#nightmarxa

[ i say this a lot but i really fucked this one up sorry ;; my idea kept changing and i didn't know what to do with it ]

Wanted posters, nosy police, even nosier investigators, and innocent bystanders. Their lives had consisted only of the aforementioned obstacles for months now. The only handicap granted to them being a mutual understanding for bringing chaos to the world and an unusual amount of trust invested within one another. Despite a strange lack of knowledge about each other (excluding their names, or aliases to be exact), no one could manage to break the two partners apart. Refusal to give up information that neither had a clue about on the other often led to the belief that they did not actually know each other. Many deemed them the “Stranger Couple.” And they would be known as such until their very downfall.

They had met during a classified mission that no one speaks of unto this very day. Dozens of dead bodies, hundreds of missing cases and files, thousands of firearms, millions of bills, all destroyed in a mysterious fire. Every trace of evidence towards the incident that day had been erased. All of it except for the last two remaining participants. Everyone else had died. Shot, stabbed, burned or choked to death in a frenzied escape from the hell hole they had all been contained in. An unexpected tragic event, the police department and news had called it. But those who were there, most of them knew that they would most likely never be coming back. None of them wanted to. Most of them knew they wouldn’t be making it home either, but a chance to be free was rewarded to the best of the best, and they would fight to their last breaths for the opportunity.

Some twisted, fucked up game of life forced on children who had just reached their teenage years. They had all been played as pieces in some inhumane game of survival, without a single way to prevent it. Stolen from their homes right from under their parents noses. Weeks of searching ended without one child returned to where they belonged. The area they had been taken too remained unknown until the day they all died. And that’s where they grew. Together in an unknown area, tormented by endless threats and impossible commands. Trained to be unbeatable forces obedient to whatever instructions given to them. Rebellion was the unfortunate end to several lives. Talking back resulted in an hour of torture. Maybe even more if one was truly disrespectful to their ‘masters.’

After, everything that happened before was no longer important and stolen from the survivor’s thoughts. That incident had become a thing of the past, never to be spoken about. The team would merely take whatever good occurred there and leave the bad in the back of vicious minds. Growing from one’s experiences was vital in all cases, even the most terrible. The two of them were a team not to be reckoned with. Without emotions to fuel their actions, the skills they learned being the one thing remembered from years of nothing but torture. The one thing valuable enough to actually remember. Routine ordered minds reconstructed to follow the deadliest instincts inflicted upon humanity. From theft to murder, it was as if it were needed to stay alive.

"Don’t trust him," she insisted, calm and composed compared to the nonstop fidgeting male beside her. "He knows you. He knows everything. He’ll rat you out and have you disposed of once you think you’re friends."

A whimper sounds from the male whenever the gun points slightly at him, flinching harshly as if pained by something. “Come on, A! We’re in the same faction. W-Why would I ever betray you?”

Breath coming in short, pants, she holds the gun in both hands, cautiously flicking its aim rapidly between her two foes. Her arms tremble with the heaviness of balancing the gun against her nervous unsteadiness. Sweat drips from her hair and rolls fluidly down her face, slightly hitting the corner of small, almond-shaped eyes before falling to hang at her chin. Both of her opponents stand with their hands up, not much difference between them, and she is frightened, absolutely terrified by the fact that there is a fifty percent chance she’ll make the wrong decision. She had fought so hard to get here and now it would all be deposited into one shot of luck. The minutes were swiftly ticking away, footsteps quickly approaching in the distance.

Time presses mercilessly down on her shoulders. Her burden being added to by limits. To trust a friend, or to trust a stranger? To put her life in a stranger’s hands or the hands of a man so caring and friendly that he protected her through out this all. Frustration causes her to press a hand to her forehead, stressed to the point of a throbbing headache. If not for attempting to maintain her confident stature, she might have broken down in tears and begged for them to just work together. Everyone here wanted the same thing. They all wanted to escape from this monstrous place called ‘home.’ Together they would be able to, but their ‘masters’ effectively brainwashed them to fight against one another. Selflessness would get you nowhere.

“‘Those who betray shall pay! Trust only those who you’ve been given the chance to analyze everyday.’ Remember?”

With just that, her previously muddled mind was cleared with righteous realization. Each faction had a motto to create union between its members, to create an easy way to identify your partners. The muzzle of the gun swings over to point at the woman, finger beginning to squeeze down on the trigger. Relief washes away the distressed expression on the male’s face and he even smiles, beginning to shuffle away from the scene. Gain breaks the first rule they learned when firing weapons. She closed her eyes as she took her shot, arms jerking from the force of it. Thump! The heavy sound of a body dropping to the ground causes her to open her eyes. Blood is splattered on the clothing of the other, leaking onto the floor from a wound inflicted on the limp and lifeless male.

Both women stare at one another with skeptical glances, uncertain of whether this meant they could trust each other now. Before the other can ask, Gain answers the question present on the nameless woman’s mysterious expression. “That wasn’t our motto. That was—it just wasn’t ours.”

The woman nods in understanding, bending down to strip the traitorous male of any items he had. There are several pieces of paper crumbled in his pants pocket along with a few bullets. The papers are tore into shreds and handed to Gain but the bullets are kept. She wonders if she should be terrified by staying with this stranger as she stares at the shreds in her sweaty palm. However, no time is left for lengthy thoughts and decisions. Running footsteps are heard closer now than they had been before. Voices screaming and yelling orders about catching any survivors and putting them to death. Their tragedy is not over yet. She has no choice but to trust the other until their escape from Hell is ensured in multiple situations.

"We’re getting out of here," her unknown companion explains while reloading a gun no one knew she had. "But I can’t trust you when I can’t see you."

"Together then? As partners?”

"Partners."