she had stood, watching her city burn and the flames of panic and disorder paint the sky red. everything had been broken glass and black smoke skies, with the groaning black dead with their sloughing off skin and dead eyes alight with a hunger for the taste of life - the thing they had been robbed of was the thing they were driven to hunt. she would kill them all, with their black blood thick with disease, and she would make a throne of their corpses. leto would crown herself queen of the dead world, with smears of blood like war paint high on her cheekbones. she would be alone on the edge of the world with the dead at her feet as silent company.

and the quiet would consume her and cleanse her and restructure her bones and turn her blood from black to blue to burning red; pulsing, alive, red. she would sit on her throne of rotting flesh and bone with the dirt scraped under her nails and eyes like blue wildfire, harsh and glittering and alight with a cold fury that could not be sated.

not from killing a hundred. not from killing a thousand.

her knife spins delicately on the ball of her thumb and she laughs at him, a cold, callous laugh that is abrasive and echoes in the depths of her ribcage. this judah who clutched at his bow like she clutched at her knives, only he did it from habit, a survivalist instinct, she did it because she liked the feel of the cool metal on her skin - the danger of holding a weapon so close to cutting her and spilling blood. she stays quiet though, bites back the acerbic remark that rises on her tongue like some threatened snake. he need not know, she merely watches him with a raised eyebrow.

the glass smashes against the wall and the last remnants of beer spill out and spread amongst the floor and she wants to flinch, shout at him how stupid it was to make such a noise but she just stares at the pile of shards on the floor; she wonders who will be the one to cut themselves trying to clean it up. she doesn’t move, sets her shoulders and pushes them further into the corner where she sits.