#sooo lei will wake up next reply

[stormfloret]

Shortly after Nora had gotten Ren into a safe position, his unconscious body began to convulse, short breaths escaping his open mouth as he rocked back and forth on the floor. He was half curled into a fetal position and his eyelids were fluttering rapidly, all the while his hand kept grasping for something that wasn’t there.

Lei watched in horror as his father endured this intense seizure, and a pang of guilt ate at his chest when he came to realize he had caused this. This wasn't supposed to happen, this wasn't right, but Lei couldn't so anything to stop it. Nora's cries had come across very vaguely to him, almost distant, but when his mother ran at him he threw his hands up in front of his face instinctively. It did him little good as she brought the heavy gun to his skull, however, and his vision went black. He was knocked out fast and his body hit the ground with all the force of Nora's powerful hit.

Ren's body continued to jerk unevenly for a minute or so, and saliva dribbled from his lips and into a small pool on the floor. By the time Nora had returned to his side, he had stopped moving, and he was already coming back to consiousness. A pained groan left Ren's lips as he came to, and he could vaguely hear Nora's voice in his ears.

He opened his eyes and looked around, still not moving from his position, and he locked his gaze on his wife kneeling above him. He blinked a couple times, and then tried to lift his hand to wipe the saliva from his cheek. When his arm flopped uselessly to the side, he whined, and dragged his hand across the cold floor to reach his face, where he used his thumb to wipe himself mostly clean.

Once more he tried to figure out what Nora was saying to him, but he couldn't seem to process her words correctly. He simply stared at her, wracking his brain to figure out what she had said. He felt confused, in more than one way, and he didn't like the feeling.

"Where... 'm I..?" Ren managed to get out a couple words, working hard to string them together correctly. His eyebrows furrowed and he glanced around once more. When his gaze fell on the two people tied up in front of him, his eyes widened, and he let out a confused noise.

Something felt very wrong, Ren was having trouble figuring out why a strange girl was tied up across from his son. His son? Ren stared at Lei's unconscious body and blinked a couple times to make sure he wss seeing things correctly. He was tied up as well? Panic settled in Ren's chest for the sake of his son, and his breathing picked up quickly.

"N-n... mm! Lei-!" having intense trouble trying to get his mouth to properly form words, Ren called out for his son. He looked back to Nora with a scared expression, and whined at her in hopes that she would do something. How could she just sit there while their son was tied to a chair? Ren couldn't wrap his brain around the situation.

He moved to curl up against Nora's body, as much of it as he could manage, and then groaned in pain. His muscles hurt, his whole body hurt, and he felt exhausted. It was only then that he managed to put two and two together, and realized he had just had another seizure. He didn't get them very often anymore, not without a trigger, so he thought back to what he could remember from before the seizure to figure out what happened.

Slowly, it came back to him, as he put the pieces together. Ren had caught Hazel spying on them, and he brought her down here. He wasn't sure if that had been yesterday or the day before, because he couldn't remember what day it was. He remembered hurting Hazel, leaving her overnight, and then visiting the next morning. He remembered trying to kill her...

A soft smile crossed his face as he thought back on the feeling of her gasping for breath underneath him. He recalled just the way she slowly stopped struggling, slowly gave into the idea that she was going to die. Had it worked? Apparently not, because she was tied to her chair once again. That brought up the question of why Lei was also here, also tied up, and why he was unconscious. Ren couldn't seem to remember any of that.

He carefully opened his jaw, stretching it a little to relieve some of the muscle tension and pain in his teeth. He licked his lip once and then glanced back up at his wife. He thought for a couple moments about what he was going to say.

"Why..." his voice was distorted by how little his lips and tongue wanted to move, "why... 's Lei... here..?"

Ren tried to move, huffing as he attempted to sit up, using Nora's arms to hold himself stable. He was able to turn and sit up enough to lean against Nora's shoulder, despite the fact that his body ached. His pain worsened when he moved, but he wanted to be more alert than he was currently, so he did what he could to stay sitting upright. Breathing slowly into Nora's hair, he closed his eyes.

"She... isn't dead... is she?"

how it goes in the mafia

After noticing that he and Nora were not alone, Ren scrawled down a warning to his partner and reached out, wrapping his hand in hers. He passed the small shred of paper from his palm to hers, and then brought her hand up to kiss her fingers gently. He kept eye contact the entire time, a look of reverence on his face, and then finally spoke. "Stay here," he started, hoping she would look at the paper once he left, "I have to go, I'll be back soon." He leaned forward and placed a soft kiss to her lips and smiled.

Turning towards the door, he walked away, opening it and closing it slowly behind him. He walked down the hall and made towards the front door, leaving the building entirely. Once outside, he wrapped his fingers around the guns at his hips and crept along the walls to the back of the building. There, he saw their visitor.

Without a word, or a note of hesitance, Ren got closer and finally wrapped his arm around the spy's neck and held the point of his gun to their temple.

"Quiet now, my dear, we don't want to alarm my wife... she's definitely more dangeous than I." He pressed the gun harder to their head and then turned them around to face him.

He recognized her immediately; Hazel was the daughter of the opposing family, the daughter of their enemy. Had Emerald and Mercury sent her to spy on them? Why send someone so precious?

Ren quelled his surprise and a dark smile flickered over his lips, a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Oh, you are going to wish you were never born, sweetheart." He put his gun away quickly and pressed his hand to Hazel's face, covering both her nose and mouth to stifle any breathing. He pushed her back to the wall of the house and held her there, waiting patiently until she stopped struggling and passed out. He held on a little longer than necessary, just to make sure she would stay out for a while, and then picked up her limp body and carried her back inside.

"Nora, darling, we have company!"

Taking her down to their basement, Ren set to work strapping Hazel firmly into a chair. There he leaned against the far wall and waited patiently for her to wake up.

@tcpazed