell of his mother would make his head whip around, and he was caught between the two. Would he choose the comfort of his mother's arms around him or the valuable advice of his father? Both were equally as important to him. Both were necessary. He would then realize there were ropes around his wrists and ankles. He had not been walking. He was merely a puppet being manipulated with strings. However, Thomas was no longer dancing, he was being pulled apart. Screams and yells would tear through the idle murmuring in his ear as the ropes yanked his members from their sockets, pulling with so much force that eventually the skin and muscle would give, and his arms would detach from his body. His trunk would fall to the floor, but he would stay conscious as his parents called out to him with things deeper than words. The crying of an infant would lead him to the next terror.

The last dream gave him everything back, from his hands to his eyes. It wasn't much use of course, since he could do nothing but watch. A sea of flames engulfed one of his parents. His father was absent this time. It was usually one or the other. The older man would usually ask him to save himself, to leave through to open door he knew was behind him. Of course, Thomas was unable to move, so he would have to watch as his father melted into a husk. But his mother was much worse. She couldn't get words out of her mouth. She would just kneel over the small body already dead on the floor in front of her, crying and asking why she had to die like that. He couldn't answer, but tears would flow down his cheeks as he watched her perish. She was in the middle of collapsing to the floor when he felt the cold breeze hit his bare arms. 

He was out the door before Bella even had a chance to catch her breath. She hadn't bothered to attempt to call him back, this had happened with the last person as well. She was used to it by now. She didn't even feel the need to cry over it anymore.

Another try, another failure. He wasn't going to be returning. The month they'd spent together meant nothing to him. She'd almost expected it.

Letting out an airy sigh, she made her way to the bathroom. Slipping on her bathrobe, she stood in front of the mirror, glancing at herself. There was a bruise on the side of her face; she'd gotten that from a fight two nights ago. Women can be catty.

Hatred hit her like a wave against the shore as she looked at her reflection, but she bit it down and began to apply her makeup. Class began in an hour, she didn't have time to glare at her reflection.

On her way to class, she looked ahead, avoiding the stares people were giving her. In high school her reputation had been the quiet one. Now it was something else entirely.

Not even her family bothered to remain in as much contact with her anymore. Bella could sense their disappointment from her dorm room miles away. Barely a night Bella was home to take their calls, so they'd given up entirely. That day her mother had come over to yell at her changed everything; that fight left Bella alone. She no longer had her family to fall back on. Not even her dad.

Growing up, she'd admired and loved him. That never changed. When she was younger she asked her parents why they prayed to God, and they answered, "because he is our light in the darkness; he's always there for us". As she grew up, the one who became that for her wasn't God, but instead, it was her father. At six she got into the habit of praying to him, and it never stopped. No matter if he was in the room next, or hundreds of miles away, Bella found comfort in him. He was her shining star in a sea of darkness.

Now, when she was so much older and in so much more trouble, she hesitated to pray or him, or even to contact him. Would he be disappointed in her? Bella didn't doubt it. She was disappointed in herself, too. Her grades were slipping, for her nights were filled with either hanging out with people or acting out in a desperate grab for attention. She couldn't help it. How she hated loneliness. She was in a rut. Maybe if she left, things would be different.

Now it was November, and the leaves were falling. She'd spent the summer in the city close, jumping from friend's house to friend's house, refusing to return home. A party was around the corner, Bella had an outfit planned and everything. But the night was closing in on her, and her motivation to put herself out tonight there was shot. So instead she spent the night in her room, watching movies on her laptop and resisting tears.

As the night turned into early morning, she tucked her laptop aside and rose to her knees. One last desperate prayer, what more did she have to lose?

"Dear Dad," she started, voice quiet. She felt like a child again, praying on the foot of her bed for Dad to come home from his trip safely; praying for him to be safe tomorrow at work; praying for him to still love her when she finally decided to be honest about her sexuality. She couldn't help but wonder, distantly, if he'd ever overheard her, ever listened in. "I'm alone, but not for the first time. I'm always alone. I can feel it in my heart. There's so many people around me, there's so many people... with me, but not a single person's ever tried to get to my heart. I feel like they don't know I have one anymore."

She let out a small sigh, her eyes slipping shut tightly as though she could avoid all the bad thoughts with such a simple gesture. "I know, by now, you probably hate me. You and mom, wouldn't blame you if you did. I hate me, too. I'm starting to think, that I need someone. I need something, actually. I need hope. I need something that can give me hope, because I can't find it myself. I want to find hope in someone's smile, in the way they look at me, in their words. I want to look to the sky and see sunlight instead of an impending storm. I want to be happy and not feel like I'm nothing. Not feel like no one'll like me if I just be myself." She stopped, her voice was beginning to shake. She dropped her hands, not bothering to end her prayer, and laid back down on the bed, opening her laptop up again and shifting through it absentmindedly.

As though fate was on her side tonight, a beep alerted her of a Skype message. She was to come home to New York tonight, there was a family emergency. She'd find out later her dog had passed away, but with no information whatsoever, she packed her car and was back in New York by the time the morning rolled around.

When she found out the news, she was crushed. She'd immediately slinked away from her home, sitting in the park, staring blankly at a book in her lap. What did she have now? Part of her began to consider moving back to New York and quitting this whole college thing. She could write a few books, maybe make a bit of money.

She looked up after a while, still tired, and someone caught her eye. She was a bit older, but the same size as Bella, and remarkably beautiful. When she looked Bella's way and met her eyes, giving her a small smile, Bella felt her heart skip a beat. Her prayer from earlier played through her mind again, and there was no doubt about what had just happened.