Mischa was a strong woman.

She had survived the Grey War. She had more blood to her hands than most could fathom. She had lost more than her delicate heart could've possibly handled.

When the peace treaties had been signed and the battles had ceased, she thought to go home. To go home with a new husband and a broken heart and a shattered family. 

For three beautiful years she thought she could survive. She thought she could breathe easily, thought she could move past the nightmares, thought she could begin to heal.

Oh, was she wrong.

Mischa sits in her room alone. The bed is cold and half-empty. It had been empty for years. 

Her eyes have been drained of all their tears. Her throat aches with every inflation of her chest. Outside her door, there are quiet footsteps trailing from the kitchen to the second bedroom to the rickety balcony overlooking what's left of Moscow. 

In a few minutes, her son will be in with a small platter of what his small hands could make. He would look up at her with her irises, but the shape would always remain the same.  

--

PROMPT 17

"There's Blood Everywhere--" Raymond murmurs.

And what he says is painfully, obviously true. 

Forty-eight corpses, still warm, litter the mess hall floor. Their eyes stare lifeless, mouths hanging open from where their necks had been uniformly sliced. 

It's been nearly five years since the liberation of their city. Raymond thought that the violence would be over. He promised his men that no more Evangelinian blood would be spilled on Viennan grounds. He had promised them that they would be free to go home to see their spouses and children whenever they liked. 

"There's blood everywhere," the man repeats, hands tightening to fists at his sides. He had been lucky. He was in the forge, blacksmithing a set of knives for the very man who caused the massacre.

"I know--" Comes the strangled sob from behind. Raymond turns, meeting his best friend's stare. Haru's eyes are red, his hands are shaking and he's all but collapsed against the empty cafeteria table. "God, I know--" His eyes clench shut as he withholds another sob.

There should have been alarms the second the intruder entered. She came quickly and without warning with a flock of highly-trained mercenaries, all in pursuit of her machine. She succeeded, and it sickens Raymond to think of at what cost.

As the surviving Evangelinians filter in, crying at the sight of fallen comrades, Haru finally allows himself to break.

"They took him, Ray--" he chokes. 

Who else could have caused this.

"She--" A break. "She made them--" A sob. "Do this--"

Something deep within Raymond, beneath the anger and remorse for ever allowing the child into their base, feels for Haru. He lost his wife and son on the same day, only managing to discover recover the child four years ago--twenty-one at the time, now twenty-five and relapsed to all the terrible conditioning and experimentation they went through since boyhood. 

Were those four years of healing for nothing? Did Raymond create the very knives that slaughtered forty-eight innocent people? 

"She called them a machine--" Haru cries, banging a fist on the table. The metallic shock echoes through the towering concrete walls of Evangeline. 

Maybe that's all the child is.

Haru grips his chained necklace. There are four dog tags--three from his fallen comrades in the Grey War, the fourth his own--, a wedding ring, and a circular locket with a photo of a disheveled woman and an infant, taken twenty-five years ago. 

Maybe the child's a victim like their father.

A beat of silence. "What are we going to do?" Raymond's voice is low, rumbling only for Haru to hear. "Roo, we can't just sit here--"

"We have to go after him--" The harshness in his raw voice nearly startles Raymond back a step. Haru's eyes are bloodshot and determined, filled with a fire Raymond hasn't seen in a long while. "I've done it before and, goddamnit, I'm going to do it again."

-

PROMPT 48

"That's a very... bold thing to say." Number Five--or Grace, barely fourteen, raises a brow at her teammate. 

"And I mean it!" Number Two raises a fist to the air. "I've said it once and I'll say it again--I don't give two shits about what the Boss thinks of my hair!" Abel's hair, pitch black an hour ago, is bleached a platinum blonde. Their partner in crime squats with her head in a bathtub, her formerly dark chestnut locks facing the same treatment as Abel's. 

"You won't be so defiant when the Boss gets you for this." A third voice startles both Grace and Abel. Shea, too drowned in the roar of the bathtub faucet, is deaf to them. Number One--the suckup--steps into the large bathroom. Her hair is black as night and pulled into a headache-tight ponytail. "What about when he said no identifiable marks? Hm?" She folds her arms tightly over her chest as Abel scoffs.

There's a black towel in their hands, now with colorless spots from the harsh bleach. "Please, Paz, there won't be anybody left to identify us!" Abel shrugs and tosses the towel over their shoulder, their tone far too casual for a teenager talking humorlessly of murder. "Loosen up a little bit, jeez."