Bound to You

“Hey, Val?” Brian’s voice asked worriedly as he walked over to them. Val looked at him and smiled up at the dark-haired man.

“What’s up, Bri?” She asked him.

“Have you seen ‘Chelle?”

All color drained from Val’s face when Brian mentioned her twin sister. Eliza looked from Brian to Val and then finally to Brian again, watching carefully as Val thought it through. She had never met Michelle, though she knew that she and Brian had been together for quite some time. She personally had always thought that the woman was a good thing for Brian, though she had never met Val’s sister.

“No, I haven’t.” Val finally spoke, her voice quiet as she tried to run through possible scenarios in her head. “I don’t actually think she’s been to the bunker, Brian. The last I heard from her, she was still in Italy.”

“That was three weeks ago, Val. She should have been back by now. She should have been—“ Brian began before Zack walked over to them, cutting his friend off before looking at Eliza, his eyes unreadable.

“Brian, there’s a problem.” Zack told him, grabbing his friend’s arm in his hand before leaning in and whispering something urgently, too quiet for Eliza to hear the words. She knew whatever had been said wasn’t good news, though; Brian’s face said it all. He’d gone from his normal tan color to ghost white in the span of the few seconds Zack had whispered, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

“What do you mean she’s in the hospital, Vengeance?” He finally spat out angrily. “How long has she been there? What happened? Why didn’t we know about this before?”

“As far as we know, she was admitted this afternoon. We don’t know what happened yet; the details aren’t clear. All we know is that she’s in the hospital.”

Brian pushed Zack aside and started storming over to the concrete door, Zack rushing after him yelling for him to stop and calm down.

“Brian, this isn’t the way to do things!” Zack finally said, catching up with him and grabbing his arm, looking over at Matt, who rushed over and grabbed Brian’s other arm, pushing him against the wall. “For all we know, Sean’s setting a trap. It might not even be Michelle!”

“Bullshit!” Brian screamed at Zack, rage in his eyes, his neck popping just slightly from the aggression he was feeling. “You wouldn’t have told me if there was even a slight possibility that it wasn’t her! So don’t fuckin’ lie to me, Zack!”

“She hasn’t been cleared.” Zack finally said. “You can’t just leave and go get her and bring her back in here, Brian.”

“It’s fucking Michelle! If anyone’s not a traitor, it’s her! She’s been with me since forever, and I know her, Zack!”

“I know you do, Brian, but we can’t be sure. Someone on the inside is a leak, and until we clear her, she cannot come down here.”

“Then I won’t come back until you clear her.” Brian told Zack, standing straight. “If you can’t trust Michelle, then you can’t trust me, either. Because I’m not just going to let her sit in a goddamn hospital all alone while the people she thought were her friends turn their backs on her.”

Zack and Matt both let him go, and Eliza watched as he punched in the code on the computer to leave the Complex. He turned around and looked stonily at them one last time before pulling the door shut behind him. No one spoke a word for several minutes before Zack finally broke the silence.

“Benj, when he gets back with Michelle let them both in.” Was all he said quietly. “Matt, call him and tell him she can come in.”

“Zack, man, are you—“

“He’s right.” Val said, cutting Matt off silently, grabbing his hand. “I’ve known Michelle longer than any of you, obviously. She’s not a traitor.”

“One of us is, baby.” Matt told her, touching her face. “You have to understand why we have to be extremely cautious.”

“I do understand, Matt, but I don’t think ‘Chelle would sell us out like that. Lest of all to someone like Sean. She knows how dangerous he is, and she knows what he’s capable of. She wouldn’t risk any of us like that, or herself. And then there’s Brian. She’s been with him forever; selling us out would ruin their relationship, quite obviously, and she loves him too much to do that.”

“Let’s just let it go for now.” Zack spoke quietly, touching his hand to his forehead in thought. “I think there’s been far too much drama lately, and talking about this is only going to stress all of us out even more.”

Eliza crossed the floor, knowing that he’d want someone to at least be around. She felt as though she knew Matt, and leaving him by himself now was not a good idea. She’d be there for him whether he wanted her to be or not. She grabbed his hand in hers and looked at his face carefully, searching for signs that he didn’t want her to touch him. Instead, she saw sadness.

“Let’s go over there. C’mon.” She said quietly as she led him over to their cots. She didn’t say anything as he stripped off his shirt and laid down on the uncomfortable object, waiting until she’d laid down on her own cot before he pulled her against his chest. His breath was hot on her neck and sent shivers down her spine, but she said nothing as she waited for Zack to make the first move, whatever that would be.

She was surprised by his next words.

“Am I making the wrong choice by letting him bring her in here without clearance, Eliza?” He murmured against her skin, touching her hip with his fingers in a nonsexual way. It comforted her rather than turned her on by feeling his touch, and she closed her eyes as she thought over his question and what it meant.

By asking her, Zack was telling her that he trusted her explicitly. He was putting his trust and faith in her, and that shocked the hell out of her. She didn’t know if he was really asking, or if it was a rhetorical question meant for himself, but just the action of asking her said a lot about how he felt about her.

“I don’t know, Zack.” She finally whispered back, turning around in his arms to look at her. “That’s something you know more about than me.”

-x-
With Brian
-x-

“I’m looking for Michelle DiBenedetto.” Brian said to the nurse at the main desk when he walked in to the emergency room, not bothering to remove his sunglasses from his eyes as he looked down at her with as much of an intimidating look as he could muster. The nurse quite obviously flinched, and quickly typed something into the computer before looking back up at him.

“I’m sorry, sir, but she’s not—“ The nurse started before Brian slammed his hand down onto the white wood of the desk, glaring down at her again.

“Let me make myself clear. She’s my girlfriend, okay? Now, what room is she in?” He spoke, keeping his voice low. The nurse hesitated for a few brief moments before going back to the computer, moving her fingers quickly on the keyboard before looking at him again.

“Room 214. It’s on the f-fourth floor, down the hallway to your right, sir.”

Brian gave her a short smile before walking towards the elevator, not saying thank you as he punched the fourth-floor button before waiting for the doors to open. When they did, no one was inside and he walked in to the claustrophobic space quickly. The doors shut, leaving him to himself as he rode all the way to the fourth floor.

When he got upstairs, he followed the nurse’s directions until he was standing outside of Room 214. The door was shut and the blinds over the square window were pulled, but he found that the door wasn’t locked and he pushed the door open, closing it quietly behind him before looking at the hospital bed in the middle of the room.

His heart stopped when he looked at the broken form of his girlfriend laying on the thin mattress, her small body covered in bruises in various shades of blue, red, and yellow, scrapes covering her face. What hurt him the most was the breathing mask attached to her face, and the IVs hooked into her arms.

“Baby, what happened?” He murmured in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own as he crossed the short expanse of space and leaned by her face, brushing her dark hair out of her eyes before letting his hand come to a rest on her cheek. “What did he do to you?”

Michelle didn’t respond, though Brian wasn’t expecting her to. He saw her chart at the end of her bed and grabbed it, looking at it. He flicked his eyes over the meaningless information of which doctors had attended to her and such before his eyes came to a rest on a sentence that stood out to him above everything else on the page.

Injuries sufficient to render the patient possibly comatose.

He took a sharp intake of breath before he looked back at Michelle, who’s dark eyes were still closed, her chest moving up and down in dangerously slow breaths; breaths that probably weren’t her own, he thought to himself sorrowfully.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here!” A voice said from the door. Brian turned his head to look at an middle-aged doctor with a scowl covering his face. Brian sighed before giving the man a scowl of his own.

“She’s my fucking girlfriend, asshole. I have every fucking right to be here.” He told the man angrily before looking back at Michelle.

“She’s not cleared for visitors yet, sir. Quite obviously, as you can tell, she’s in no shape to be seeing—“

Brian turned and gave the man a death glare that caused the doctor to immediately shut up. “What happened to her? Can you at least tell me that much?”

The doctor sighed, hesitating just as the nurse at the main desk had before speaking. “She attempted suicide, sir.”

“How?” Brian pressed, tears pricking the corners of his eyes as the doctor continued quietly.

“She was found on the sidewalk just outside a three-story building. She tried to jump, but wasn’t high enough for injuries to be fatal. She’s…She’s not really expected to pull through, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Like fuck you are.” Brian said before walking to Michelle again and ripping the IV’s out of her hands and the breathing mask off of her face before the doctor tried to grab his arm.

“Hey, sir! You can’t do that! Security!”

Brian pushed the man out of his way as he made his way through the hospital, carrying Michelle bridal style as he forced his way out of the room towards an emergency exit that he knew would lead to a fire escape. He knew Michelle wouldn’t survive long without whatever she’d been hooked up to, and knew that he didn’t have a lot of time.

Instead of going down the fire escape like the hospital security would expect him to do, he instead found a way to get to the rooftop of the hospital before he laid Michelle down carefully on the cement. He bit into his wrist roughly, not caring how badly he injured himself as he propped Michelle’s head up and held his wrist to her mouth.

He knew what he was doing was against all the regulations he had helped enforce over the years. Turning humans into vampires was, for the most part, frowned upon. But Brian didn’t give a damn. Michelle was his everything, and if she died…He couldn’t live in a world without her, he thought to himself angrily.

Finally, after what seemed like hours had gone by, Michelle began to cough, and Brian pulled his wrist away from her mouth. He looked down and saw her looking up at him, confusion in her eyes.

“Brian?” She asked him before she saw the wound on his wrist slowly starting to heal itself. Immediately, her face drained of color. “Oh, God no. Brian, what did you do?”

“I did what I had to in order to keep you alive, ‘Chelle.” He told her, cradling her head. “Baby, you’re not dead, that’s all that matters.”

Brian didn’t reply but instead closed her eyes, letting a few tears fall out as Brian picked her up and carried her towards the same exit he’d come up. By now the hospital security would have lost him, and it would be safe for them to leave the hospital this way.

-x-
With Sean
-x-

“Sir, the hostage is freaking out again.” One of Sean’s lackeys told him quietly as he knocked on the door of his office, sticking his head in just enough to look at the man sitting at his desk, fingers pressed together as he thought about what his next course of action would be.

“Which one?” Sean asked agitatedly, briefly looking up and glaring at the man, who cringed under the cold glare.

“The one we got from the Sevenfold attack.” He said. At this, Sean smirked and stood up.

“I’ll take care of it, Eric. Go make sure the cook prepares something that’s barely edible; we don’t want to spoil our hostage, do we?

“N-no, sir.” Eric stuttered before quickly leaving. Sean walked out of the office and down a hallway until he reached the door that would lead to the basement, where he kept all of his hostages. He opened the door and whistled some Buddy Holly song under his breath as he took slow, deliberate steps down the staircase, making sure that each step of his heel was loud and distinct so that the prisoners would know he was coming down. He liked to see the fear written all over their faces; to see them cowering in the corners of their cages as he inspected each of them before giving directions to his lackeys as to whether he wanted them kept alive or dead.

He found the cage he was looking for easily, remembering exactly where he’d placed this particular hostage and why he’d put her there. Instead of huddling in the corner like he’d wanted and expected her to, the dark haired woman was standing in the middle of the cell, anger covering her face, body covered in gashes and bruises that he’d inflicted upon her for the most part. Some, of course, had come from his other men, but he’d taken a special interest in this girl.

“Tell me, Leana, why do you keep pushing my buttons?” He asked her, keeping his voice cool. She laughed a little before keeping her gaze straight on his.

“They don’t believe I’m dead, you know.” She said, keeping her own voice a little airy. “Soon enough, Jimmy and Zack and all of the others will know that you’ve kept me here, and it’s only going to be worse for you.”

“You really do think that you’re going to get out of here, don’t you?” Sean chuckled. “You might want to get that seductive thought out of your head, Leana. Because let me make one thing clear to you: you’re not getting out of here alive.”