Ruvik X Reader - Part 3

Part 3: The Woman in White

---

“All units, all units; 11-99, expedite cover code 3, Beacon Mental Hospital.”

   Tires squealing on the rain-washed road, the car rolls to a stop in front of the city’s home for the insane. Three car doors open and out steps two men and one woman.
   Joseph comes up behind Sebastian and peers through the falling rain at the old building.
   “What do you make of it?” he asks the older detective.
   “Connelly, contact Dispatch and let them know what’s happening,” instructs Sebastian to the car driver before turning to his partners, “Joseph, Kidman, you’re with me. We’re going to have a look around”
   Kidman gives him a curt nod. “Right.”
   Rain making his trench coat shiny, Sebastian is the first to make it to the door. He waits for Joseph before he pushes the left door open a crack. The smell hits him instantly. Only one thing could smell like copper and pig flesh: blood.
   “Smells like blood,” points out Joseph.
   Sebastian had already made that observation yet doesn’t comment about it.
   “All right. Stay sharp,” cautions Sebastian and Joseph unholsters his pistol.
   Leading with his gun, Joseph pushes the door open wider and moves inside. Sebastian is close behind, having left Kidman to wait outside. The brunette takes in the sight of the dozen or so bodies scattered everywhere. Each one wore the same white outfits that was standard for mental patients. Each body is layered with blood and some have their entrails peaking out.
   Sebastian is suddenly grateful for his strong constitution brought on my years of drinking and experience as a detective. It wouldn’t surprise him if Joseph suddenly needed to empty his stomach at the scene before them. He hasn’t seen as much as I’ve seen.
   But Joseph remains professional and if he’s strongly affected by the gruesome scene, he doesn’t show it. It almost makes Sebastian smile. Looks like I toughened him up.
   Thunk!
   Both detectives spin around in search for the noise.
   “Did you hear something?” Joseph’s voice drops, so only Sebastian can hear him.
   Sebastian nods to assure Joseph he did and they scan the room for any signs of movement. A light shimmering out of the corner of his eye catches Sebastian’s attention. He’s drawn to the service desk where a figure now stands.
   Joseph notices her too.
   Adorning a dress in blinding white, she stands there as they approach. Her face is completely hidden by a veil. Strands of ivory cloth swirl around her and the hem of her dress furls softly with a supernatural breeze.
   When the detectives are only a few feet away, she turns away from them. Joseph notices how she’s barefoot as she walks into a side room. The door shuts behind her and she’s lost from view.
   Joseph quickly opens the door and discovers the room with security monitors. Sebastian peers in, but the Woman in White is gone. Instead, there is a man in a labcoat hunched against another door. Sebastian kneels down beside him.
   “Are you injured? What happened here?” questions Sebastian.
   The man is balding and has a dark beard. He sits there dazed, his eyes wide and unblinking.
   “...can’t be real…impossible...Ruvik is...” he mutters in disbelief.
   Sebastian and Joseph exchange a look. He must be in shock. The man passes out and Joseph kneels down. He fixes his golden-brown eyes on Sebastian.
   “I’ve got him. The security cameras might tell us something,” points out Joseph, placing a hand on the doctor’s shoulder.
   Standing up, Sebastian walks over to the monitors. He ignores the tiny ones above and misses the image of the Woman in White walking-or, rather-gliding down another hall. Instead, he focuses on the large, central monitor.
   The live feed reveals three officers firing their weapons at something off camera. All of a sudden, blood spurts from the cop furthest out. Then another cop is slashed open and Sebastian’s eyes finally catch up to the man in a white, tattered hood. In less than a minute, all three cops are dead. Sebastian can barely make out the shape of a syringe in the mysterious man’s hand.
   “What the h***?” breathes Sebastian, stunned.
   Zooming in with the camera on the man’s head, Sebastian tries to see his face. As if he could sense Sebastian is there, the man turns his head and stares directly into the camera. The best Sebastian could describe him would be that the man looks like a walking cadaver.
   Then the feed falters and the man blinks out of existence.
   Sebastian leans back. “What?” he mutters in disbelief. Without warning, someone spins him around and the detective sees a syringe coming down upon his face.
Next thing he can remember, is waking up hanging upside down like a pig for slaughter. Classical music plays nearby. He hears the hacking and slicing of flesh beside him but can’t twist his head to look.
He can, however, see the woman standing before him. Her white dress is clean and void of any specks of dirt or splotches of blood. She looks too pure to be in such a vile environment. Reaching behind her, she brings a long knife into view. Bringing a finger to her lips, she gestures for him to remain silent. Then she stabs the blade deep into the body hanging in front of him. After a moment’s pause, she begins humming along to the music and walks away, her dress fanning out behind her in that same supernatural breeze.
Sebastian blinks and the Woman in White is gone.
Going limp, Sebastian waits for the blood-soaked butcher to walk away before he starts swinging for the knife.

---

A chainsaw to the leg, cities grating against each other, and a car falling off the face of the Earth. Could things get any worse? Why, yes; someone could end up in an isolated cell like Sebastian.
Opening his eyes, Sebastian finds himself lying on a cot. He looks around at his dull, black and white surroundings. He feels like he’s in a slightly nicer jail cell. How did I go from being in an ambulance to here?
Climbing off the cot, he spots the door to his left. As he approaches it, the Woman in White walks by, her veil still hiding her face. Shooting up to the door, he looks for her only to see a nurse instead. Her brown hair is tied in a ponytail and her eyes stare at him beneath thick glasses.
“Are we awake?” she asks in a monotone voice, opening the door.
“Hey, Miss, did you see that woman just now? The one dressed in white?” he asks her.
“Whatever are you talking about? You are the only soul here, right now...” she replies, walking away from him.
After exploring, Sebastian figures out he’s in a hospital. He steps into a map room and notices something on the bulletin board. Moving closer, he discovers it’s a child’s drawing done in crayon. A girl with dark hair and a red dress is holding hands with a shorter girl with (h/c) hair who, in turn, is holding hands with a boy with pale blonde hair, bordering on white. Having no idea what it means or what any of this means, Sebastian turns away and walks out.
   There she is again. The Woman in White.
   Drawn to the mirror by her reflection, Sebastian keeps glancing over his shoulder at the empty space behind him. How is she in the mirror if there’s no one here?
   Now he’s standing before her, in front of the mirror. Everything is still in black and white, but the ivory of her dress is blinding. As if anticipating his question, she reaches up to lift the veil from her face. The ornate lace pulls away from her chin, her lips, her nose-
   The mirror fractures. Right as her face is about to become clear to him, the mirror cracks and the light shining through makes it hard to see.
   Blinking, Sebastian finds himself abruptly launched back into the burning ambulance. A faint voice resounds in his head.
   “I’ll be waiting.”

---

   
Find Joseph. Find Joseph and get the H*** out of here. As he clears the village of hostiles, Sebastian is repeatedly distracted by something hovering at the edge of his vision. Doing his best to ignore the white shimmer, he picks up the Agony Crossbow. Testing the weight in his hands, he hears something thump down the stairs.
He doesn’t hesitate. Aiming down his sights, he sends a bolt through the man’s eye. Already reloading another bold, Sebastian is ready to fire. Fortunately, he doesn’t need to spend any more ammo as the man-or, rather-creature pitches forward and doesn’t get up.
He’s about to retrieve the bolt from the man’s skull, when a flash of white enters his field of vision.
Dumbstruck. That’s the only word that can describe Sebastian as he stares at the Woman in White. She stands across the room as silent and haunting as ever. As always, her skirt moves with the supernatural current of the air.
I know she must have answers and I want them. Sebastian holsters the Agony Crossbow onto his back and whips out his police-issue pistol. Amazing how quickly this place has made him so paranoid. Even the Woman in White can be his enemy if he allows her the chance, so, instead, he keeps his gun trained on her as he steps around the chairs and debris.
“Listen, I want answers. I could give you the whole ‘I’m a detective with the police’ spiel, but I can tell that has no effect on you. Just...help me understand,” urges Sebastian.
The Woman in White remains silent yet doesn’t make any attempt to escape. Her body has gone rigid and even the strange breeze has ceased. Is she afraid?
Not taking any chances, Sebastian approaches her cautiously, pistol at the ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
“I’m sorry if I’m frightening you, but you have to understand that...well, I have yet to meet someone who isn’t bats*** crazy around here…” he adds, half-muttering to himself.
Once he’s close enough, he reaches out to lift her veil. There’s a gasp from her and-
CRASH!
Splintering wood resonates from nearby and Sebastian’s heart jumps up into his throat, when he hears the buzz of a chainsaw. He looks out the window to see whatever was chained in the barn has broken free. Turning back to the Woman in White, his dark eyes widen.
She’s gone.
Yet again, he was about to see her face and, yet again, he failed. Keeping his gun un-holstered, Sebastian takes a deep breath to compose himself.
It was time to finish where they left off…
The second the chainsaw man came into view, Sebastian let out a rally of bullets as fast as his pistol would allow. Aiming for vital hitpoints, he struck the head, the heart, and even the kneecaps. Still, the man kept charging at him, lifting the hungry chainsaw above his head. Sebastian rolls out of the way and sprints to a safe distance away.
However, his security blanket is brief as the wild man proves himself capable of giving chase.
This game of cat and mouse continues as Sebastian narrowly dodges a wild swing of the spinning blade. A dull ache in his leg reminds him of what happened last time. Switching to the crossbow, he fires his only two bolts. Ripping through flesh and muscle with ease, the mini harpoons embed deep into the man’s flesh.
Finally, the man falters. Collapsing to his knees, he eventually dips forward. He’s still stubbornly gripping the chainsaw, so Sebastian has to rip it from his hands.
Then something happened: something that never happened before in this backwards world. The body dissolved. Like, it melted and bubbled away into red goo. For the second time that day, Sebastian feels dumbfounded.
The bloody bubbles slither their way across the barren earth. They travel all the way up to the village gate. There they stick together, forming a mass that shapes itself into a man. Great, it’s the guy who got me into this mess.
The walking cadaver has returned. Sebastian isn’t sure what just happened, but something tells him that this man is the puppetmaster, the person pulling the strings. Standing there in an off-white, tattered robe, the man is focused solely on one person: Sebastian. In fact, he looks pissed.
At first, Sebastian thinks it’s because he’s slaughtered so many of the walking corpses around the village. Then he realizes the truth behind the venom in the man’s eyes: he touched her. He touched the Woman in White. He touched his property.
The heat alone in the man’s pale eyes could melt Sebastian, but there was a deep-set malice in the hooded figure’s face too.
“Stay away from her,” was the only warning Sebastian got before the man blinked out of existence.
The voice, the heat in his eyes, would forever be seared into Sebastian’s brain. Shaking it out, the detective decides he better find Joseph and Kidman quick. As he cuts through the chains at the gate, his mind rewinds to one thing:
The Woman in White.