His face...

The eyes of the man had rolled till they showed creamy white, mouth open slightly as if a scream was about to escape his lips, but got stuck in the middle. His body was slumped on the floor, back leaning against the wall with the head tilted slightly upwards. Limp arms hung next to his body while his skin was unnaturally pale for someone who normally had a beautiful olive complexion. A trickle of blood ran from a small gaping hole in his forehead between his eyes, down to the nose.

Azura tried to speak, but her words would not come forth. She blankly stared at the man in front of her. Her Charlie. Her man. Her love. She tried to open her mouth but her lips refused to move.

With a loud crack, his face abruptly jerked towards her and his lips started moving. His eyes opened wide exposing more murkiness as a crooked, evil grin spread across his face.

“Without you, he'd be still alive. You killed him. You put this bullet between his eyes.”

Azura backed away in shock as a twisted voice emerged from between his lips. Fear gripped her heart and her breathing became erratic. The man’s face had started twitching, lips going from a crooked grin to opening and closing while the whites of his eyes started to fill with blood. Azura backed away even more, then spun around trying to get this vision out of her mind.

As she spun around she saw Nora. Their eyes met and Azura could see the fear in Nora's brown ones. She was dark-skinned as was the rest of her pack, her hair a dark brown color. It’d been straightened and tied into a large bun on top of her head, but something was off.

Nora's lips formed words Azura could not hear, the fear in her eyes had become more and more apparent as she raised her arm to point at something. Azura followed her gesture and stood face to face with a man. He was sweaty, dirty, and wearing a stained, blood-spattered shirt that might have once been white.

His movements were jerky and slow; like his bones were not connected to each other. The worst part was his face; the features unreadable, morphing and changing constantly. Azura felt frozen, wanting to step back but unable to. He slowly came closer, limping with each step.

Something cold had appeared in her right hand, and as Azura looked down she was shocked to see herself only in a bra and pants. There was no scar marring her skin, but blood splatter covered her body. The glistening of the knife caught her attention, and with seeing it, her fear subsided, and in its place rage started to fill her.

It was like the knife triggered the immediate change of demeanor. She gripped the handle till her knuckles turned white. Azura started fuming as the rage built, all the fear inside her being replaced, burned by flaming fury.

“Can you feel it yet? You're a wild animal! A killer! You're a murderer and you’ll have everyone killed. Everybody you know and love will meet their demise because of you. You're feral!”

It was unclear where the voice was coming from, but it only added more fuel to Azura's anger. It was like someone else was controlling her emotions. She could feel the flames and heat inside her become so immense that she had to let it out.

She finally found her voice as she started to scream, plunging her knife in the body of the manlike figure before her.

“That's it, embrace it! Embrace who you really are!”

Pulling the knife out, she felt the blood spatter onto her before she plunged the knife back into its abdomen. With one swift movement, she jerked the knife upwards, slicing him open from navel to sternum. Bones are laid to waste in her wake as ribs are sliced apart.

Azura pushed the body away and let out a final scream before she dropped the knife, panting heavily. Her feet were standing in a pool of blood, which seemed to be steadily rising. It came from everywhere, surrounding, swirling, and capturing her.

Azura let out another feral scream at it and raised her fists, then let them fall into the crimson fluid around her. As soon as they touched the blood, she felt the flames inside of her burst open. She spun around as everything caught on fire immediately, eyes stopping at the sight of Nora.

The blaze had spread, burning everything in its path. All the blood had disappeared, leaving angry dancing flames in its wake. Nora stood on the other side of the room, the fire engulfing her.

Azura's eyes widened, her rage and fury gone in an instant. She reached out, but the flames held her back. They grabbed her legs, curled around, and bound her to the floor. They licked around her arms and pulled her back.

In front of her, the flamestorm started to coil up, shaping and forming two gigantic wings. Azura gasped as she recognized the shape it was taking.

Nora reached out for her as she was trapped within a vortex of flame. Azura looked back to the fire that had become the wings, only to see the thing she feared most.

A phoenix had risen, its fiery wings immense. The tailfeathers split into several long whips of flame while two intelligent, beady black eyes stared at her. It just floated there, leering at her, taking her breath away before it turned around to face Nora. Without warning, it suddenly flew off towards her with dazzling speed, leaving only embers flying around in the place where it had been.

"No! Nora! Please, no!" Azura found her voice again as terror filled her heart.

She was forced by the inferno to watch as Nora was engulfed by the Phoenix, the fire licking her face, scorching her clothes and skin. Her eyes tormented by pain and her mouth writhing and twisting in anguish. Nora's skin burst open from the extreme heat of the flames and it didn't take long for her body to slump to the floor with the Phoenix engulfing it until there was nothing left.

“I told you it was your fault. Thanks to you she's gone. Scorched thanks to you. It's you, it's all you, and you enjoy it. It makes your heart pump faster and your blood flow quicker. Embrace your killer side. You know you want to.”

She still couldn’t pinpoint the source of the calm, cold voice, but the messages made her shiver every time it spoke.

The Phoenix had risen from the floor again, hovering in the air, looking straight at Azura. She felt her knees buckle but the fire kept her upright as if it were carrying her. There was a moment of a silent stalemate as both just stared at each other.

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There was a rush of emotions going through Azura's body as if it were unable to choose what to feel. Somewhere deep inside she felt... something she did not want to feel. Something familiar, some fondness for this creature of death.

Just as Azura was about to open her mouth, the Phoenix parted its beak, and a bright blue-white light formed inside. Completely panic-stricken, Azura opened her mouth to let out a pain-filled scream just as the lightning bolt struck the left side of her stomach.

*

Lucas gently shook her shoulder, she’d been tossing and turning for a while now, but that scream had caused him to rush over and try to wake her up. Azura was sleeping on the couch when he came back home and he had just let her be while he went to the kitchen to prepare for dinner.

She wouldn't wake up. He tried shaking her again when she suddenly, forcefully, grabbed his arm. Lucas startled back by the sudden movement from Azura, the feeling of intense heat radiating around his clothes coming from her hand. His gaze traveled from her grasp to her face and he was taken aback by the look in her eyes.

They were wide open, staring right through him it seemed. It looked like a fire was burning behind those deep blue eyes but she wasn’t awake.

"Hey, wake up!" It was the only thing he could think of doing. He pried her hand off his arm and took hold of both her shoulders to shake her. "Come on, you're freaking me out!" His voice contained a hint of panic when she didn't react immediately. "I really don't want to throw a second glass of water in your face so please snap out of it!"

Azura suddenly started to blink and had gasped for air. She frantically started to look around, a hint of fear still left in her eyes. The intense fiery gaze was gone though. Lucas let go of her shoulders as she appeared to calm down. He let out a sigh of relief as she became more alert.

"Welcome back to the living! Normally I would ask if you had a good night's sleep but in this case... I think I know the answer to that. Do you want some water?"

Her throat felt parched and raw. She caressed her neck with one hand as the other moved to her side without seeming to realize it. Lucas had left her alone to get some water, not for a reply. Her posture had told him all he needed to know. Azura just now noticed the blanket that lay crumpled at her feet, she was sure she didn’t grab a blanket when she decided to lay down on the couch.

"Here's your water." Lucas handed her a glass and gave her a reassuring smile. "You feeling any better?"

"Yeah, I am. Thanks...." She returned his smile to try and sound more convincing, thankful that they were actually speaking again even though it was a bit forced.

"No problem. Do you want to talk about it? The nightmare I mean."

Azura was a bit taken aback by his forwardness but being subtle hadn't been his best characteristic back in the day either.

She shook her head. "No..." A coppery taste filled her mouth, so she placed a finger in her cheek and took it out to see if there was any blood. It came out clean. Azura took another sip of the water, hoping it would wash away the lingering memory before her eyes met his. "It's changing you know," She softly spoke up again but had averted her eyes. "I used to have the same nightmare every night but ever since my first night here, it's been changing. It's mixing up details from the two attacks, fusing them together to become one big mess of blood, fire, and death."

"Sounds like a killer combo to me." He chuckled slightly hoping to lighten her mood.

Azura groaned while she fixed her eyes on the fireplace. "Oh, you have no idea." She mumbled back. The flames were dancing on the logs and it looked like they had been for a while. She wasn’t the one who lit it though when she returned home, so Lucas must have covered her with the blanket and started the fire. She was finding it difficult to face him directly.

"By the way, I was preparing dinner. Are you hungry? And if so, could you please set the table." If he felt the same awkwardness as she, he did a great job of covering it up. His voice betrayed nothing as he switched topics like a pro.

Azura swallowed and forced herself to meet his eyes again, trying to go for the same lightness he seemed to have adopted. "I'm starving, actually!"

She folded the blanket and got up, thankful he didn’t force her to say any more about the nightmares and had shifted the topic of conversation. Lucas went back to the kitchen as she moved to the dining table to set it up. It was a good distraction to get her mind off the horrible images which were still imprinted in the back of her head.

*

Dinner was nice. They had ended up chatting a lot about simple stuff after the initial silence. Lucas had tried to follow the advice Rose gave him about being a friend and not a therapist. He had kept the conversation light and simple, talking about everything except her past, the nightmares, or her first meeting with Dr. Jensen. She’d responded well, was open to him, and he even got her to laugh out loud a few times. She seemed to be at ease and with every minute she was starting to act like the Azura she had been before the 'shitstorm' as she had named it.

They sat down in the living room with the TV on, Azura had wrapped herself in the blanket again as she settled on the couch. Lucas watched her for a moment while she seemed more engrossed on the fire than the television. Despite her laughing, eating, and actually having a conversation with him, she was still easily distracted by something, and every time it happened she retreated back into herself. Whether it was about the nightmare or something else, he couldn’t tell, and to prevent another blow-up, he didn’t ask.

The woman did look better now than when he had first opened his house to her. She was still pretty much skin-an-bones, but she had been thin when he had first met her. The dark circles around her eyes had lessened though, and she actually had some color to her cheeks. Lucas moved around the couch, looking for a spot to sit as she’d taken up quite a bit of space.

"Are you going to leave some room for me or am I banned from it?" Lucas gave her a small pout. It was like his words were a delayed reaction, reaching her a second later than he had spoken them. Azura jolted up as if caught red-handed and for a brief moment he saw the doubts and fear in her eyes before she put on a big smile and answered him.

"For tonight you're banned from the couch! Please try again tomorrow." She laughed as he put up an even more sad face.

"Well next time I won't be giving you a blanket when you sleep or cook you dinner. So the joke's on you."

"Oh...right... Forgot about that... Well, sorry then! You can sit right here!" She patted the empty spot on the couch while trying to flash him the most innocent smile she could muster.

"Too late now! You made your choice." He sat himself down on the black leather seat instead.

"But I..."

"But what? There's no buts." He interrupted her.

Lucas and Azura's facial expressions had switched. She was now acting sad and pouting while he was just smiling and acting all innocent. She knew he had her and gave up. "Next time you won't win so easily, buddy." She glared at him and stoically turned to the TV.

"We'll see about that." He kept his eyes on her for a bit longer before turning to the box as well.

She nestled even more into the blanket, eyes darting between the aimless program and the fire. The vacant, distant look taking over at times as the show progressed. She was pretending to be fine. Maybe to fool him, or maybe to fool herself, but she did look relaxed for once. When the show ended, it took her a moment to move, but she eventually turned towards him.

"Can I...maybe join you at the climbing hall anytime soon? I've had enough with sitting here and doing nothing. I need some distraction plus I could use the workout." He could hear the insecurity in her voice as she asked him, like she was a little girl asking for something big that she was afraid to get.

Lucas looked surprised, but a big smile soon sprawled across his face. "Sure. Come by whenever you want to."