T.S.Noir
Sabrina released me after a few days.
I stumbled back to my apartment, the world blurring around me like a half-remembered dream.
Leon was nowhere to be found.
I suppose he must be out searching for me — after all, I had vanished without a trace.
I couldn’t even remember how many days had passed.
Time meant nothing anymore.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror and froze. The girl staring back at me was a stranger — hollow-eyed, pale, something vital stripped away.
I barely recognized her. I drifted into the bedroom, where the walls were still lined with old photographs of Leon and me. Smiling faces. Laughter frozen in time.It felt like a different life — a life that belonged to someone else.
Someone innocent.
Someone whole.
On the dresser, I spotted a note in Leon’s familiar handwriting.
"Call me when you get home. I'm out looking for you."
I picked it up, my fingers trembling. I turned the paper over and pressed the pen against it, my heart cracking with every word I forced myself to write.
A note to my lover.
To my better half.
A farewell letter dressed in apologies.
I wrote not to make excuses, but to give him the truth — to tell him that what happened wasn’t his fault.
Wasn’t even Wick’s fault. Or Sabrina’s.
No.
This — all of this — happened because of me.
Because of my weakness.
Because when the darkness came for me, I let it in. And now, I couldn’t ask him to love the thing I had become.
Leon,
If you are reading this, it means I made it home.
But it also means I am already gone.
I don't know how to expin what happened to me — not in a way that will make sense. Not in a way that will ease the pain I’m about to cause you.
All I can do is try.
I was taken, Leon.
I was broken.
I was remade into something... else.
It wasn’t your fault.
It wasn’t anyone's fault.
Not Wick’s, not Sabrina’s.
Not even mine, not entirely.
It was the darkness inside me — the part of me too small, too weak, too afraid to fight when it mattered most.
I let it in.
I let it grow.
And now, I’m not the girl you loved anymore.
I’m not the Li who ughed with you in the sun, who kissed you under the stars and promised you forever.
That girl — the one you deserved — is gone.
In her pce is something hollow and hungry.
A shadow wearing my face.
I thought, for a moment, when I saw you again, that I could hold onto you.
That your love could anchor me.
But love isn’t enough to cure what I’ve become.
And you, my sweet, beautiful Leon, deserve more than this broken thing that wears my skin.
I am leaving because I love you too much to let you see the rest of the fall.
Because if you stayed...
if you tried to save me...
I would only pull you down with me.
I want you to remember me as I was.
Not as what I am now.
Please.Let me be a memory — not a mistake.
I will always love you.
That, at least, is something they could never take from me.
Goodbye, my love.
I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough.
— Li
I took a knife from the kitchen and stared at my reflection in its cold, unforgiving surface.
The broken girl before me was a hollow shell of the person I once was.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I remembered the kind, naive woman I used to be.
A girl so full of hope and love for Leon and the future ahead of us.
But now.
All that remained was a shattered husk, an empty vessel tainted by Sabrina's depraved desires.
Trembling, I raised the knife to my wrist, preparing to end it all.
The pain would be over soon, I thought.
Leon would be free of this tainted mess of a person I had become, and he would never know the depths to which I had fallen.
He deserved better than this... than me.
With shaking hands, I pressed the tip of the bde against my wrist, ready to bring an end to my suffering.
A crimson line appeared, slowly weeping a scarlet trail down my pale skin.
The pain was nothing compared to the agony in my heart.
As the note fluttered to the floor, I let out a shaky exhale, my vision blurring with tears.
Unbeknownst to me, however, Leon had returned earlier than expected, driven by a gut feeling that something was terribly wrong.
He burst through the door just in time to see me slumped over, bloodied and lifeless.
With a primal roar, he dropped his things and rushed to my side.
His voice trembled as he tried to wake me, call my name, anything to make me come back to him.
But it was too te.
The life had already left my eyes, which stared vacantly at the ceiling above.
Leon cradled my lifeless body, sobs wracking his powerful frame for the first time in years.
In that moment, he knew that everything he cared about had been taken from him – yet again.
A cold, dark rage began to unfurl within his broken heart.
Leon sees the note that I left him.
He knows what happened to me, maybe I shouldn’t have left a note.
The rage in Leon's eyes hardened into icy determination as he read the words that spilled from Li's shaking hand.
Each letter seared into his soul, branding itself into his very core.
The note told Sabrina's twisted game, her sickening desire to corrupt and defile the one pure thing in his life.
His hands clenched the fabric of Li's bedsheets as he vowed vengeance, a visceral oath sworn on the cold, unyielding bedrock of his shattered heart.
"I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely, rocking back and forth with her lifeless body in his arms.
"I'm so sorry... I should have been there to protect you. I should have known”
He knew the price of such a vow, the darkness it would birth within him, but at that moment, Leon Bckwood ceased to exist.
In his pce rose a ghostly specter of vengeance, devoid of mercy or remorse.
His world narrowed to one singur and all-consuming obsession: to make those responsible pay for what they had done to Li.
Tears streamed down Leon's cheeks, hot and salty, mixing with Li's blood on his hands as he clutched her lifeless form to his chest.
His heart felt like a leaden weight in his chest; heavy with grief and guilt.
He had vowed to protect her, to keep her safe from harm's way, and yet, he had failed her when she needed him most.
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