Chapter Text
The first time Alisha came home to a knife stabbed through the door, she explained it away as a prank. What else was she meant to do? She’d just come home from the movies, a rare treat on her off day, only to find some strange dagger buried in her door, holding the most uncomfortable note to the wood.
“I want to eat you.”
Ok, so it was weird to pin that to someone’s door. It had to be some teenager playing a prank. So, she pocketed the knife (her first mistake) and wrote it off as nothing more than troubled kids. Besides, it was a pretty knife, despite its simplicity. With a pommel and guard made of gold, surrounding a stained rosewood handle, leading into a straight blade. An aged blade, judging by the knicks on it. She could feel how balanced it was, the handle worn. It didn’t quite fit her hand, yet something about it felt feminine. Perhaps the fact those worn places suggested the hand wielding it was smaller than hers.
The second time she found a knife, she texted May about her crazy ex boyfriends.
“Do you live in a Cornfield? Cause I’m stalking you.”
So, that was fucking creepy and entirely corny. Maybe she’d have laughed, if that was dropped in person, but not when it was stabbed through her door with a fucking fantasy kukri! This knife seemed to be built into a horn, with a harshly angled blade. Bone held half the length in place, the forehead of a goat. With the actual blade breaking away at a right angle. Even without knowing what she was looking at, Alisha recognised this as far more primal. She could only hope the staining wasn’t blood.
The third time she received a blade to the door, she almost laughed. Almost. Her day had been so utterly insane. From being dragged into a relic retrieval alongside an actual arrest, to dealing with Herc. She was tired, she was sore, and… she couldn’t even put words to how she felt. After seeing those scared eyes as Herc and his team tore the frightened woman into the back of their car. It sat wrong in Alisha’s gut, churning like noxious smog. Nauseating but not enough to bring her to her knees. They were doing the right thing, even if she didn’t like her co-workers. This monster had stolen from the Gods. They deserved to be imprisoned… right?
“Your boss is an asshole. Stab him with this.”
Alisha only had the energy to give a watery snort. The mysterious note leaver wasn’t wrong… but the dagger left behind… Alisha thought she’d understood sinister, understood the phrase less is more. This blade proved her wrong. A stiletto dagger. It was simple, darkened metal, the guards shaped almost like teardrops, flowing into the most perfectly fitting hilt. Plain. Slim. No decorations, no fluff. Just steel, right down to the slender blade. Alisha could have mistaken it for some medieval hair pin, if not for the note.
The most terrifying thing was how right it felt in her hand.
The notes continued, each accompanied by knives, varying from practical methods to assassinate everyone bothering her in her life, to the most extravagant pieces that made her hands tremble to even touch. Delicate floral engravings. Hilts woven by shaped wire, galloping stallions, lithe hounds. Each accompanied by the most ridiculous messages, pickup lines that were so cringey that Alisha couldn’t help but cackle out loud at them.
“I heard you like tofu. Me too, but only with fk at the end.”
“Us women should stick together. Thigh to thigh.”
“I’m looking for treasure, can I check your chest?”
But then where those solid blades. Those simple hilts, those straight forwards blades. Weapons meant for nothing but effectively and ruthlessly slaying their enemies. Weapons worn by what felt like a hundred years of … dare she say it, loving use. There was no other way to explain the level of care these weapons had clearly been given… until they were stabbed into her door.
“If Athena looks at you funny, stab her eyes out.”
“H.E.R.A fucking sucks, but you don’t!”
“If you want to take over H.E.R.A, I will cut them all for you.”
“You’re better than those arseholes.”
“If Hercules keeps leering at you, I’m going to cut his dick off with this dagger’s twin.”
These little notes were often accompanied by other things. Little giftbags filled with pretty jewellery, or the paper from a bouquet of flowers. Sadly, stabbing flowers to a door had proven not the best way to deliver them, given they were spilled over the ground. That had made Alisha laugh. Somehow, a psychopath stabbing gifts into her door was proving to be the healthiest, potentially non platonic relationship she’d ever discovered herself in… how fucked up was that?
So… Alisha’s life was going to pieces, along with her door. She seemed to have three extra peepholes, which she’d simply ductaped up from the inside. It didn’t seem prudent to replace the door, only to have more blades in it the next day. Her job, although she loved it, had become increasingly more difficult with Hercules and his team constantly at her. Truthfully, Herc’s little crush was not only disturbing, but more invasive than the stabby admirer… who she had, for some stupid reason, still not reported. What was going on with her? Was she even sane anymore? What sane person didn’t call the cops, or H.E.R.A about the medieval armory impaling their front door?
Then, there was a difference. The night was unusually quiet, as if the city was holding its breath. The air sat heavily across Alisha’s bare skin, nipping at the cuff of her blazer, which had sleeves that only came to mid forearm. The shadows were somehow darker, licking at the light they clashed with, catching Alisha’s eye. The day had been horrible, to say the least. Even Cyprin had cut in, trying to defend her from Herc’s bullshit, but Alex couldn’t watch forever. The moment their attention had been drawn, Herc had been there, demanding Alisha join him for dinner after work. She’d, of course, refused. Politely but bluntly. That had led to Herc’s typical reactions to rejection. Anger, then dumping a shitton of work on her to prevent her having a life outside of him. Truthfully, she was looking forwards to finding a note from her stabby stalker, secretly hoping that there would be a snarky paragraph about Hercules… what she got was far, far from what she’d been expecting.
What was driven into the door was a bloody spearhead! A spartan spearhead! Literally bloodied. The wet, smeared kind of bloody. She had to take a breath, then another, and another. Knives were one thing, but fresh blood? This was going too far! But the spearhead looked so well cared for, with part of it wrapped in leather, as if it’d been used as some form of war blade. Alisha instinctively knew it had seen war, that the blood on it was far from the first it had tasted. The blood was smeared in a handprint, as if the person driving the weapon in had been shaking. Hurt, possibly? That absolutely terrified Alisha, enough that her own hands shook as she delicately took the befouled note in hand, squinting to make out the beautiful cursive writing across the soggy parchment.
“Don’t call H.E.R.A”
That had her rushing to get her door open. She fumbled with her keys, muttered desperately as she slipped on a bloodied doorknob. She could see the blood around her door, the scratches, everything leading to the fact that someone had broken into her apartment. Illegal, but that didn’t matter. Not when her answers were so close. When her fantasy was possibly dying behind the door. Oh, she was so fucking off her rocker, so stupid. Everything inside her was questioning why she acted so out of character, what had the Fates woven into their looms for her to be so far removed from herself, to have not only gone against her usual behaviour, but to feel nothing was wrong with doing so? She didn’t have much time to ponder that, not when her door was swinging open. She staggered in, stumbling over her own feet with her arms windmilling to keep her upright.
It was only once she had righted herself that she looked up… and finally locked eyes with her answer.