BLACK

CHAPTER 3

As the warm water cascaded down her naked body, black felt her tense muscles relax. This was her favourite part after a mission. A nice and warm shower. But it is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because of the comfort it offers. A curse because it gives her mind time to race back to her past, a time that have wounded her mind permanently, a time that soaked her last set of tears. So that is what she does everytime she is having a shower. She thinks about her past. No, she relives it.

Five years ago........

An ear piercing scream and the sound of glass shattering downstairs interrupted the much needed sleep of Fiona. The thin walls of her room were doing a poor job at keeping the shouting from downstairs away from her ears. It was like all other nights. Peace and silence inside her house was like rain on a desert. The normal routine was her drunk father barging in every night when she and her mother was sharing stories while having dinner. He would immediately start screaming and Fiona would be ordered to go to her room by her mother. Fiona would cry herself to sleep because all she wanted was a nice family like her peers'.

Today, however, her father came later than usual. What surprised Fiona even more was that, this time, she could hear her mother's shoutings too. That had never happened before. Her mother was a quiet and gentle soul, her guardian angel, the only person who holds a place in Fiona's heart. Fiona have always encouraged her mother to do something about her father. But her mother still loved him.

Fiona's thoughts were cut short by another scream that she recognised as her mother's. With tremendous fear but without hesitation, her feet carried her downstairs. When she reached the kitchen, the first thing she noticed was her father, a murderous glint in his eyes and a victorious smirk on his lips. His pale blue shirt had splotches of red in it and his bloody hand held the neck of a broken beer bottle.Her eyes were wide as she stared at the crimson liquid dripping down from the edge of the bottle. Her heart hoped for it to be his blood,but her mind thought otherwise. She wanted to believe her heart,she almost did until she saw a lifeless body lying on the floor just behind him. It was her mother. A pool of blood adorned her face, which was in contact with the cold kitchen floor, like a halo. Even in her death she was an angel.

Fiona shifted her gaze from her mother to her father who was staring at her.His eyes held an unreadable emotion. Her hands shaking with fear of her father's next move. All she knew was that she didn't wanted to meet her mother's fate. She won't die, not before killing him first, not before seeing the defeat in her father's eyes when he begs for mercy like her mother might've. She wanted revenge. And she will have it.

Her furious eyes took a look at the man that destroyed her everything one more time amd she ran. Her legs carried her through the front door and into the streets. She left everything behind, her dead mother, her shouting father and her old self. She ran and ran until her muscles couldn't work anymore. Her legs gave out and she fell on the concrete sidewalk. Now that her anger is gone, all she can feel is loss, defeat and regret. She should've went downstairs sooner. Then maybe, she could've saved her. Tears streamed down her face as she brought her knees under her chin and hugged herself. The chilly breeze of the night couldn't bother her. Her body was too focused on shaking from her sobs that it failed to register the shivers from the cold.

In the middle of her sobbing, she felt a warm touch on her shoulder. She saw from her peripheral vision that it was a hand. Her mother had warned her about the dangerous strangers of the night many times. But this touch was anything but threatening. It was rather comforting. Her blood shot eyes lifted its focus from the grey road to the stranger's eyes. And just like that, she stared at the kind brown eyes that belonged to a man that was going to change her life forever