Kate isn’t a complete stranger to being woken up with a gun pointed to her head, but she’s definitely not used to it being Yelena itching to pull the trigger.
The cold metal of the muzzle of the gun is pressed harshly into her forehead, biting into her skin. She lays frozen, not even daring to breathe, her body pinned to the bed by Yelena’s weight. Her girlfriend is breathing hard, her teeth bared as soft snarls echo from her throat. There’s a wild look in her eye, the same hollow, glassy sheen that overtakes her in the throes of bloodlust and sorrow.
A strike of fear tries to shoot up Kate’s spine, but she clamps it down and refuses to humor it. Yelena is stuck in her head. Yelena had a nightmare. Yelena doesn’t know it’s her.
Yelena would never hurt her, she tells herself. Yelena would never hurt me.
“Yelena,” Kate dares to whisper, her lips barely moving. The blonde’s hand is pressed firmly to her chest, the flesh of her palm molded by Kate’s sternum. It’s started to move, inching to Kate’s neck, fingertips hooking over her collarbones. Kate doesn’t dare to swallow the saliva that’s building under her tongue.
There’s no response, no change to the way Yelena’s brows are furrowed, no twitch to her lips as they curl over her teeth. Her incisors practically gleam in the darkness.
“Yelena, baby.”
Yelena’s hand lands on Kate’s throat, fingers trembling as they brush over her windpipe, tracing her Adam’s apple and squeezing ever so slightly into the muscle of the sides of her neck. Kate’s breath catches, her eyes wide. Yelena is looking right through her. The gun presses harder into her forehead, the pinch a dull echo through the haze of panic that’s starting to build.
Her girl is speaking now, the Russian thick and slurred, too fast for Kate to pick through and decipher. She’s begun to tremble, chest heaving and gun rattling in her grasp.
“Yelena.” Kate can feel something cold and horrible building in her stomach, underneath her skin. She slowly raises her hands so that Yelena can see them, and hazel eyes snap around, her lips pulling back further as the low snarl that hasn’t ceased for a moment in her throat only seems to grow. “Yelena. It’s me. It’s Kate.”
“Kate is dead.”
Kate feels her blood run cold, and she can’t stop her body from trembling. “What-”
“She’s dead.” Yelena has leaned closer, her hand tightening on Kate’s throat. She’s breathing hard, panting through her nose and between her teeth, and the look in her eyes has only deepened, shattering over her face. “She is dead.”
Her finger is twitching over the trigger, and Kate’s eyes dart over the firearm. The safety is off. The cold metal has cut through her skin, and she’s distantly aware of a thin trickle of blood seeping down her forehead.
The fear overpowers her will, and Kate reacts before she can think. Her hands dart for the gun, trying to push it up and away, her head pressing down into the pillow to get out of its aim.
Kate’s ears are ringing. Tears sting her eyes. The gun went off. The gun went off. Yelena shot it. Yelena shot her-
No, not her, she can still think. Her brain is still inside her skull. Her eyes are functioning in their sockets. There’s a throbbing in the side of her head, and the ringing has turned into a scream, but she’s mostly sure she’s not dead.
The shot seems to have woken Yelena fully, her mouth hanging open and eyes staring directly down at Kate. She seems to take it in all at once- her girlfriend, laying underneath her, pinned down by her weight. Her hand, wrapped much too tightly around Kate’s throat. The pistol that she keeps in her nightstand, pointed only inches away from Kate’s ear, and the bullet hole in the headboard, splintered wood jagged as it pokes out.
There’s a moment where the world completely stops, and for a moment, there’s nothing but Yelena and Kate, one breathing and one not, one scared and one horrified, both with tears on their cheeks and uncertainty on how to move forward in their chests.
Yelena is scrambling off of Kate and out of bed half a second later, the gun dropping to the blankets silently as she yanks the window open and disappears into the cold night. She has to get out. She has to get away. Far away, where she won’t almost kill the one thing she has left to love.
Kate doesn’t move to follow her. She lays there on her back, throat aching and head spinning as she sobs, and the fear only tightens its grip on her shaking body.