A hush settled over the world as I fell into a dark abyss. It was like those moments in a dream, when you can feel yourself falling before you jolt yourself awake.

Except, there was no moment of catapulting back to consciousness, drool sneaking from the corner of my mouth and sleep clouding my eyes. Now I was just falling.

Falling.

Falling.

That invisible chord, which usually kept me anchored to the life beyond this realm, now felt endless. Somehow, it was less of a tether and more of a tenuous lifeline held loosely around my wrist, finer than silk. Any moment I expected it to break and flutter in the endless dark like a spider's web severed by the wind.

I should be afraid, but there was something serene about the absence of everything.

This oblivion.

The tether tugged and with it I felt the sensation shift. Like the arc of a swing, or the bottom of a bungee jump, I knew I'd reached the edge of what was possible in this temporary place. To go any further would be to sever the ties I still had, to know that falling deeper would mean something permanent. Irrevocable.

I felt myself get wrenched back.

Consciousness rushed in; a ravenous beast engulfing the remaining darkness. Silence and serenity were replaced with shouts of a struggle and the roar of racing blood.

My lungs burned as I gasped and gulped for air. My throat screamed in agony as the bruised flesh worked around every frantic breath.

I didn't know how long I'd been out, but I could still feel the heat from R's hands searing a ring around my neck.

My eyes wheeled around the room, trying to orientate myself as the fog started to clear from my head. Something had stopped R.

Or someone.

That thought sharpened my senses, and with it my gaze snapped to the sight of R slumped in a chair, just like my own. A figure loomed behind him, tying his hands and feet with rapid efficiency.

I squinted in the light of the lantern, as its bright beam obscured the person from view.

I tried to call out, but the words caught in my throat. I coughed around them, wincing at the way the movement worked the tender muscles in my chest.

In a blink of an eye, Olivia crouched before me. Her golden skin was flawless, as were the gilded curls that framed her doll-like face. She was a stark contrast to the gloomy wreckage around us.

Surprise brought on another coughing fit and the remnants of rage in her green eyes softened.

Before I could speak, she flashed behind me.

Her voice was soft as she spoke into the silence. "Thank Fate, I found you in time."

The warm, soft, brushes of her touch, as her fingers worked the bindings, was heaven against the bitter cold and angry burns the ropes had left behind. Within seconds the ropes fell away under her nimble touch.

"I was checking on the flat when I saw the signs of a struggle in your kitchen," she continued as I unfurled my body from the cramped position it had been stuck in for the past few hours. Her eyes scanned over the injuries evident on my creamy skin. The bruises were already starting to form but they were nothing in comparison to the mess I'd made of my wrists. I'd imagined it was bad when I was trying to cut the ropes, but the red angry flesh was worse than I'd expected.

In an instant, she disappeared and returned, offering me a bottle of water.

"Drink this," she prompted as she twisted off the cap. "It will hurt like hell, but it will help."

The plastic bottle crackled as I gulped down the water. She was right, it burned against my throat, but some primal urge in me drank it down like it was ambrosia.

Olivia's lips curved in a slight smile, before she turned towards Mr R. The concerned crease between her eyebrows seemed out of place, out of character.

"Who is he?"

I followed her stare and drank in the appearance of R supine on the chair, trussed up and vulnerable. His nose was bloodied and twisted out of line while blood clotted at the split in his top lip. Olivia had torn a rag from his grey t-shirt and made a gag.

Karma's a bitch.

Whatever Olivia saw in my face seemed to give her all of the answers she needed.

"I've known too many men like him," she murmured, her voice hard as she glared at Mr R's sleeping form. "My entire existence has been dedicated to pleasing them. Some were like him, some weren't... But for all of them I've moulded myself to be what they want. A blonde..." She picked at the curls cut to rest on the elegant sweep of her shoulders, "a brunette," she continued. "Introvert, or extrovert. I've even hopped between vessels just to please them. To please the Council. Each one taking it's toll..." The vitriol in her voice softened as she tore her glare from R to meet my own.

"You can talk to me Anna. Other's won't understand, but I will." The sincerity in her words hung like an olive branch between us.

I could almost feel the words bubbling up my throat, could almost imagine the sweet relief that would follow. How would it feel to finally share that which I'd bottled up all of those years ago, out of fear, out of hurt? All that anguish had only fermented over time, becoming more potent as the years passed, to the point that I knew, like the bile lapping at the base of my throat, it would burn on its way out.

Now wasn't the time, wasn't the place. Olivia wasn't the person I'd weather that storm with.

"Thanks, but... I can't," I croaked as I rubbed at the rope burns on my wrists, trying to ease the way they stung and prickled. The trembling in my fingers increased with each pass as the shock started to set in.

Olivia's lips flattened into a solemn smile as she nodded, "I understand."

Her doe-like eyes watched me carefully, a living porcelain doll. I shivered as some remnant from the night we first met crept along my skin, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

She'd saved me. She'd found me, somehow, and come here, despite our relationship - or lack of. Yet adrenaline still tugged at my muscles, like a parent pulling a child from the water's edge.

I shook off the uneasiness I felt in her presence and turned to sift through the items R had discarded on the countertop when he arrived. His car was the only one parked at the entrance which meant it was the only way I was getting out of here. I thought perhaps Olivia had borrowed Aslo's car, but from the speed she could move at, running would have likely been faster. If she had ran here, her clothes showed no sign of it. She was as pristine as always, but then again, she was a Watcher. When you're able to move with inhuman grace, faster than the eye can see, muddy puddles and wayward branches probably weren't much of an issue.

"Has he got his car keys on him?" I asked over my shoulder while I rifled through the bag Mr R had brought with him. I tried to ignore the way my hands were shaking or the tell tale burn of tears in my eyes. I couldn't break now. There would be time for that - weeks of it, I was sure - but not now. When I was home, curled up with Nightmare and some bad rom-com, then I could let go.

For now, I just had to find a way out of here. At some point I'd have to call the police to come and arrest him, but all my mind, my body, wanted right now was to be as far away from this nightmare as possible.

Olivia didn't respond, instead the sweet, heady scent of incense drifted through the fetid smell of damp and decay. Drawn to the aroma, I twisted to see Olivia standing beside R.

"What are you doing?" I asked as R started to stir. Like lightning, fear struck down to my core. The rational part of me knew that Olivia could control him, but what he'd almost done was too raw to think rationally.

She brushed the remaining ash on her jeans, all that was left of the page she'd burned to wake R up. I gaped while the crooked bend on his broken nose righted itself, and the split on his lip knitted back together, as he healed before my eyes.

"I'm giving you what you need."

What the fuck?

R started to rouse, gagging on the fabric pulled taught across his mouth.

Olivia watched him, like a cheetah hunting a gazelle, as she inched back towards me. "For everything he's done to you, all the pain he's put you through... this is your chance." The lime in her eyes flashed towards me, as sharp as the fruit they resembled. "You can finally hurt him the way he hurt you. Make him feel what you felt." She passed behind me. Her footsteps made no sound; only her voice echoed against the walls. In the descending darkness, she was just a wraith whispering sweet nothings into the gloom.

There was a hunger in her voice that called to the itch inside me. Two kindred spirits.

R was a provocative sight. His eyes were still addled by alcohol, concussion, and whatever effect Olivia's pages had on him. With the sight of him bound and helpless before me, l could feel myself succumbing to the seductive sentiments Olivia whispered from the shadows.

He would have done it to you. The itch cooed, dancing to Olivia's tune like a cobra charmed by a deadly melody. Ready to strike.

Memories I usually fought hard to repress washed over me, and I let them. I sunk into them.

A litany of moments flashed through my head: Mr R and our time together, the things I did to myself at his behest, or in the wake of his absence.

Bitch...Whore... Disappointment.

The world beyond the Conservation Centre ceased to exist. All I saw was him, the master and maker of all the things I hated about myself.

"If you can't do it for yourself," she continued, "then do it for all the others. Because you know there will have been others before you, and after. Other young girls that suffered everything he did to them in silence because they couldn't speak up."

I felt cool metal press against my palm as I was lulled into the vision Olivia painted. One of retribution and bitter revenge.

Not just for myself, but for the others he'd hurt. Like the girl from the bar. Had she been like me? Had she sat there that day with his bruises hidden in places he knew no one would look? I had assumed her glances towards me were out of curiosity and intrigue, but what if they had hidden a plea for help?

My palm tightened around the object in my hand, a knife. The handle moulded to my grip and the weight of it in my hand felt balanced and satisfying.

"You know that when he leaves here, there won't be another chance... You know he'll walk away, like he did before. Like he  always will."

A small nudge, soft but insistent, pushed me toward R while Olivia's words sung a siren song in my head.

Maybe I could cut and cut and cut. Cut him out of me. Rend him down to nothing but flesh and blood. No trace of the man he was. I'd promised myself that I would burn his memory to the ground, like a fire ripping through the forest, taking with it all that was rotten and stifling. This could be just as good; hacking him down until the overbearing branches of his influence were gone. Nothing but a fresh start left behind.

The forest beyond the Centre chattered and rustled, whispering its agreement as the wild winds outside started to scurry through the bare branches.

My feet inched further forward until I could hear the rasp of his breath and see the sheen of sweat across his throat.

"No one will ever know. I can always heal him afterwards. It will be like it never happened," Olivia crooned.

The fog cleared from R's face, and his eyes widened as he saw the knife gripped tightly in my hand. His eyes flashed to mine, shining brightly with fear.

I could almost taste the sweet tang of victory as I stood mesmerised by how weak he was in front of me. I'd dreamed of this moment, and now it was here it didn't seem real. As if in a trance, I slowly dragged the knife from the nape of his neck down to the top of his chest, following the v neck of his t-shirt, enthralled by the way he thrashed and his blood oozed from the small slice.

As he jolted and grunted against the gag, the fabric worked free, and a scream, his scream, cut through the din in my head.

The knife felt so cold in my hand, too cold.

As if zapped by lighting, I pulled my arm back away from R.

"What are you doing?" Olivia hissed, sweeping from the darkness to my side. I should have been shocked by her speed and sudden appearance, but I couldn't take my eyes of the terror painted across R's face. It was the same expression I'd seen in the mirror, the first time he'd taken what I would have offered, had he asked.

"I can't do this," I murmured, fighting the bile in my throat as I realised how close I'd come to twisting myself into some version of him. Cruel, vindictive, heartless.

"Why not?" Olivia exclaimed. The curls around her cherubic face seemed to almost float, like the air around her was charged with electricity. "After everything he did to you? He would have killed you if I hadn't stopped him."

"It doesn't matter. None of it matters anymore." I'd spent too long fixating on shit that was in the past. So much so that I was moments away from giving in to the itch within and slashing R to bits. All for what? Revenge for something that happened five years ago? Something that, if it hadn't happened, wouldn't have led me to where I was now.

"Please," R gasped, fighting through the haze in his mind.

Olivia didn't stop pushing. "He ruined you, Anna. Don't you want to do the same to that perfect face of his? Don't you want him to know how it feels?"

"No." I dropped my hand to my side, looking at the knife clutched in my palm and the red smear along its blade. Now that the fog was clearing, horror started to set in. I'd let the hatred I held for him cloud my judgement so badly that I was willing to slice him open, like his bloodletting would be some act of retribution.

"Please. It's gone far enough, Katie." R's eyes fixated on the knife.

The name pulled my attention like a magnet. "Who's Katie?"

Was that the girl from the bar? Or some other tryst conjured up by his delirium?

R slammed his mouth shut, but his eyes flicked from me to Olivia and back, like a prisoner hopping on hot coals. Unable to stay in one place, but terrified to move for fear of the fresh pain to come.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and a shiver scurried down my spine. The fear in R's eyes wasn't fresh or confused.

It wasn't the look of a person who's greatest worry was the unknown ahead of them, and the threat of what possibilities it might hold.

He knew what was coming. What path those words, those glances, had shifted him onto.

And from the resolution in his eyes, he was at peace with his choice.

"Ru-" he started.

But didn't finish.