From Her Vein to the Floor

"Now. deleted and defeated,
I will stand on my own.
Yeah, your memory that punches me
Has broken the bone.

Give me recipes for sorry.
I'm admitting I'm wrong.
Still, your memory that punches me
Has broken the bone."
- Blue October

It had been a month since she'd spoken to Skylar and about two weeks since she'd said a word to Antony. During that time, Skylar had texted her, called her, sent friends to talk to her, and showed up at her house about fifty times, and not once did he receive any form of response. Whenever he saw Antony in the hallway, the boy would smirk and wave at him, always taunting. That is, of course, until he began to receive similar treatment from Torryn. He'd convinced his father to offer the girl a temporary reprieve from fighting, and she'd just disappeared on him. Luckily for him, however, that reprieve was about to end.

They'd graduated, left high school behind. Summer had begun, and college was in the distant future. Torryn had had plenty of time to recover from her spat with Skylar, and now, her free time was plentiful. What better way to get back into the swing of things – and to fill all of that silly free time – than to return to the Arena?

Why do I have to do this? Antony thought with more than a hint of annoyance at his father as he hauled himself onto the roof of Torryn's front porch. You can Superman your way onto the roof in a single bound. I have to steal the neighbor's ladder – which is too fucking short, by the way – and try not to die as I ninja my way to the window.

With a huff, he finally reached Torryn's bedroom window, peering through the small gap between a pair of forest-green curtains in an attempt to find any sign of the girl. He leaned a bit closer when he saw a hint of movement from within the room, and a clean, white towel suddenly caught the edge of a curtain as it was tugged from the rack nearby. Antony saw a flash of bare breasts as the curtain was pulled aside, a look of horror upon an unfamiliar face, and his scream echoed that of the woman he'd just unwillingly spied upon as she climbed out of the shower. She leaped back with the towel to her chest as he leaped back with his hands clamped over his eyes, and he didn't seem to register that he was falling until he actually hit the concrete of the neighbor's blessedly empty driveway. With a groan, he thought to himself, Wrong window.

A moment later, Torryn was leaning over him, an eyebrow cocked as she looked him over. "You just saw my mother naked," she began once she'd deemed him unbroken. "How does that make you feel?"

"Usually, seeing a woman naked would give me a boner and something to do later, but that..." He shuddered as he slowly sat up, his eye twitching the slightest bit as he relived the moment. "That made me want to gouge my own beautiful eyes out." He glanced at her, taking a quick but very obvious peek down her tank top, and added, "Your body is so much better than hers."

She rolled her eyes as she straightened from her crouch at his side, the one that had given him such an excellent view, and said sarcastically, "Thank you so much, Antony, for approving of my body. I think all of my dreams have now come true."

He reclined on his elbows to take advantage of the skirt she was wearing, but she stepped back before he had a chance to enjoy the view. "You should go put some pants on," he told her, finally getting to his feet now that all of his fun had ended. "We're going to do a bit of fighting tonight."

"Why didn't you just call to tell me that?" she asked, looking sexily annoyed as she crossed her arms and cocked her hip. "Or knock on the door like a normal person?"

"You've been ignoring my calls for weeks now," he explained, bending backward a little bit in an attempt to relieve a bit of the pain in his spine, "and I didn't expect a pleasant outcome if I came to the door."

"So, instead, you...decided to take up voyeurism at my bathroom window?" Her eyes drifted to the step ladder beside the front porch, and she couldn't help asking, "Where the hell did that come from?"

"Your neighbor's back yard," Antony said unabashedly as he began attempting to fold the stolen ladder, finding it to be quite a challenge. It had been so much easier to open it...

Torryn sighed and jerked the rusty old ladder from him, managing to fold it up in a matter of seconds. "I'm not going to the Arena," she said simply as she handed the ladder back to Antony, who promptly threw it over the privacy fence surrounding her neighbor's massive back yard. "I don't want to fight anymore."

"Do you really think you have a choice?" Antony asked as he wiped his hands on his jeans to get the dust off. "You can tell me no, but when my father comes back for you, you won't have the chance to refuse." Torryn frowned, and Antony shrugged helplessly. "You made a deal with him, remember? Either you fight, or he enslaves you."

She looked away from him, and the melancholy in her expression made him want to reach for her. "I don't know if I'm up to it."

Gently, hesitantly, he let his hand rest upon her shoulder, bare but for the thin strap of her navy blue tank top, and smiled as reassuringly as he could, looking almost devilish as he did so. "You said something similar to that in the beginning. You know, right before you started kicking ass."

She laughed lightly and turned her face to him, not shunning his touch or his words as he'd expected. "I guess you have a point." She placed her hand over his upon her shoulder, leaving it there for only an instant before gently pulling his hand away from her. "I'll go change into something a little less revealing. Don't steal anything else from my neighbors while I'm gone." She started for the house, and he watched her go with a smile.

That had gone much better than he'd expected...minus the fact that he'd seen her mother naked, anyway.

-?-

"I had to tell my mother that you were trying to play Romeo by coming to my bedroom window," Torryn informed Antony as she slid into the passenger's seat of his cute little car, idling quietly in her driveway. She'd kept the blue tank top on, but she'd traded the skirt for a pair of nicely fitting blue jeans. "She told me to tell you to never come here again."

"Does she know that I probably won't listen?" he asked, beginning to back out of the driveway.

"I didn't mention it, but I'm sure she knows how teenagers work." She buckled her seat belt and let out a soft, sarcastic laugh. "She doesn't pay much attention to what I do, but she watches enough movies about kids my age to know what might happen."

"I'll just be sure to come to the right window next time," he said pleasantly, though another shiver ran down his spine at that terrible, terrible memory. He was going to have nightmares, and lots of them.

"What happens if I'm naked when you show up?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow at him quizzically. "Are you going to scream like a girl and fall off of the roof again?"

They slowed to a stop at a stop sign, and he looked at her as if she'd just broken out of a mental institution. "Hell no. I'm going to take pictures."

She laughed lightly for a moment, then suddenly frowned. "Skylar has a few pictures of me," she mumbled, speaking more to herself than to the living vampire. "I hope he doesn't do anything with them to try to get revenge on me or something."

"He doesn't seem like the type," Antony said in an attempt to comfort her, his eyes flicking to her worried face as he rolled through another stop sign. "He's way too nice for that, even if you did cheat on him." It made him uncomfortable to say it, but he couldn't very well call it something else. Besides, it's not like pretending it hadn't happened would fix anything – and that was probably for the better, considering he held that night with Torryn as one of his fondest memories, and it was the one that had ultimately won the battle against Skylar.

Torryn sighed, all of her guilt slipping out with that single sound, and it didn't feel like much of a win anymore. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. He's been trying to talk to me since we broke up, anyway. I doubt he would be making such an effort if all he wanted was revenge."

"Why haven't you talked to him?" he asked, curious. "If he's been so willing to talk to you, couldn't this be resolved pretty easily? He's obviously not opposed to the idea of getting back together with you."

She shrugged, careful to keep her gaze on the passing trees and houses instead of on Antony's questioning visage. "I just...I guess I know that things will never work out. Sure, we might manage it for now, but eventually, another argument'll spring up, and he'll go right for the cheating thing again, and we'll be right back where we are now. He's..." She swallowed, and it was easy to see that she was trying to keep herself from crying, from falling apart again, right there in Antony's car. "He's never going to let it go, no matter how many times I apologize," she finished, and her voice cracked noticeably throughout.

He let out a harsh, almost angry sigh, at war with himself now. One part of him was glad that all of this had happened, glad that he now had the chance to do what he liked with her, this girl he barely knew; but another part of him felt guilty, guilty that he'd ruined the perfectly normal relationship of this girl, a girl he felt he knew all too well. Neither side seemed to be budging. It was just a constant, never-ending debate in his mind.

After a moment of deep thought, he turned, startled to see her staring at him in confusion. "What's wrong?" he asked, sounding just as confused as her shadowed face looked.

"You sounded angry," she said hesitantly, and he remembered that sigh he'd let loose.

"Oh, no," he said quickly. "Why would I be angry?"

She shrugged and said nothing more, and the rest of the ride was spent with only the sound of some hard rock music from the radio to fend off the silence.

-?-

"This is going to be my first weekend fight," Torryn said as she closed the car door, nervousness beginning to creep into her voice.

He started for the warehouse ahead of her, trying to hide his smirk. "It is Friday, isn't it?" he said as if he'd had absolutely no idea.

"I'm going to die in there!" she nearly yelled in a panic, though her pace didn't slow.

"I doubt it," he said, finally turning to show her his smirk. He'd hoped that it would reassure her, but it only made her scowl at him, annoyance temporarily dulling the fear in her expression. "Relax," he tried instead, hoping to calm her down just a little bit. "I'm sure there's no one in here that you can't handle. Well, except for the undead vampires, of course, but really, who can handle them?" He held the front door open for her, and she walked by him with a nod of thanks, though her eyes remained on the scene lying dead ahead.

There had been a lot of people present the first time she'd shown up here, but that crowd was nothing compared to the mass of chattering, wriggling bodies that filled the place now. She and Antony could barely squeeze through the throng of people to make it into the building because it was so packed. She reached for Antony's hand, terrified to get separated from him with so many strangers around, but her hand closed on air. He'd already left her side, likely to find out who she'd be fighting this evening. She stopped where she was and stared shyly about her, the fear in her scent turning heads in every direction.

"I was wondering when you would come back," a deep, soothing voice said from behind her, and she spun to find Antony's father hovering over her with a less-than-comforting smile curving his pale lips. She watched as his nose gave a sudden twitch, wondering vaguely if he was one of the many people here who could actually smell her discomfort.

"No, you weren't," she replied with much more boldness than she felt. "You sent for me. You knew exactly when I would be here."

His smile didn't change. "I wasn't sure if I would have to come get you or not. To be honest, I'm actually quite surprised that you came here willingly."

"I'm sure she likes the money," said another deep voice, and Samuel suddenly appeared at the vampire's side. He wore a broad grin, chilling in a different way than the smile that Antony's father wore, and the look in his eyes gave the impression that he wanted nothing more than to eat her up at this very moment.

Antony's father gave a light chuckle, very cold and oddly convincing. "Of course she does. Who doesn't? But I'm sure it took more than the promise of money to lure her down here."

"I remembered how much I didn't want to be your slave, and that was really all it took," Torryn told the men, attempting to match their cold, creepy smiles and failing miserably.

Caesar's smile fell abruptly, his expression becoming disturbingly serious. "Actually, my dear, I have a proposition to offer you concerning that particular matter of business."

Her own smile vanished, but before she could feed her curiosity by asking about this proposition, Antony returned, smiling pleasantly up at his father and taking her hand tightly in his as if to offer her a bit of comfort. She wouldn't admit it, but it worked.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Father, but I need to help Torryn prepare for her fight now. I'm sure you'll understand." His smile had taken on an aggressive edge, but his father didn't seem to notice.

"Of course, of course," he said, his eerie smile returning in full force. "Let her know what she's up against so that she may triumph as she did during her last battle." With that, he left the pair alone, and Samuel quickly followed, already whispering to the man.

Once they'd vanished into the crowd, Torryn turned to Antony with a frown. "Who am I fighting tonight?" she asked, her tone heavy with anxiety. The memory of her battle with the telekinetic kept running through her mind, over and over again, and she really didn't want a repeat of the pain that had come with that fight. Of course, a lot of that night's pain had come from Antony's insane mother, but that was really beside the point.

Noticing Torryn's trepidation, Antony let out a nervous laugh that only made her that much more afraid. "A living vampire," he answered, wishing he could have found a way to sugarcoat it. "You'll be fighting a living vampire." Her fair face had gotten six shades lighter by the time he thought to add, "But it's really not that bad. I mean, at least it's not an undead vamp, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Torryn agreed, her face still much too pale. "An undead vampire would eat me. At least a living one will just kill me."

"Well, actually, any kind of vampire-" A sharp look cut Antony off, and he couldn't help another sheepish laugh. "I mean, yeah, right. No eating."

She took a deep breath and exhaled, doing her best to calm herself down. "Do you have any advice for me?"

"Move fast," he said simply, "'cause he'll probably move faster."

She took another deep breath, but this one left her in an annoyed rush. "Is that all you've got?"

He shrugged apologetically. "Pretty much. You already know to let your instincts do most of the work for you, so what else is there to say?" She sighed again, but said nothing more, and he shrugged another silent apology. "I guess I should go get my bets ready," he said, already beginning to turn. His fingers only now slipped from their comfortable place around her hand. "Good luck."

He barely made it a foot before her hand on his wrist pulled him to a stop. "Hey, wait," she said softly, though he'd already turned to face her.

"What?" he asked, frowning in confusion. This was usually the part where she freaked out about the upcoming battle alone, just watching as he disappeared to some unseen place across the room.

"I was just...thinking," she said slowly, hesitantly, her nervousness nearly palpable. Her eyes fell upon their hands, still hanging in midair between them, and she kept them there so she wouldn't have to meet his gaze. "I'm...I..." Finally, she let out another annoyed sigh and looked him right in the eye, blurting, "I'm tired of spending all of my nights alone. Do you want to, I don't know, do something after this?" His mouth fell open in shock, and all he could seem to do was stare at her. To fill the awkward silence, she muttered, "You know, if I live through it and don't get eaten."

He began to laugh, loudly and cheerfully, but the crowd suddenly went wild around him, their shouts and cheers and applause drowning out the sound. Torryn could still see his face, however, so when he finally stopped laughing and turned his attention back to her, she was scowling, her pale cheeks flushed in embarrassment.

"You can just say no, you know," she muttered dejectedly once the noise of the crowd had died away, releasing his hand. She crossed her arms and looked at the floor, and he smiled at the redness of her cheeks.

"No, no. It's not that," he told her, laughter still lightening his tone. "It's just...you don't usually do things like that, you know? You don't ask to spend time with me." And you never look quite so cute, he thought, though he didn't dare say it aloud for fear of being punched in the face. Sometimes, you could pick a girl up by calling her cute, but girls like Torryn weren't quite so easy.

Disregarding everything he'd just said, she asked, "Do you want to do it, then?" It hadn't come out quite the way she'd meant it to, and her cheeks somehow managed to become a shade darker. "I mean-"

"Of course I want to do it," he said with a smile, gently teasing her. "Whatever it is you want to do." Before she could respond to his taunting, he turned his gaze toward the ring and said, "It's your turn." His smile had disappeared, but when he turned back to her, finding that her cheeks were still tinged with red, it returned as the slightest curve of his lips.

She looked toward the ring, then back to him, her eyes wide with panic once again. "Are you sure I can do this?"

"Are you sure you can't?" he countered, and gave her a light shove toward the ring. She took a few steps forward, then stopped and turned to look back at him. "You can't die now," he said as a way to encourage her, wearing his trademark smirk. "We have a hot date tonight." An unwilling smile made its way onto her pink lips, and she made it to the ring without stopping again.

If she lived, she got to look forward to a hot date with Antony. If she died, well, she got to die imagining a hot date with Antony. It was pretty much a win-win type of thing, wasn't it?

Yeah, she sure thought so.