Blood soaked time

                                    

                                          
Ginny? Taun? Josephine?
You probably know the drill, by now, but lets do it again for thrills. If you previously chose Ginny, continue reading.
If Taun was your bet, skip this chapter and trot to the next.
And if you believe Josephine is where your future lies, skip this chapter and the next.
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Ginny looked at Taun, head tilted as she let her notebook fall to the ground, the pages that had fluttered from it littering the ground like so many more bodies.
'It's you. Isn't it?'
Still she didn't meet her gaze, words a whispered, 'What?'
'I'm sorry, it was't really a question.' Ginny's steps drowned out Isabel's dying breaths and she crouched, ignoring the body of Evi that lay in Taun's arms as she pressed a hand to her cheek, gently wiping away a speck of dried blood. 'I just wanted you to know.'
'Why aren't you running?'
Ginny laughed, lips pinching together, her face a mask of the past 24 hours. 'You think I only just realised? I chose not to run a long time ago. I'm not going to change my mind.'
'You should.' Ginny leant forward, silencing Taun's words with a kiss. They were so close, eyes searching each other, but for what... neither truly knew. 'I've killed people, Ginny.'
'So have I,' Ginny whispered back. 'Some people deserve to die.'
'You don't believe that.'
Ginny shrugged, looking down at the awful state Evi had ended up in, back up at the haunted eyes of Taun. 'What's your real name?'
'Astra.'
Ginny smiled, sitting back on her heels. She tilted her head and nodded, just once. 'I hoped I'd see you again, Astra. That day when you delivered the invitation...'
'You didn't recognise me.'
'Not at first. Eyes are fallible. And you're very good at disguises.' She laughed, their bodies shaking amidst the chaos as she leant forward for a second time, pressing her forehead to Astra's, closing her eyes to their surroundings, listening to the way their heartbeats sang. 'How will this end?'
'I don't know.' Astra admitted, fingers grazing Ginny's chin. Ginny opened her eyes and watched her for a moment, the way her eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks with every fluttering breath. Ginny wanted that breath. She wanted those lips and those eyes and those hands, she wanted to call them hers and for Astra to know she owned Ginny in just the same way. She didn't want it to end. Not ever. Not ever. 'Not anymore.'
'Was it always going to be like this?'
'Yes.'
Ginny nodded. She wasn't afraid of dying. Not anymore. Not if it was her. Astra. A laugh tried to break from her lips at the thought, the idea she was so encapsulated by love or lust or whatever the emotions breaking her hard-worn shell were that she would be content, whatever happened.
Yet she was not so good at lying to herself as all that. She wasn't afraid, no, not of death. But she had no intention of letting it catch her so easily.
'Astra?'
'I can't st'-
'You can.' She pressed her hands to Astra's face, holding her steady as her eyes welled. 'A story is only as good as its teller. But all stories should end with the possibility of a future. No novel should close with everything tied up in string and blood.' She lowered a kiss to the tip of Astra's nose. 'Be with me.'
'I can't leave here. I was never going to leave here.'
'You will. You promised me a story. You sealed your fate in with mine. I haven't forgotten.'
'Ginny, you shouldn't'-
'I haven't forgotten,' she repeated, caressing Astra's sharp face. 'Whoever you are, whatever you did, you were never alone in this. You may have gathered us, Astra, but see what happened when monsters converged?'
'It's my fault.'
Ginny, however, had never been the sort of woman who cared much for fault. And seeing the opportunity for happiness with the woman before her, knowing the blood that had soaked their time in this place and the women who would never leave these halls, she considered just what kind of blame should be laid on one who, through good means or other, had only been trying to make the world a better place.
Some people, she would truly come to believe, deserved to die.
She and Astra would not be two of them.
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Skip the next two chapters.