The Lazarus Project

One. Sometimes all it takes is one: a bullet, a breath, a well placed finger over a sternum breathing ragged and barely contained. One eye glaring at two. 

There's something to be said for it, that eye -- and those hands. They clutch his wrist and he knows in that moment he'd fare no better than bone china. Lazarus can, would break him.

 But then he doesn't. A single dry digit is enough to keep him pinned. It makes about as much sense as a pane of glass against a monsoon and still the rage abates like water. 

In the distance, there's thunder. The danger isn't over yet. 

"What?" Irritation seeps into the usual flatness of his tone. "You know what you made me do." Lazarus' growl comes from somewhere deep in that ravaged chest. It brews like a storm.  "What you continue to make me do." 

Svelka's finger trails up the small divide between his pectorals, resting it in the hollow of his clavicle. So much promise he only now begins to truly see. 

"We have a deal," he says, "Either you'll continue to uphold that deal or you won't." 

The Lazarus Project. It does have a nice ring to it.

i had nothing