//Yikes, this ended up being much longer than I thought it would. Mia is actually a long-standing character of mine so it was interesting to get her out and running since I haven't written anything for her in a long time.//
Mia was faced head on with the one thing she feared over all else--the aftermath. God, she hated it. Their tears and the sounds tearing from sore throats broke something in her and it terrified her. The person would be stopped before meeting their goal of harassing the cold-stone assassin, but then again it didn't happen all that often. In fact, it was so rare for anyone to know it was her, it never failed to surprise.
This time it was a slim woman.
And a folding knife.
Mia stared, lips quivering, eyes narrowed on the pathetic piece of metal. The woman mistook the quiver for something else and stood taller, trying to force herself to meet Mia's eyes. It would have been brave, stupid, but respectful if the woman's hands hadn't been uncontrollably taken over by a tremble.
"I-I know what you did." Even her voice shook. Oh, the poor thing.
"Ah," Mia intoned with a tilted head, "am I supposed to clap? I feel I should." She wryly smiled and brought her hands together, the resounding noise making the would-be attacker flinch. "You can't even hold the damn thing. Are you sure you can even use it?"
There it was. The flicker of doubt in the woman's eyes. Mia could practically hear the internal dialogue, the struggle on if it was right to kill another, even if that another was a killer.
The assassin took the chance to examine the woman. She was tall. Gaunt like she hadn't eaten well for a while. Her hair was matted and somewhat resembled the color blonde if it was mud. It hung like a dead thing, veiling half of her features from view. Mia wasn't sure she wanted to see the rest--everything she saw was disturbing, dirty, and sharp. Too sharp. From the lips to the collarbone, to the elbows to the feet, all angles. Mia swallowed as her eyes drifted further down.
To the skinny, shaking hands. The bones stuck out like blood red on snow white. The fingers belonging to the wrists fared no better. They were gnarled and looked violently purple. By now Mia couldn't stop herself, she was too overcome by morbid curiosity.
Further and further, Mia found sharp edges, nothing was round or healthy, not even in color, which had seemed to have long fled from its walking dead host.
How had this happened? Mia almost snorted at the question. Of course, she was the cause of it, naturally. She heard about it, she even expected it after knowing the woman for so long in her attempt on getting closer to the target, she was on her way to welcoming it ... but seeing it was another thing entirely.
The woman's name floated to her tongue before she could think. "Avita."
Avita's head snapped up. Mia expected many things to be in her eyes--fear, anger, revenge, death--but what was saw made Mia pause in uncertainty.
Forgiveness? Acceptance?
"I understand." Avita's voice was soft. Her fingers twitched once before the fold-in knife dropped on the hard tile. The woman wobbled once, twice, before falling on the third, hands outstretched for her husband's killer.
Mia reached out and clutched at the woman's shirt to hold her upright.
"Don't do that. Please don't try to understand me, Avita, you shouldn't go down that road." Avita said nothing but nodded in agreement.
As they stood there in Mia's bathroom, the window open and the white curtain blowing in the breeze, Avita balled her fists and struck the other woman as hard as she could, to wherever she could reach, screaming and cursing Mia's name. Mia stood silently through it all.
The would-be attacker, possibly would-be murderer, eventually succumbed to exhaustion, her body too frail to continue its assault. Mia frowned down at the woman in thought, her brow furrowed. This was why she hated dealing with families. It was hard to look at, too hard to face or hear, and it made it too difficult to look at her own daughter.
For a long stretch of time, she stared at the sleeping woman, watching while Avita's hair slipped down her face and showed the true picture of what Mia had caused.
Brokenness. Nothing but fragile cracks brought on by a woman with no qualms about killing for money and an employer too careless to care.
