WARNING

Contains scenes of violence

He was staring down at her, expressionless but the hand that was holding a knife to was trembling. “Bae?” she asked cautiously, scared out of her mind and confused, so very confused.”What’s wrong? Why are you….?” She couldn’t find the words. Was he trying to kill her? That couldn’t be right. What was going on?

She opened again, but no words came out. Instead she stared into his eyes, willing him to come back to his senses, willing for some emotion to appear in their cold depths, or to wake up and realize that this was a dream, that it wasn’t real. But when something finally happened it definitely wasn’t what she was expecting.

He smiled at her, not his usually warm and cheerful smile, but something completely different…predatory. Then he slowly removed the knife from and caressed her face with the flat side of the blade. Violet was frozen with fear, this wasn’t Baekhyun, she told herself. It couldn’t be her boyfriend; her warm, fuzzy beagle-like boyfriend would never…he couldn’t….

He looked up at her face all of a sudden, his movements quick, and agile, and he flashed a smile at her and suddenly was gone, just like that. When Violet finally managed to get up, trembling and terrified, she saw that the window was open, and that he’d left a rose on the windowsill...

***

Violet kept telling herself that that had been the day that she had lost him, but no matter what she told herself, she couldn’t make herself believe it. She was the root of all her own problems, she knew that and so here she was once again in the midst of yet another battle, and so was he….she could feel it.

***

It was winter when she met him again. She had gone walking in the woods…their wood, trying to battle away the feeling of loss that seemed to be consuming her since the day that he had disappeared.

She followed the path that had become routine to her, and found herself once again at the mysterious cave. She had revisited it an uncountable amount of times in the past few weeks, convinced that this was where it had all gone wrong, and to her surprise, on the first visit back she saw that the cave had changed. It no longer had the walls that glistened with a thousand stars, or the beautiful lake that had given her chills down her spine. It had become an unremarkable, normal cave. But she still came back now and again, trying to find some clue as to how her life had been turned upside down, trying to find out what had happened to her Baekhyun.

But before she could step into it once again, with her fingers crossed and mind filled with hope, she heard someone speak her name softly from behind her.

She spun around, her heart beating wildly, and there he was, the same person who had frequented her mind, haunted her dreams, the one she had longed for day and night, only a few feet away…

Her mind was thrown into a frenzy by this unexpected meeting. The council had been hunting him for days without any luck, and avoiding the clutches of the council was considered an impossible feat. She herself had combed the entire forest and explored every inch of their favourite getaways with no luck. It had been as if he had disappeared off the face of the planet, yet here he was. Safe and sound…or was he?

Thousands of emotions clashed in her mind; surprise, joy, disbelief, curiosity, doubt, fear and apprehension. Was this her Baekhyun or the monster that had tried to kill her? What would he do now? She didn’t have a weapon, what could she protect herself with? Did she have to? The person that she had yearned for was right here in front of her, and all she wanted to do was run and throw herself into his arms but how could she after what had happened the last time that she had seen him?

It was all too much for her to bear, and her feet gave away and she collapsed. Immediately a pair of strong hands encircled her, supporting her weight and bringing her down gently. Violet’s eyes fluttered open and she came face to face with Baekhyun, her boyfriend who had tried to kill her.

“Violet,” he said softly as he gently brushed away strands of hair that had fallen onto her face.

She stared at him unable to form a coherent sentence, and he just held her for a while.

“Is it really you Baek?” Violet asked when she came back to her senses. “Are you back?”

“No,” he replied making Violet’s whole body tense. “No Vi, I’m not the Baekhyun you used to know,” his eyes looked wistful as he spoke. “And I am the Baekhyun that tried to kill you.”

Violet’s eyes widened at his admission and she roughly pushed him away and scrambled to her feet. Her breath came in quick gasps as she remembered the events of that night and her hands involuntarily went to her neck, reliving the feel of the cold metal on her skin. She stared at the creature who was still kneeling on the snow laden floor, hands at his sides and a lost expression etched across his face.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what happened to me Vi…What am I? What have I become?” he looked up at her with a lost expression on his face.” I can’t control my own hands and feet Vi,” he said looking down at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. “And…and I have all these thought, these dark, dark….thoughts…And I’ve done some terrible things, unspeakable things and I can’t stop…” he trailed off and a single tear fell from his eyes and landed in his palm.

Violet stood motionless, and speechless. She didn’t know what to do or say. She was still trying to wrap her mind around what Baekhyun was saying, trying to make sense of the words that had come out of his mouth when he looked back up at her, his expression making her gasp.

Baekhyun’s eyes were filled with te