Shattered Windows, Broken Locks

She was going to count to seven, and then she would find another way out. She trembled, and her lip was wet with the blood she'd already been tasting, and... and she just couldnt seem to make herself count. She forced the breath she'd been holding out through tight lips and a trembling chin as she opened her eyes. She looked about the old building with misted eyes - never been here before. She shot wide eyes up to the door, then scanned for another window -    Her breath hitched as a familiar form moved towards her on steps silent enough that she had missed them. She pressed back against the door with sharp inhale, and her hand instinctively reached for a blade that wasn't at her hip. No, no, no, no.. Down to the cellar she would go, those dark dungeons she belonged in. Ashe's eyes darted about the familiar room until they locked on the next window. There.    With chattering teeth, Ashe turned to rise and.. Kalt. She froze, and then she was being pulled into him. Her breath increased to shallow gasps with a spinning head, and she tried to slip away, to run, run, run, but she couldn't. She wanted to rip herself from her own body, and her body rippled with her desire to do exactly that: trade this body for the wolf. His command halted her however, and she became aware that she was held firmly against him, and she could feel the large X scarred over his chest. She could still feel sticky, warm red being smeared across her middle, the phantom shocks of her blade pulling across and splitting open skin.    Run, every instinct roared, but his voice carried over it. She looked down to the ground with wide eyes as her hand was pressed down over his heart. You're safe. Safe. Ashe let out a heavy gasp and squeezed her eyes shut again with a deep shudder. And she obeyed. She held onto his voice, the heartbeat that thrummed powerfully under her hand, the warm skin of a bare chest under her head. It isn't real. There were no gloves of red over her hands or up her arms, no blood-slick dagger hilts in her palms or a mask waiting in the shadows. Something in her still hissed, move, run, away, away, away..    One minute or one hour, Ashe couldn't quite tell, but soon enough she was regaining her breath. Regaining some semblance of self. She blinked out into the gray light of pre-dawn, revealing more of the room she had scrambled into. She remembered now. Her wine in the rafters, Kalt insisting she come back with him.. and they had kissed up in those rafters. The small woman swallowed with a dry throat, and she leaned just lightly into Kalt, breathed him in. Here and now, right then, she was safe. When was the last time she let something like this happen, let anyone pull her back from herself? Run. That was what she did, what she had to do, because all of this pain and punishment was hers. But... this time she couldn't run. She wondered if he would have found a way to come after her if she had run after all.    Ashe finally turned her head up to meet his eyes, and her brows pulled together as she pieced together her thoughts. She was at his house. She'd stayed overnight in his house. In his bed. Nothing had happened between them beyond the kisses in the temple, of that she was certain.. but between them? Sleeping in the same bed had been commonplace since she was seven years old and couldn't sleep through a night. "I'm sorry," she rasped. She looked away and brushed the side of her face across his chest, over a part of the X, and she made herself sit up - if he let her go. Her sense of calm in the wake of her night terror was chilling and not at all the impulsive wolf that ran until her legs gave out or she found something to burn her terrified energy with.    She glanced at Kalt in the absolute silence of the earliest moments of the day, and her heart stumbled a moment. "I should go," she said quietly, but made no move to leave. Ashetta