.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

DEVIL'S ADVOCATE!

oooo. prologue

SILVIA FLORES WAS NINE YEARS OLD when she met with death for the first time; the briefest exchange beginning a long line of many clandestine meetings. Staring down the barrel of the gun just inches from her face, she should have been fearing for her life, should have been crying out the way a child was supposed to; a dimly lit candle flame about to be snuffed out before it could truly burn.

But the sun was too bright in her dazed eyes, and the spray of blood already drying to crimson freckles on her skin tasted like death.

It was everywhere, splattered across the windshield, the dashboard, the floor. The scent of copper invaded her nostrils, forcing itself down her throat and winding around her fevered brain like a keepsake.

Silvia could feel it seeping gently across the car seat towards her, seeking out the cracks in the worn leather before dripping sluggishly onto the floor. She wished she could convince herself that the whole morning had been a dream, a waking nightmare, but knew better.

Knew she couldn't ignore the viscera and brain matter soaking the front of her new blue t-shirt, coating her bare legs and matting her hair with crimson.

It was all her fault, and she knew it.

Gaze fixed on the gunman, she stared not at the pistol grasped in his hand, digging into the soft flesh of her forehead like a whispered promise. Instead, she chose to study the sliver of humanity just barely visible; pale blue eyes, staring bleakly over a black bandana.

Although the ability to speak had deserted her, Silvia's accusing gaze was enough. How could you kill him? The question lodged in her throat, a hot ember coating her lungs with ash and threatening to consume her from the inside out.

Time seemed to hold its breath. In the distance, the first police siren began to cry out - the first of many. Silvia tried to glare convincingly, ignoring the way her bottom lip trembled. The cold pressure on her forehead eased slightly.

A war was being waged in the man's mind, moral turmoil sending tremours through his usually steady hands. To spare the child's life would tear his reputation to shreds, shattering the illusion that enabled him to kill as easily, as guiltlessly as he did.

For someone who had forged his life's work by killing on the behalf of others, even this would be the crossing of some invisible line, the breaking of an unspoken oath. To kill a target was one thing, merely business, a way to put bread on the table. But to take the life of an innocent? A child in the wrong place at the wrong time?

He was a criminal, but he wasn't a monster.

Slowly, the pistol fell to the man's side. The sirens were getting closer now, voices rising in a cruel harmony that the city knew all too well.

Blue eyes clouding over with something akin to sympathy, the man shook his head. The sirens were screaming a couple of blocks over, and he knew he didn't have much time before a crowd would follow.

"Sorry, kid," He murmured, a consolation for himself more than anything. "Just doing my job."

Taking one last look at the destruction he had just caused, the man turned tail and ran, feet beating an arrhythmic heartbeat on the pavement. Silvia couldn't help but listen as his footsteps faded away, cutting through an alleyway and out of sight. Leaving her life in shattered ruins as swiftly as he had entered it; going, going, gone.

Later when the emergency services arrived, flashing lights bathing the scene in hues of blue and red, they would find the girl, folding in upon herself as what remained of Sebastian Flores slumped across the driver's seat. The bullet had torn through his left eye, leaving a gaping wound in its place, the dark mystery of his brain turned inside-out for all the world to see.

Silvia had always liked to imagine what the inside of her father's enigmatic mind would look like. Had pictured a tangle of wires and blinking lights that cast vibrant sparks against the backs of his eyelids with each electric thought. But that illusion had shattered as soon as the bullet had found its way home, her childish imaginings replaced by the killing embrace of reality.

It was perverse, in a way. For a person's inner sanctuary, housing each thought and feeling, every treasured memory and coveted reminiscence, to be gracelessly broken open. The flame extinguished, magic lost forever.

"-did you hear me, sweetheart?" A woman asked, navy uniform marking her as an EMT, voice softening as the girl's vacant gaze slid over her. "Can you tell me your name?"

Fingernails eating crescent moons into the palms of her hands, Silvia ran her tongue over dry lips, bile rising in her throat at the metallic taste.

Rather than giving her name, the girl's voice rose in a tangled stream of sounds; vowels and consonants falling over each other in husky incoherence. In desperate prayer.

But the holy words that had previously brought comfort and solace were now razor-sharp and wicked, once-gilded edges clawing at her throat.

"Sweetheart-?" The woman tried again, eyebrows furrowing as she reached for the child's arm. Silvia tried to inch away, but it was too late. The gentlest brush of skin-against-skin, enough to ruin her from the inside-out.

Nerve-endings forever doused in gasoline were now set ablaze, each synapse white-hot and burning as Silvia's body went rigid. She couldn't move, couldn't speak, limbs stiffening and beginning to shake.

Images filled her head, one after another, a slideshow playing on fast-forward. The thoughts and feelings of a stranger overwhelmed her senses, the invasiveness of it all turning her vision black at the edges.

As the sensation began to fade, Silvia's brain was barely able to register the muddle of voices around her, tainted with worry.

"-seizure or something, we'd better get her in the ambulance."

Then multiple pairs of hands were on her, undoing her seatbelt and lifting her from the bloodied seat as the pain began anew, amplified tenfold. Each touch was corrosive, sinking beneath her skin, breaking her apart from the inside. A scream was ripped from her chest in an agonised torrent, a desperate attempt to purge the poison from her body.

STOP TOUCHING ME! she tried to cry, but coherence had abandoned her, leaving hysteria in its place. Unable to communicate, a fresh scream was torn from her lungs; anguish and desperation rising into the humid air.

Unbeknownst to Silvia, a few blocks away in a cramped apartment bedroom, someone was sharing her torment from afar. Hands clamped over his ears, the boy writhed in discomfort, unable to block out the noise as the screams reached fever-pitch. Even on the worst nights, with the city's sirens singing a cruel chorus, he had never heard pain quite like this.

For the briefest moment, the pair were united by the girl's grief, tethered by something vicious. But Silvia could only handle so many feelings before her body gave out, voice fading to a hoarse whisper before ceasing entirely.

Finally, the screams stopped. The brief connection severed, leaving Matt Murdock in shaken silence; heart aching for the stranger whose suffering he had shared.

-¤-

CATATONIC was the word they used, whispered in hushed tones across the hospital bed as Silvia's empty gaze never left the ceiling. She never truly knew just how long she was there for; seconds felt like hours, while hours stretched into centuries. Time moved around her, a swirling river current cradling her still-breathing corpse, wounds turning the water red.

Grief caressed her cheek with cold fingers, while wrath whispered sweet nothings in her ear.

It was her fault, she realised, her father's death staining her hands and wreathing her veins with guilt. Tears ran burning divots in her cold cheeks, skin stretched painfully tight over weary bones.

Rosary beads, his rosary beads, lay on the bedside table, remaining in the corner of her vision like an accusation. She could feel the tarnished silver crucifix's gaze, the weight of it bearing down upon her heavy shoulders.

There were traces of that day everywhere she looked; the feel of blood slick on her skin no matter how many times she tried to scrub it off. Five, ten, fifteen times, her flesh turning raw and beginning to peel, a dying flower shedding its petals.

Time heals all wounds, they say, weak condolences offered in hushed tones. Time does pass, yes, but old wounds can fester and rot, frayed stitches picked apart with each fractured memory. Children grieve, grow up, keep going, as is human nature. But unbeknownst to Silvia, she would not; instead destined to follow in her father's bloodied footsteps, echoes of the past twisting her into something terrible.

Silvia Flores was nine years old when she first felt the fear of God; first felt the cold sting of metal in each palm, nailing her to a cross of her own design. Guilt had woven her a crown of thorns, placing it atop her head and watching with delight as she writhed in pain.

She had been blessed to survive that day, they said, over and over as she bit her tongue so hard it bled. She was lucky.

Lucky. The word tasted wrong on her tongue, bitter and ugly. If luck had truly been on her side that morning, the gunman would have put a bullet between her eyes without a second thought. Would have taken her alongside her father, providing a release she would have taken with open arms; silencing the war being waged inside her body and soul.

It was cruel, really. To be promised a pyre that remained unlit, tossed to the lions den only to be dragged out unscathed.

To almost die as a martyr, but live haunted by her sins.

-------------------------------------

okay so, a bit of a shorter introduction than what i'd usually write, but i wanted to give a bit of silvia's backstory without giving away too much!! all will be revealed soon. 👀

i hope you enjoyed the prologue, please lmk what you thought in the comments :)

- ¤ -