To preface this with more than just a chapter, I got the idea of seeing a writing prompt this on social media the other day. Normally I ignore them but this apparently scratched my noggin the right way to go for it.

What followed was about 4500 words of an idea that had nowhere to go.

I do have ideas on what I could do with this and honestly could have done another 4k from just this but 1) I don't have time and 2) I am distraction central and if I do not finish one project it will never get done and I want it to get done.

So this goes here for now. It doesn't have a title. It doesn't have reasons for what leads into his besides 'bad guy do bad thing, less bad guy find bad things.'

Read it if you want. It's long. It's going here for now because I want to. It's probably got errors and no I haven't checked. It's the beginnings of a thought that hasn't really been established yet.
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Kaleb Heath just wanted to have a normal Friday night. Just him, a bowl of popcorn, his cat, and some old silent film he'd grabbed from the library a week prior and never got a chance to watch.

A normal, mundane, Friday night.

When something slammed against his front door and scraped down the side he knew he wasn't going to get his wish.

He paused the movie almost immediately, set the half empty bowl of popcorn on the desk in front of him, overtop a few old blueprints he'd drawn out for an extension to his home that he never bothered to move. As he did he grabbed a relatively long pillow and placed it over the top of the bowl to stall time before his cat could get into it.

Kaleb waited a moment, listening for any other sound... like maybe footsteps as they left. Or weapons readying. Or voices.

Nothing.

Why him? Why couldn't whatever event it was move three houses down, why'd it have to pick him?

Midway to the door he paused, eyes lingering on a bookcase a split second too long.

It was fine. Chances were, it was the neighbor's kids playing pranks again and he'd get to explain to them, nicely, why exactly they should leave him the hell alone.

It was fine.

Kaleb Heath opened the door to silence. Just a flickering light that lit up the narrow walkway between the yard and his porch broken the stillness of the night.

Then, he looked down and to the right.

In the corner, pulled in by shadows and the slim area the light didn't touch, was a girl. She had a thin, pale face-- forehead, chin and cheeks covered in tiny scratches, with a deep purple splotch forming on her left cheek, right under her eye. Her hair was so blonde it was nearly white, straight as a pin, and short enough it appeared it'd usually be in a type of bob around her chin,  except now strands of it were knotted and plastered over bloody streaks on her face. Her body was thin, like a dancer's, except now it folded in odd ways and held too many rivers of blood down her bare arms and legs, some limbs torn from slashes and some with bullet holes. Her fingers splayed out with each gurgled breath, dancing around a long, metal sword shoved deep into her chest.

She'd have been cute, if not for the damage done to her.

Kaleb stared, open mouthed, at the girl. He'd seen things. Sometimes been around them as they happened.

Nothing like this.

This, that managed to be on his porch at ten o' clock at night instead of a hospital.

The two locked eyes. Hers were odd. Familiar in a way they shouldn't have been. Deep brown, nearly all black, they swarmed with echos of the darkness around her.

He only knew one pair of eyes like that.

"... didn't know where else t- to go." The soft, choked words, shredded by her own gasps, were almost apologetic. They held a twinge of fear. Of hurt.

The moment her voice hit his ears he knew who she was. He heard that voice every time he dropped his mask. Every time he went to work. It was the voice that taunted him. Jeered him. Fought him.

Shadow.

In an instant, the shoulder-length, messy red hair and silver eyes he'd given himself vanished, replaced by an ever-changing mask of a face, always searching for a form and never landing on it. He moved out of his doorway and crouched in front of her, arms anchored onto the walls beside him in hopes the black drapes of an old bathroom would block the blood and body from view of any watchers who passed by.

As he did, he leaned forward, voice the growling whisper of a man known not as Kaleb Heath, but feared as the Bonestealer.

"Yet you chose here." His lips twisted into a sneer, the expression taking command of his entire face. "Why."

Shadow-- the girl-- the one who was dying on his front porch-- tried to form words, but all that came out were broken letters and gasps.

The Bonestealer pulled his attention to her chest. To the sword, driven deep through her. To the blood that drenched her shirt and pooled onto the concrete.

Whatever he was going to do, she couldn't stay there. It'd draw the neighbors, then the police, then the Heightened.

The Heightened.

A sinking feeling tugged at his gut. He knew how the Shadow fought. He couldn't do this much to her, let alone any other random thief she met.

Gravel crunched in the road as a car road past. At the noise, Shadow's eyes grew wider, full of a panic he'd not seen before, and she flicked her fingers up to point toward the strobing light. Tendrils of darkness crept forward and covered it, hiding the two from prying eyes.

As a car door opened a few houses down and chattering voices of the family grew louder then disappeared into their house, Shadow tried to speak again.

"You..." Her chest heaved, voice cracked at barely above a whisper. "...the on-- only one I could... trust."

Trust. 

Yeah, right.

"We try to kill each other on a bi-weekly basis, of course I'm the one to trust. Obviously." Bonestealer shifted closer, his face less than an inch away from Shadow's. He let a hand fall from the wall and grasped the hilt of the sword in her. "I could end you right now," he hissed. "It'd be easy, like taking a pin from a pincushion."

The girl didn't flinch. Kept her gaze on his. "Do it," she wheezed. "Only way... be able to."

Never planned on killing her like that anyway.

He let go of the sword and stood, eyes wandering to the world around them. Except for the few cars and road noises, it was silent. Still. Waiting.

The neighbors didn't need to see this next part

Bonestealer reached up, toward the shadows that still covered the porch light. As soon as his fingers brushed the fixture he started to turn, eventually popping out the bulb that went with it before placing the cover back on. The shadows swarming the light drew back near his touch, some retreating so far as to go back to the girl.

Some shadows faded.

Her shadows never faded.

Lightbulb in his hands, he whirled back to Shadow. Her arms that had been hugged so close to her chest were beside her, palms up on the concrete. Her chin tilted up slightly, head leaning against the bricks and to the side. The air that was a warzone of her breathing moments before held tiny rattles every time she tried.

Bonestealer bent beside her again, bulb now shattered in a million pieces across the porch. He could get it later. As he neared, Shadow kept an unfocused gaze on him, each second a growing struggle for her to hold it.

The man placed a hand on her arm, over the gashes and bullet wounds, and as he did he was no longer Bonestealer. The reddish hair fell back into its place, the eyes silver and piercing once more. Kaleb let the mask raise up again, this time with hints of a beard around his chin and freckles over his nose.

She'd already seen it. What was the point of hiding that any longer. Besides, she had never told Bonestealer information he needed before. Kaleb Heath though, he may have an easier time

As Kaleb moved his hand from her arm, the wounds it held vanished, the only trace they were ever there the blood that covered her skin and a gnawing of a headache he felt in the back of his head.

"I'm not going to call you Shadow. Not right now and not when we aren't working. So, I need you to tell me your name."

She didn't answer, just stared him down as best she could.

Kaleb sighed. "You have mine. You have my address. If I'm going to try to keep you alive, I need to know who you are."

He pressed his hand against her leg for a second, and the scrapes on it disappeared.

The gnawing in his head grew louder.

"Katya," she breathed. Kaleb drew his attention back to her. She fumbled for a word, then said softer than before, "M-martel."

Katya Martel. The Shadow.

Kaleb gave her a quick smile. "I'd say nice to meet you, but it's not. I wouldn't wish these circumstances for meeting someone on my worst enemy, yet here we are."

The edges of her lips twitched up before her head rolled forward. He caught it with his right hand and pressed her up again, letting her cheek rest against his palm.

"Katya? You can't do that quite yet, okay? I need you awake for this next part."

He placed his free hand on the hilt of the sword and his other on her side. "This thing screams either traceable or trackable. Seeing as we haven't been obliterated, it's a slow trace and I need to get rid of it. So here's how this is going to go. " He leaned closer, set a knee behind him. "If you make a sound I will bury you with this sword. I will heal you when it's out, but you can't go to sleep, understood? I have three questions I need answered, and if I ask you now you will die before you can answer them. You will be safe if you do this. Deal?"

As much as she could, she nodded.

"Good."

Kaleb didn't give her a countdown. Hand to heal her as close to the blade as he could, he pulled the sword away. For a second as he did, all of the blood the metal held back came with it until his hand pressed against the hole so hard it was as if he was going to push through her. 

Her weak breath caught, but she didn't utter a sound. 

The longer he held his hand to her gut, the more the  gnaw in his head turned to a slow pound. He wouldn't be able to hold it for long. Hopefully, enough. 

Katya's eyelids fluttered. She didn't have long either-- air no longer rasps to get in, but weak. Slim. Warm,  dark liquid coated nearly every inch of the corner, far too much of it and all hers. 

Kaleb placed a hand on her neck, thumb against her jawbone. Cold. 

First question.  The kindness he tried to muster a minute before vanished, replaced by a stubborn fury. His voice was hard. Firm, even while quiet. The Bonestealer's. 

"Who did this to you?"

The girl's lips moved enough he could see the word,  but not hear it. He leaned in again, ear near her mouth. 

"Ev'r... everyone."

Not enough to go by. Kaleb pressed his fingers against her skin slightly, the pressure enough to get her gaze to fall to him once more. 

"Was it the Heightened?"

The word he knew was coming was too soft to be a whisper. Too quiet to be a breath. He understood it anyway. 

Yes.

Knowing the answer didn't stop his pulse from quickening. His mind raced with questions he needed the answer for, none he could ask or get.  They flipped. They turned on their own-- why would they turn on their own? What parts of a story did he miss and what parts did no one know?

An agony erupted in his head, and instinct caused him to snatch his hands away from the girl and close to him instead. Yellow and sickly green lights flashed through his vision; a sour, metallic taste at the coated the top of his tongue and edges of his lips. For a split second his heart pounded in his ears and gut hovered around the top of his throat, and the next instant all of it was gone, replaced by a repeated hammer through his brain and black spots that he knew all too well weren't going to leave his sight any time soon.

Too much. He could heal her no more.

Kaleb glanced at her chest, like he thought he'd be able to see if she still bled. He knew his mistake as soon as he tried and brought his focus back to her face.

Eyes shut. Head tilted. Still as the grave.

Shit.

Kaleb placed both hands on her cheeks, then one in her shoulder. She still breathed-- barely. It wouldn't be for long. He didn't doubt she still bled too, and that was no longer a problem he could fix from his front porch. 

"Katya." He pushed into her shoulder to try and shake her. "Katya, we have one question left."

Her lashes fluttered.

A long list of swears went through his head.

"Katya." His voice raised. "Look at me, do they know where you are?"

She didn't respond. Kaleb forced himself to take a breath and not shout louder. If anyone saw, it'd be over.

So, he tried a different way. Everything he asked, it was as the Bonestealer. Sure, he held Kaleb Heath's face, but the words and actions were those of one so many considered a villain.

The Shadow fought. She tried. Eyelids fluttered, lips twitched to try and answer him, yet she held no strength to do so.

By all accounts, she should already be dead.

Kaleb cupped her head in his hands and leaned in, lips right at her ear. He brushed strands of her hair back from her face, held her almost like a cradle. Her body was limp like a thrown away rag doll except for the small streams of air she gulped in and blood that rolled off her skin.

The last time he was this close, she'd proceeded to nearly tear him apart with her shadows and he managed to burn a stash of wallets and payments the Heightened got as thanks for assistance.

That wasn't this time. This time, if he truly wanted, he could end a fight before it ever began.

But he didn't want. Not that.

"I know you're tired," Kaleb breathed. "I know you are and I know that all you want right now is to rest. I just need you to answer me, okay? I need to know what we're dealing with, and then you can sleep."

He leaned his forehead against the wall and tried to reform his thoughts. If his head would stop screaming, it'd make his life much easier.

"You found me, Katya. I don't know how you did but you did. I need you to tell me if the rest of the Heightened have that information."

He didn't know if she opened her eyes again. He didn't feel her stir either. Just two hints of a word were what he got, yet it was enough for him to understand.

"They will."

He sat back as soon as she said it, resting her head against the stone bricks once more.

Too many thoughts.

Too many possibilities.

What the hell happened that the Shadow turned to the Bonestealer for help?

Whatever it was, he didn't have time to think about it.

As quickly as he could, he grabbed the sword and shoved it against the wall as close as it'd get, lifting one of the potted plants he had sitting out to cover the hilt of it. He'd deal with that as soon as the Shadow wasn't dying by the second.

It'd have to be soon though.

Carefully, he placed one palm against her back, between her shoulder blades, and the other he kept in front of her to stop her head from rolling too far forward as he pulled her torso close to him. When she was near enough he could let her weight fall against his side, he slipped an arm beneath her legs and lifted.

If not for every bit of resistance that was gone from her, she would have been easy to hold. He twisted so her cheek lay against his shoulder and one arm was cradled against her stomach and his chest. The other dropped the moment he picked her up and dangled in the open air, swinging each step he took.

As he pushed open his front door he paused, trying to hear any signs of life from the broken girl. For the second time that night, he received nothing.

Kaleb slammed the door shut behind them with his foot. They needed to get to the lab. They needed to be there five minutes ago. He couldn't heal her any more. Any of that, and the way the screaming in his head was, he'd collapse. Maybe though, maybe he could do enough to keep her however she was. Whatever state she was. As he thought it, his vision blurred. The world rocked for just a moment before it rightened itself to normal.

The pounding grew louder.

Kaleb grit his teeth and faced the bookshelf. His way down he couldn't reach while holding the girl.

Good thing he had a fix for that.

"Noodle! Button please."

There was a flurry of sounds from the living room before his cat pranced out, shrouded by the dull light from the still-paused movie. As Noodle passed him, a small kernel of popcorn fell from his tail to the floor just inside Kaleb's sight.

He sighed. Of course the cat got into the popcorn. Why wouldn't it.

Noodle hopped from one shelf to the other, orange and white striped tip of his tail the only thing visible on him until a book flopped to the ground and a low grinding sound grew from below them. The cat hopped away just in time for the shelf to grind to the side, giving way to small area lit by a white light.

Kaleb went toward it and clicked the side of his cheeks twice. Instead of going back to the chaos of popcorn and movies, Noodle waltzed into the area with him and rubbed around his ankles.

The Bonestealer smiled down at his cat. "Hey buddy. I'll get you some tuna later, yeah?"

His answer was a screeching meow.

The room lurched and the grinding came back, this time clear it fell with the elevator.

Kaleb leaned against the cold, stainless steel of the walls in hopes of his brain reorganizing itself. The longer he held the Shadow, the worse the pain between his eyes grew and the more the world became unsteady and unfocused.

Was she even still alive?

He looked into her face. There in the light was the first time he could tell how pale she really was. Her skin was a strange greyish, her lips tinged with hints of blue around the edges and speckled with flecks of ruby. Tiny beads of perspiration sat at the top of her forehead but didn't fall, nor did she shake with the chill that usually came with them.

Unconscious, she looked like a child. Young. From how she acted when they had their wars he always assumed mid-twenties, but now... she couldn't have been more than twenty-one, and even then he'd be surprised.

A small flame of anger at the Heightened sparked once more. Shadow burst into the scene five years before. They sent a child to fight their war.

Tiny clinks caught his attention. Steady. Like drips. Kaleb stepped back and looked at the ground. Droplets of blood shone up at him from the steel below, stealing pieces of their reflection and casting it away. They speckled the floor, falling from the fingertips of her dangling arm. It was probably upstairs too, on the carpet he waiting on for Noodle to press the button.

Kaleb's attention drew back to Katya's body-- more accurately, what covered her. Her shirt was ripped in too many different places, some hidden behind the deep stains of red coating her. That red turned nearly black at her stomach, all pulled together where the sword had been. Her right leg and arm still held open holes and gashes, yet the flow of life was paused by him as he just tried to keep her alive.

His breath caught. Outside, he hadn't known just how bad it was.

She should be dead.

Was she dead? She still hadn't moved since the warning.

As his head demanded he stop trying to keep her breathing, he fought to hold his voice steady. "Katya, I swear if you're dead after all this I'm going to kill you."

Almost on cue, her eyelids fluttered.

Good.

The elevator stopped and doors opened to give way to a room just as bright as the lift. The walls were bare, white and unnaturally clean, so with machines pressed against them. A long, silver table was in the middle of the room, covered in papers with drawings and his scrawled writing over them. A sink was near it, the counter holding cups and sharp items, cabinets closed beneath it.

"Bill!" Kaleb shouted. Sheets flew from the corner of the room, and from under them a tall, gangly man leapt from a bed. His brown hair was thin, scattered in clumps around his skull like patchwork. He wore a lab coat that stopped just above his wrists and was slightly too short, the coat splotched with dried gunk and black marks. His face mimicked the color of the walls, his cheeks and eye sockets sunken in with an expression too blank to be gaunt. The only thing about him that held life were his eyes, and the one time Kaleb looked at them the more he realized they held nothing behind them but muscle.

"Is that the Shadow?" Bill's voice crackled with rasps. Kaleb would have to check that soon.

Kaleb tightened his grip on the girl as the world swayed again. "Just clear off the table please, Bill." 

The man-- not quite alive and not quite dead-- moved to the mess of the table and gathered the papers in a pile, sorting through some as he went.

"Just throw it!" Kaleb got closer, halfway laying Katya down on the slab and used his free hand to shove as much as he could away. As he did, Bill snatched his nicely stack pile and chucked it across the room.

"Apologies. You told me not to the other day."

The other day, yes. Then, he was over a bottle of wine deep in bad ideas and had gotten the shit beaten out of him earlier by the very person he was trying to save.

Kaleb sighed. "I'll sort it later. Right now I need you to get her oxygen and blood. No, I don't know what type, you'll have to test it," he added as Bill started to ask. "Bring everything over here before you start."

He shut his eyes as the man did as he said. Each jolt of the objects needed scraping or bumping something send a pain akin to an ice pick being driving into the base of his skull.

Focus.

Keep her alive. Get rid of the sword. Clean the blood. Get answers.

Keep her alive. Get rid of the sword. Clean the blood. Get answers.

God, it hurt.

He cracked an eye, just to glance. Most of everything lay in neat piles near Katya. Kaleb straightened, waiting for Bill to get the last item he needed.

There were painkillers upstairs. Just... get through this.

Kaleb shut his eyes again, hands clasped around Katya's arm as she lay on the table. A clatter came from beside him and Bill started shuffling around, rearranging cables and machines, flipping switches he knew to flip only because the Bonestealer's constant habit of nearly dying.

He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and wake up in a week.

Issue was, there was a sword, upstairs, on his front porch, covered in blood, that may or may not have been tracked.

He may need to deal with that.

"Bill?" Kaleb grabbed the deadish man's wrist with one hand and stretched it forward. "Put this hand on her while you get everything straight. Keep it on her." He leaned closer. "Do not let go until you're sure she'll live, understand?"

Bill's mouth dropped open slightly more than it usually was. "I most certainly don't? You expect me to do this?"

"You were a doctor seven lifetimes ago, and those are the core memories I saved." Kaleb flashed him a quick smile, though it likely appeared as more of a grimace. "Yes."

The gawking mouth moved with no words. "I don't know how to heal her though!"

Kaleb let go of Bill's arm and moved toward the elevator. The mere act of walking wanted to send him to the floor.

"You were literally raised to heal, Bill."

He caught sight of Noodle across the room, playing with a string that terrified him to know what it was. "Don't let Noodle out of this room until I give the clear. And--" He whirled, arm out. "If anyone besides me walks into his house and you see it on the cameras-- please turn them on, by the way-- leave her, take the cat, and get the hell out. Let Noodle go when you're a ways away. "

At least the cat would survive this ordeal. Maybe be adopted by a family that understood his love for tuna more than Kaleb.

He'd doubt that though.

"What is going on?" Bill's hand flew into the air. "All of this with no explanation, and enemy on your table, why?"

Kaleb mashed the button to go up and the doors started to close with a jolt. "Trying to find that out!" he shouted.

He didn't know if the words went through before the steel blocked everything out. Didn't really care either. He just had to figure out what to do with a weapon.

When the doors opened upstairs and he saw the trail of blood coating the floor, he marked another item down on the list in his mind. Bleach. He needed to find his bleach.

The television screen still stared at him as he went toward the outside, movie paused and popcorn untouched except by cat.

So much for a movie night.