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enthrallinglyeden · 1 month ago

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TIMING: present LOCATION: the library PARTIES: Emilio @vengeancedemon and Eden @enthrallinglyeden SUMMARY: desperate to get to the bottom of his email problem, eden turns to the town pi for help. meanwhile, emilio is just trying to make it through the fucking day. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

Taking cases would be good. He decided it almost on a whim, the way one might decide to make a dramatic aesthetic change in the midst of a poorly disguised breakdown. Emilio knew nothing of the old cliche that found scissors a tempting thing to take to your hair when life seemed to be going to hell around you, but this was almost certainly his version of doing so. He was dead, he was angry, and he was taking on more cases because the distraction felt so much better than thinking about any of it.

Today, he was meeting with a new client. The fact that this case wasn’t one lingering from before his death and that this client wasn’t someone he’d met while breathing made it appealing to him, as if he could pretend his heart still beat so long as there was no one around who knew enough to question it. He didn’t know anything about the case, but he didn’t need to. He knew it was a distraction, and that was enough.

Meeting at the library, too, was something that felt better to him. His apartment was something he was still getting used to, something he had to readjust to after so long away. It was nowhere near as nice as the office Teddy had built for him, but he didn’t want to go back there now. The apartment had served him well before, and it was a fine enough tomb now. But meeting outside of it allowed him another distraction to focus on, and he liked that. The library was public, and he liked that, too. There were no dark alleys to be lured into, no dumpsters waiting to house his corpse. This case would be good. If he said it often enough, it was bound to start sounding true.

Approaching the desk, he rapped his knuckles against it to get the attention of the person standing behind it. “Looking for Eden Lu.” It wasn’t the most polite greeting, but… well. Emilio wasn’t any more polite in death than he had been in life.

—

The emails had stopped for now but somehow, the silence scared Eden more. He was no fool — silence didn’t mean safety, it never did. It just meant that the individual was collecting themself, preparing more ammunition to toss in his face. Perhaps the scariest part of all was that he had no clue what their next move was. This was far from the first person to be too close to his personal business. Eden had handled his fair share of stalkers and blackmailers before, but it was never something that couldn’t be settled with money or his mother’s connections. This wasn’t one of those cases.

But if the person on the other end of the screen could prepare for a war, then so could he. Better to get a jump on the attack during this silence than sitting around and relishing a time free of threat. Eden had never dealt with private investigators personally, but how hard could it really be with enough money? Though one of the only offices in town that he found in his search was one with some…unfavourable reviews. Rude behaviour, drinking on the job, but good results, and that’s all that really mattered to him. Surely he could take a few jabs if it meant that he could get any substantial intel on the individual.

He couldn’t sit still knowing that the investigator was on his way. Eden tried his best to focus on his work, but the possibility of finally getting answers sent a strange mix of adrenaline and nerves through his body. He tapped away at his computer, his eyes darting between the screen and his surroundings until the knock on his desk finally came. “Yes, that’s me. Mr. Cortez, I presume? Just one moment.” There were no pleasantries, just a curt greeting which Eden was somewhat grateful for. He hadn’t told his co-workers who he was meeting, only that he would need an hour off and the less attention they were drawing, the better.

“Thank you, Helen. I’ll be back in an hour,” he said to the elderly lady that approached, flashing her a grateful smile as she took his place. His charm always did work especially well on her. Eden led the other man to one of the study rooms in the back, making sure to close the door behind them before speaking. “Thank you for meeting me here. And for taking my case. It’s a bit of a…critical situation.”

—

The moment the man behind the desk confirmed that he was the person Emilio was looking for, the fury studied him with a critical eye. He’d never met Eden in person and, given the way a recent case of a similar nature had ended with his corpse in a dumpster, he figured it was fair to proceed with some amount of caution. Eden didn’t look like much of a threat, though Emilio knew from experience that looks could certainly be deceiving. He looked like a lot of Axis’s clients did — nervous, uncertain, and a little paranoid.

Emilio leaned against the desk as Eden had his coworker take over for him, following him wordlessly to the study room and shutting the door behind them. Eden, he suspected, would prefer privacy for this conversation, and he doubted the guy would try to kill him in his place of employment. (Not that it would matter much if he did anymore, of course; unless Eden Lu was planning on sawing his head off, Emilio was pretty close to untouchable.)

He nodded absently in response to Eden’s thanks, biting back a comment that he wouldn’t have taken the case if he weren’t being paid to. He’d been pretty reliably informed that his customer service skills could use a little work. He doubted his attempt to rein them in would last very long here. By the end of this case, Eden Lu would probably hate him… but he’d also probably have the answers he was after. To Emilio, the latter was the only thing that actually mattered.

“You were vague on the phone,” he commented. “Not a bad idea. But now’s the time for details. Tell me everything that’s been going on. Don’t leave shit out. Lying to me isn’t going to help you get this shit solved any quicker, and it’ll piss me off.”

—

Eden could feel Emilio watching his every move, or at least that was what it felt like. Call it a force of habit to believe that everyone was watching him at all times, whether it was born out of narcissism, insecurity, or paranoia. Not that he could really fault the other man for putting him under such scrutiny — from what little he knew about the profession, analyzing people seemed to be part of the job of a private investigator. Not that Eden was worried about what Emilio would think of him, but he still found himself subconsciously sitting up straighter in his chair.

He was admittedly taken aback by Emilio’s tone, but Eden figured it’d be best if he held his tongue. The last thing he needed was to put an end to things before they even began, especially considering what he had read about the investigator’s temper in Axis’ reviews. “Well, I certainly have no desire to piss you off, Mr. Cortez,” he said cooly, clasping his hands together on the table.

“The emails that I told you about on the phone started about a year ago. I initially ignored them because they seemed like your usual spam, not the first time I’ve gotten messages like this either. You see…” Eden trailed off for a moment, trying not to let the hesitation show on his face. “I used to be a public figure. A celebrity. People always wanted something from me, or sometimes they simply just wanted to try their luck with a shocking message. So when this sender claimed that they’d ‘ruin my life’, it was just another day, you know?”

Eden’s gaze shifted to try and read Emilio’s expression to no avail. “But, uh, then the emails started to get more in-depth. Sending me details about my life that you wouldn’t just get from an Internet search. Then the messages became more aggressive. They threatened to expose my secrets, then take my life, and I figured I had to step in before they could do either of those things. So, here we are.” Eden knew that was far from enough information to solve anything, but he was frankly tired of speaking. He wanted to hear what Emilio thought so far — after all, he was the one paying the investigator.

—

Lately, he’d taken to looking into his clients a little before meeting with them. It was a habit he’d once partaken in almost religiously, though he’d fallen out of it in recent months. If he hadn’t, maybe he would have been able to avoid catching a knife in his chest in the midst of a dirty alley and bleeding out at the bottom of a dumpster. That certainly offered a convincing argument for picking the habit back up now, even if it was certainly too late for it to be a helpful thing to do. So he’d looked into Eden a little. He knew the guy came from money, though he wasn’t sure he still had access to it now. (He was leaning towards probably not, given the less than glamorous position at the local library.)

He didn’t know much about the man’s personality, though. Eden didn’t seem thrilled at Emilio’s less-than-friendly demeanor, but that was hardly a surprise. Emilio had read the reviews left on Axis’s Yelp page — he knew that his personality was pretty damn close to the number one complaint his clients had about him. When this was over, he’d probably earn another one-star from Eden himself, no matter how the case ended. He didn’t care about that. What he cared about was finding the answer to the puzzle Eden had presented him with, and that started with gathering all the pieces.

Emails were a little strange, for Emilio. He wasn’t someone who knew a lot about the technical side of things, tended to shrug that part of his job off on other people rather than deal with it directly. But the content of the emails Eden had been getting was familiar enough. Threats, blackmail. Emilio knew how to respond to that kind of thing far better than he knew how to respond to most things people might consider ‘normal.’ It didn’t matter how the messages had been delivered, only the content they contained.

“Okay.” Emilio nodded thoughtfully, digesting the information. “It would be good if you’d tell me exactly what the emails were threatening you with. My first step would be retracing the information, figuring out how someone could get it and narrowing down who might be able to do it from that. But, look, if it’s something that’ll ruin your life…” He trailed off. He doubted Eden would be willing to share his deepest secrets with a stranger, even if that stranger was someone he was paying to help him. Roles reversed, Emilio sure as hell wouldn’t have been forthcoming. “So let’s start somewhere else. Time frame, ¿sí? People you met just before the emails started coming in. Even just people you saw for a moment who gave you a bad feeling. It can be a long list. It’s important that no one is left off. And the, ah…” He trailed off, snapping his fingers. “The address the emails go to. Is it one that’s public anywhere?”

—

This was the part that Eden wasn’t looking forward to; the main reason why he had let the individual go on with their games for so long. Everything would’ve been incredibly simple if he just handed all the evidence over to the police and let them deal with it. There was a world where he’d even be safer that way — a world where he was human. But he wasn’t, and that was why he was in this mess in the first place. As sheltered as his life in the colony had been, he was well aware of the threats that lurked out there. Hunters who were ready to draw their weapons the moment they set eyes on individuals like him. Maybe this person was a hunter themselves, and who knew what ties they had with the law no matter where Eden managed to run to.

He wasn’t even going to hire a private investigator in the first place, going back and forth on the idea for weeks. But he had bit the bullet and done it, and now he might as well accept the help. Eden felt more confident trusting an independent detective with his secret, if it ever came to spilling them. For now, he wouldn’t lie, but he would leave out the details until it felt absolutely necessary.

He sat quietly, trying his best to take in Emilio’s thought process without letting his usual habit of overthinking get to him. For as horrendous as the reviews called Emilio’s people skills, the investigator seemed to have a decent understanding of a client’s psyche. Even if people were paying the money for his help, that didn’t mean they’d be willing to immediately open up. Eden appreciated the alternative path that Emilio was offering him for now, nodding along to the investigator’s words.

“See, that’s the part I’m struggling to figure out. No one really jumps out at me from the time the emails started. A year ago I was in some small town in Canada and mostly kept my head down,” Eden began, trying to dig deeper into his memory. “It’s the individuals who I’ve encountered before then who spark the biggest suspicion. Rivals in the industry, acquaintances in the industry who want something from me. Maybe a few people that I’ve managed to anger somehow? Definitely people that my mother has managed to anger…” His mind wandered to the long list of enemies that his mother had but managed to silence with money or death. “I can imagine it’d be easier for them to take things out on me, especially since I’ve…distanced myself from my family.”

With a tired sigh, Eden slumped back in his chair at the thought of being the collateral damage in his parents’ messes, even after all these years. “I know it doesn’t line up with the emails, but I have reason to believe that the individual stems from those times. Why they would take so long to strike, I’m not exactly sure…but my gut, my gut is telling me…” he trailed off, not entirely sure that Emilio would buy a hunch based on a gut feeling. “The email address is not public, no. Entirely separate from the ‘private’ email I had under my management company too, just one I use for personal affairs.”

—

The problem with this line of work was that, in a lot of cases, people had very specific reasons for not taking their cases to the police. Sometimes, those reasons were easy to deal with. The police, especially in Wicked’s Rest, didn’t often make time for certain kinds of cases, especially if those cases seemed odd and difficult to explain. Other times, though, the reasons why people avoided going to the law with the things that concerned them were things that made it all the harder for Emilio to get to the bottom of their cases. Some people wanted secrecy, wanted privacy. They wanted to be given answers without having to offer up any of their own. And those cases were difficult to resolve. It was hard to answer questions when the questions you were given were carefully censored by someone trying to avoid giving too much away.

As annoying as those cases could get, Emilio understood them to some extent. People who came to him were usually scared. What they were scared of varied — if the case Eden Lu had put on his desk had been one involving something less dire, he might have been more annoyed with his fear — but the feeling was something universal.

He’d do what he could with the information Eden was willing to give him. And, if that information proved to be less than what he needed, he’d dig into things Eden would probably wish he’d leave alone. That was where the one star reviews tended to come from. No one really liked someone who knew more than what they were told, and Emilio ended most cases in that very state. He could attempt to be respectful and avoid digging for a time, but he wasn’t good at holding off on it indefinitely. Especially not when digging was the thing sitting between him and answers.

For now, though, he’d work off what Eden told him. Most of it was straightforward enough, but the mention of his mother caught Emilio’s attention. “Your mother have a habit of pissing people off to this extent?” He’d seen things like this a hundred times before. Someone too big to touch did something shitty, and the person on the receiving end of it went after someone they cared about because they were an easier target, or because the kind of revenge they wanted necessitated taking something away from the person who’d wronged them instead of killing that person themself. He thought of his own daughter briefly, then pushed the thought from his mind. Not the time.

“Maybe they were gathering information,” he suggested. “Making sure they had enough to threaten you with before making the threat.” If the email was private and not connected to anything else he had, there might have been clues there. “You got a list of everyone who has it? What do you usually use it for?” He wasn’t sure if he and Eve were on good enough terms to ask a favor, but maybe she’d be able to do something with this if he called her. (He didn’t know if he could bring himself to call her.) “I’ll need lists of people you and your mother have pissed off, too. Anyone you can think of. Doesn’t matter how small. I know it’ll be a big list, but we need to narrow shit down.”

—

He knew the rabbit hole he was going to have to go down when he mentioned his mother, but Eden also knew that there was probably no way this case would get solved without mentioning her. “My mother…she has a habit of getting what she wants no matter what. Money can be very persuasive, but it only keeps some people quiet for so long. As for the people who didn’t take the money, she had much more…confrontational methods. I doubt…those people can talk much now,” he explained as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Just recounting his mother’s dealings was headache-inducing.

Eden had never kept track of how many lives his mother had ruined. Hell, who knew how many more she had ruined since he left? Yet even after going through the effort of hiring a private investigator, even after sitting across from him in the room right now, conflict still stirred inside of him. The point of this wasn’t to ruin her life or take her down, and it wasn’t like some private investigator from the small town of Wicked’s Rest, Maine would be capable of doing so anyways. But even just admitting her wrongdoings outloud to an outsider felt wrong. The guilt tugged at his conscience and threatened to tear him apart.

No, you don’t owe her anything anymore. You mean nothing to them.

“Lu Ziyuan is a very powerful woman,” Eden finally continued after his moment of pause. “She is idolized back in China and she knows that. She would never risk anything that would publicly ruin her image, which is why she excels at getting things done behind-the-scenes. Even if there’s a conflict in the tabloids that doesn’t involve her, you can never count out her involvement.”

Eden hadn’t realized how much he’d been talking until he met Emilio’s gaze, suddenly getting self-conscious as if he hadn’t hired the private investigator to come listen to him in the first place. “Lists….yes, lists seem like a good idea. Here, I’ll…” He reached for the piece of scrap paper at the other end of the table that had been bothering him since entering the room because why couldn’t people clean up after themselves. But that was beside the point.

“That makes sense. Would be a waste of time for all parties if someone started making threats without a solid plan,” Eden said bitterly as he pulled the pen from behind his ear. Splitting the paper into three sections, he began scribbling down some of the first names that came to mind. “Like…what people usually use a personal email for, I guess? The bank, Apple, subscriptions. Any communication I do in town that isn’t work-related like real estate agents. The running club? Hopefully it isn’t any of them. Some of them run very fast,” he said, half-meaning it as a joke despite it coming out more like a statement. “As for the list of pissed off people, get comfy. We may be here a while.”

—

He was a little surprised at the transparency. Eden wasn’t saying point blank that his mother had killed people, but the implication was certainly there. I doubt those people can talk much now. The fact that he was being so open likely spoke to the fear he was feeling now. Whatever was in those emails had rattled him enough that he was willing to turn over his mother’s secrets to get to the bottom of it, which made Emilio all the more keen in helping him out. So much of his job was helping people with small, petty things. He used to be able to balance it with his slayer work, used to be able to feel like he was making a real difference in graveyards with a stake in his hand, but now? He wasn’t even much of a match for spawn or ghouls anymore. His best bet at making any kind of a real positive impact was through his detective work, and Eden’s case was one of the few that offered him that opportunity.

“Okay,” he nodded carefully. “That kind of thing has a real risk of pissing people off enough to take action. Even if the people she directly… dealt with aren’t capable of it, everybody’s got somebody in their life who gives enough of a shit about them to feel a certain kind of way about things like that.” Even monsters had people who loved them. The slew of unanswered texts on Emilio’s phone was proof enough of that.

Eden continued, and the more he spoke the more Emilio began to suspect that the threats were less about him and more about his mother. If she was powerful, she was protected. She had people watching her back and making sure no harm would come to her. But Eden, alone in another country and distant enough to tell a stranger the sort of things she’d been up to, was an easy target. He’d never approved of the method of punishing people by hurting their loved ones, but he knew others often saw no problem with it.

Eden reached for a scrap paper, and Emilio was relieved that getting information from him was easier than it often was in cases he worked. Granted, there was a chance that the librarian would hold back on him a bit — people usually did, after all — but at the very least, whatever list he provided would give the detective something to start with. If it didn’t yield any results, he’d bully the guy a little for more answers. He was decent at that.

“I don’t have a personal email. I don’t know what people usually use them for.” He snorted at the attempted joke. “Well, I’m not very fast, but I’m sure I can manage to trip them if I put my mind to it.” The idea of a running club made him want to roll his eyes, but he refrained. (Couldn’t people run by themselves? Why did they need a club for it? It felt like bragging.) “I’ve got nowhere else to be. Try not to leave anyone off. Even if it seems like something small, write it down. You never know how pissed some people will get over the tiniest goddamn shit.”

—

He could see the wheels turning in Emilio’s head. Not that he had a single damn clue what he was thinking about, but at least it seemed like the information that he was providing was good enough for a start. “Yeah, exactly. That’s the thing. I need to protect myself, but if this person ends up being someone who was genuinely wronged, can I even blame them for reacting this way?” Eden stared blankly at the table, absentmindedly twirling the pen between his fingers as he tried to imagine himself in such a scenario. If someone he loved had been subjected to a wrath like his mother’s — a siren’s wrath — who knows, he might take such drastic measures too. At least there was no one that he loved that much.

Luckily Emilio found his attempt at humour to be somewhat amusing and a hint of a smile tugged at Eden’s lips. “I’m pretty sure man-made obstacles are against the rules of the running club. And a personal email for personal affairs. That way your work life can stay professional and your personal affairs can stay private.” His expression soured at the irony. “Well, they’re supposed to stay private.”

Eden forced his twitchy hand to steady, concentrating on putting pen to paper once again. The list wasn’t going to write itself, and thankfully the ‘email’ column came easily since it was really only a handful of people who had it. “I’ll just put individuals for now. I’ll give you the more general contacts — bank, newsletters, the running club — later, if you end up needing them.” A part of him hoped Emilio wouldn’t. After all, it would be nice if he could keep some privacy.

The column for his enemies was harder. Eden wasn’t sure what exactly constituted an enemy, but he did have a few severed connections that could’ve harboured enough negative feelings. The relationships ended for a reason and he did not care about airing them out for Emilio to see. However, Eden hesitated as he started writing Dayo’s name, immediately crossing it out. Dayo didn’t deserve to be on this list; it was impossible that he’d need to be on this list. But Emilio had said everyone, and the investigator was bound to inquire about the name that got such a reaction out of Eden regardless.

As for his mother’s column, Eden’s head started to spin after writing down the initial obvious suspects. How could he possibly write down everyone who his mother had pissed off when it could mean half the people in every room she stepped in? He didn’t even know the majority of their names, and Eden couldn’t help but think about the unidentified corpse that laid in his trailer that night. “That’s definitely not the end of my mother’s column,” he said as he slid the paper over to Emilio. Rubbing his temple as if it could clear him of the incoming headache, Eden closed his eyes. “But it’ll have to do for now. Like you said, too many people get angered over the smallest things. Have to think about the rest.”

—

Emilio was, of course, the last person who could condemn anyone for seeking vengeance. How much of his life had been dedicated to finding the people who had wronged him and his family and taking revenge against them? His death was dedicated to it in its entirety, from the moment the blade went into his chest to the moment he woke up in the back of Eve’s van and every goddamn moment that followed. But… he thought of Flora on the floor of his living room against the wall, dying for her father’s sins. He thought of Juliana, who would probably be alive now if she hadn’t fallen in love with a Cortez. “You can blame them for acting against the wrong person,” he pointed out. “If they were wronged, they were wronged. But unless you were the one who wronged them, it shouldn’t be you they come after.”

He huffed as Eden shot down the idea of tripping people in running club. “Sounds like it would be more fun if it weren’t against the rules,” he commented, mostly joking. The explanation of a personal email’s purpose — to separate life from career — drew a dry laugh from the detective. “I live in my office,” he said flatly, “so I guess that’s not really on the table for me, anyway.” But it made sense that Eden, whose career had been so public facing before he’d fucked off to join a library instead, might want something like that. Privacy was important. Emilio didn’t envy the obvious lack of it that Eden had been granted.

He watched Eden write down names, paying a little extra attention to the one he crossed out and re-added. An ex, the title beside the name said. How bitter had the breakup been? Why the hesitation in adding the name? Emilio wouldn’t be able to stop himself from digging into it later. In any case, that name and Eden’s hesitancy in adding it provided a decent distraction from the more familiar name in the column of people who had the email address on hand. Eve Farran. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see it spelled out there. His fingers twitched absently against the table. He hoped he wouldn’t have to ask Eve about it, but he knew he likely would. He was thorough. It was one of the things that made him good at this.

“Individuals is a good place to start,” he confirmed, eyes darting occasionally to Eve’s name scrawled out on the page. “Not a lot of overlap, I see. Your exes don’t have your email address?” Testing the waters, looking for a reaction. Clients weren’t always honest; sometimes, they didn’t even recognize how dishonest they were being.

The mother’s column was one he paid special attention to. Given how Eden spoke about her, he figured the source of the emails was far more likely to be tied to her than it was to Eden himself. “We can start with these,” he agreed, “and see where we go. Do you know anything about where the sender may be coming from? The emails, are they in English? Any wording that makes you think English is not comfortable for the person sending them?”

—

But that was the thing — a little part of Eden always felt like he was partially responsible for wronging these people. By not speaking out more in the colony or putting a stop to the ways his mother conducted business, could he really claim innocence as a witness? Eden bit the inside of his cheek. No, it was pointless to think about that now when everything was over and done with. Besides, what could he have ever done against his mother when he could never even take back control of his life from her?

“I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first to comment on your apparent work-life balance, or lack thereof,” Eden said with a hint of amusement, though the irony of that statement coming from his mouth wasn’t lost on him. His free time in his old life was never really free, and God knows he was currently doing a terrible job of not overworking himself in an attempt to distract himself. “At least tell me that you have a wall in between your respective work and home areas. A partition, even.”

He could feel Emilio’s eyes on him as he wrote. Not a surprise, the man was doing the job Eden had hired him to do. Though with every name he wrote, the slight feeling of dread in his gut only intensified. This was getting too real. He was taking action, and he had no idea if it was going to save him or make things worse. But at least he would be prepared. Death didn’t scare Eden nearly as much as it used to, but he still refused to die at the hands of this individual.

Eden snorted, shaking his head with certainty. “My exes? Hell no. Relationship with Jiayi was staged, Vincent was a leech of a friend. Haven’t talked to either of them since leaving China, and I made this email after that. Dayo…” he paused as if it would help let the tightness in his chest pass. “We did all of our communicating through text. More…personal.” It was the truth, though he hoped Emilio wouldn’t linger too long on this particular subject.

“They’re all in English, pretty fluent English from what I can tell. Would seemingly narrow it down to somewhere in North America, but most of my circles in China spoke good English. They see it as a necessity to learn now, a way to stay relevant in our business.” Eden grimaced. “You never know with these rich people either, maybe they hired someone. You’d never believe what insane things people with too much money choose to spend it on.”

—

He understood it, that tendency towards feeling guilty for things other people had done. Emilio knew all about guilt; it was one of the driving forces behind his life, for better or worse. (Usually for worse.) It was easy to tell someone else that something wasn’t their fault, simple to remind Eden that he could hardly blame himself for his mother’s actions. But when it was Emilio staring into the mirror and repeating the same assurances to himself, it always seemed to fall flat. Emilio was a man capable of applying the things in his head to everyone but himself. Other people deserved a grace he couldn’t extend to himself.

He got the feeling he wasn’t the only hypocrite in the room, though. Eden spoke of a work life balance in a way that made Emilio think he didn’t apply the same rules to himself, either, and the detective huffed a quiet half-laugh. He thought of his apartment, with the desk just a few feet from the couch. He’d taken some measures to separate the two spaces, but it seemed to dissolve more and more as time went on. Whatever barriers he had between his personal life and his professional one disintegrated when he’d stopped spending time on the former. “I manage,” he said, which didn’t really answer Eden’s question. Probably better that way, though; this was a professional relationship, too, after all.

The exes were probably off the table, then. There was certainly something about the way Eden mentioned Dayo, though Emilio suspected it was more emotional than it was related to the case in a genuine way. He didn’t ask about it, both because it wasn’t relevant and because, on the off chance that Eden might genuinely respond, he didn’t want to listen to a stranger talk about his ex or his feelings surrounding them. Better to leave all that for whatever friends Eden had in town. (Which included Eve, apparently.)

“So it’s not the exes. That’s a good thing.” Grudges with a romantic history tended to be more brutal than most, in Emilio’s experience. Heartbreak was a hell of a driving force. It complicated everything it touched, turned people into things they would have never become without it. His thumb absently rubbed at the ring on his finger, and his chest ached with the thought that he, too, was responsible for breaking the heart of someone who loved him. (Of everyone who loved him, really; it was hard not to think of Wynne’s face in his apartment, of the look they’d given him just before they turned to leave.)

Pulling himself out of the spiral, he nodded along as Eden spoke. “We’ll go with the assumption that the person writing the emails is the one making the threats for now,” he said, clicking his tongue. “Threats are usually personal. The kind of thing a person wants to do for themselves. A lot of people find some satisfaction in just making a threat, even if they don’t plan to follow through on it. It makes them feel powerful, like they have something over someone. People like that feeling. But we take these seriously, too. We won’t assume the person making them isn’t planning on doing what they’re saying unless they give us reason to think so. So… for now, this is the information we have. This person is someone who has your private email address, and they speak English very well. They know things about your mother, and things about you. It’s a place to start.”

He took the paper Eden had written his list on, folding it and tucking it into the pocket of his jeans before standing. “I can work with this. But if we’re working together, I need you to be honest with me. Keeping secrets makes it harder for me to do my job. And you really want me to be able to do my job. So, before I go, I’m going to ask you: Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

—

From Eden’s experience, saying ‘I manage’ was usually someone’s way of covering up how badly they were actually managing. Though, maybe this was also just another case of him projecting his own miseries onto someone else. Regardless, he knew better than to press on with the matter; maybe if he ever found himself in the Axis Investigations office, slash Emilio’s home would he be allowed an opinion.

“Yeah, thank god for that,” Eden said softly, the ache in his chest finally starting to dissipate. There was relief — not because Jiayi and Vincent were people he remotely had any emotional connection to now, but because of how they represented some of his worst days back home. Reliving bad memories was something that was going to happen with this process, and he had accepted that the moment he stepped foot into the room with Emilio. However, if there was any excuse for him to put off the vulnerable discussions, he was going to take it.

Inhaling sharply, Eden forced his attention back to what Emilio was explaining. “To be honest, this is far from my first time being threatened. They say it comes with the industry that we’re in. Well, that I was in. It usually always was someone who just wanted to feel power and control over someone seemingly untouchable, even if the feeling only did last for a few seconds. So that…makes sense,” he said with a nod. Not that it would take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusions that Emilio had so far, but Eden was still impressed with the private investigator’s work nonetheless. Though considering the abysmal opinions about the man he had read prior to their meeting, maybe his bar was already on the floor.

Seeing the other man start to pack up, Eden stretched his arms over his head before standing up. From what he could see through the small window in the study room door, it didn’t look like the library had gone up in flames in his absence, to which he let out a quiet sigh of relief. However, just as he was about to reach for the door and lead Emilio out, the investigator’s tone dropped into something much more serious.

Is there anything you’re not telling me?

It was clear from their short hour together that Emilio was someone who would not take well to lies. Not that Eden had never planned on lying, but he had been ready to lean into the art of omission. It was something he had gone back and forth on in his head for weeks, because god knows the case might be solved faster with such a crucial piece of information. But as satisfied as he was with Emilio’s work and no-nonsense personality, Eden didn’t trust him. At least, not yet. He was going to wait and see how well the investigator could be trusted with the private information he had handed over today, and then would he consider telling him about the rest, no matter how much he knew that was going to anger him.

It was times like this when Eden felt a sliver of gratitude for his past career choices. Putting on a polite smile that came so naturally to him after years of PR training, he prayed the slight uncertainty in his gaze didn’t betray him. “No, I’ve told you everything that I can recall at the moment, Mr. Cortez. But I will let you know if anything else comes to mind.”

—

A lot of PI work could be done through the process of elimination. You crossed out answer after answer until the only thing remaining was the truth. It was something Emilio had gotten good at during his tenure at Axis, a skill he’d honed carefully and completely into something as sharp as the knives in his pockets. Already, he could cross a few names off Eden's list. It wasn’t the exes. It wasn’t Eve. It was more likely something to do with the librarian’s mother than the man himself, though Emilio wasn’t entirely ready to commit to that as a certainty just yet. This case was a hair more difficult than some of the ones that came across his desk, but Emilio liked that. He liked the distraction it brought with it, liked feeling like he could focus his energy here instead of on his personal life. He could play the elimination game, and he could play it well.

But only if he had all the possibilities available to him. The problem, of course, with the process of elimination was that if the right answer was never on your board to begin with, eliminating the ones that were got you nowhere. He believed Eden, at least, that his exes weren’t a problem. The relief he expressed was too real to be falsified, even for an actor. But he wasn’t sure how much of the rest of it to believe. His mind kept going back to Eve’s name on that list. Did Eden know her because he’d used her cleanup services before? Had he been a part of one? Emilio would have to reach out to her, figure out if she knew any more than he did. (He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of reaching out to her; their conversations as of late hadn’t been the most productive.)

He considered the man in front of him, the familiarity with which he greeted these threats. Emilio understood that, too, had been both the person being threatened and the person doing the threatening. It was a little surprising to think that someone in a profession as human as acting had to deal with things like this but, then, Emilio knew very little of the industry. Things like this, he figured, were one of the few things that seemed to transcend species. Whether someone was human or something else, this kind of thing was always a possibility. He wished it weren’t, even if it likely would have put him out of a job.

In any case, he thought he’d gotten all he could from Eden here. There were no more answers to be provided; the librarian made that clear. This did not mean that there were no more answers to be found, of course. Emilio would be thorough. He’d look into all the information Eden had given him first and, if the process of elimination there left him with nothing left to see at all, he’d start poking around at the things Eden didn’t want to share with him. One way or another, he’d figure out what was going on here. Eden might not like him much by the end of it, but Emilio would do all he could to at least ensure that the man was alive.

He nodded at the man’s polite smile, wondering if he could really trust anything Eden said. An actor was a liar by trade, and Eden must have been good at it to have had such a lucrative career back home. But questioning his client would do him little good at this stage, so Emilio offered a smile of his own that was far less convincing. “All right,” he said. “In that case, I’ll be in touch. We’ll figure this out.” Whether Eden liked it or not.

#wickedswriting #c: emilio #thread: i hope this email finds you well #//ily bex :3

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banisheed · 2 months ago

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TIMING: Current LOCATION: Axis Investigations PARTIES: Siobhan (@banisheed) & Emilio (@vengeancedemon) SUMMARY: Boobs Realperson needs help from Emilio! CONTENT WARNING: implications of child death, implications of past domestic abuse (child abuse). PREVIOUSLY: (mentioned) Siobhan Dolan and Ingeborg Endeman teamed up to kidnap and torture Rhett Tangaroa in an abandoned factory, where Siobhan joyously claimed his leg. Emilio Cortez burst on to the scene, bargaining for Rhett's life, ultimately saving him. [ part 1 & part 2 ]

Siobhan strangled someone while Double Indemnity played on his CRT TV once and so, she knew a thing or two about noirs. There was a certain style about them: long trench coats, dark glasses, curling plumes of cigarette smoke and a dame with blonde hair. Though there was no saxophone playing in the background, and her blonde wig left much to be desired, she was sure that Emilio would be none the wiser. She’d gotten the look: she had the coat, she had the hair, she practiced her French accent, her large sunglasses obscured most of her face. And, anyway, Emilio was an idiot.

“Bonjour,” she said. The sniffles and the meek voice were intentional, though aided by the sheer volume of dust around her. Had the building always been like this? Didn’t he have the money to hire a maid by now? Siobhan straightened out her brown coat. “It is moi, Boobs Realperson…” Siobhan had always been terrible with fake names; for all the lifetimes she’d lived, she’d always insisted on using her own. “...we spoke on ze phone? Monsieur Cortez? Are you in?” She tapped her foot. Fates, she hated being French but she’d still take it over being British. Would it be too late to change her accent?

“Seal voos play—” She rolled her eyes. “—it is so scary here and I am a…woman.”

—

The first time he’d been seriously injured on a hunt, he’d been thirteen. It was less than a year out from Victor’s death, and grief made him sloppier than he’d ever been before. He’d had close calls before that one — moments that would have been worse if he’d ducked a heartbeat later than he had, injuries that would have lasted longer if his healing factor weren’t willing to work overtime — but at thirteen, he came the closest to death he ever had at that point in his life. He remembered thinking his mother might worry over him, and then he remembered wondering why he’d thought that at all. She hadn’t, of course; she’d chastised him for his mistake not because the idea of his death nauseated her, but because his injury had left Rosa unprotected in the remainder of the fight. When you make these stupid mistakes, it isn’t just you who suffers. You have a job to do. Why can’t you just do it?

He’d been on another hunt less than a week later, still aching and unsteady. Cortezes didn’t let silly things like near death experiences slow them. And maybe Emilio was a blight on the family name, but he still followed that philosophy. He still had a job to do, still clung to it. He was dead. He was dead. He was dead, but couldn’t he be useful, still?

It was less noble than that. He knew it, deep down. He didn’t want to be useful, he wanted to be distracted. He wanted to think about anything other than the stillness in his chest. He couldn’t be alive, couldn’t claw his way back to a heartbeat, but he could make it so he didn’t have to think about the absence of it. He wanted to forget, needed to. Axis had always been a good method of doing that.

So, when his phone rang, he answered it. He listened to a painfully French woman complain, and he thought, this is good. He thought, this is better. He told her to meet him at his office — the one in Worm Row, the shitty one, the only one he was planning on using now — and he hoped that whatever she brought to his desk would be interesting enough to let him forget he was dead for an hour, or maybe two.

He was in the bedroom when she arrived, sitting on a dirty mattress he no longer needed and staring up at a stained ceiling that had almost grown unfamiliar in his absence. There were new stains there, different ones. He was trying to work out which he remembered when he heard her enter, her voice calling out through the empty apartment. It was familiar; more so in person than it had been on the phone. He didn’t know who it could belong to, but… his recent experience, the case that ended with him dead in a dumpster, had him moving cautiously out to the living room.

“It’s a fucking apartment,” he called out gruffly, irritation clinging to the words. “Don’t have to be nervous about —” He cut himself off as he entered the living room, narrowing his eyes. The wig was bad. The jacket was ugly. The accent, he was realizing, was fake. (How was he supposed to know? He’d never spoken to a French person before.) The name was… one he probably should have clocked, sure. But he’d just died, and everything felt so goddamn heavy all the time.

Still… it was a little embarrassing that it had gotten to this point. He stared at her with a sigh, rolling his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my apartment,” he ordered, fingers itching for a knife. He probably needed to be careful here; he remembered, in the van with Eve, how easily he’d been consumed by rage, how hard it was to control himself after. Control was still a fickle thing, even now. He needed to try not to lose it.

—

Siobhan waddled into the apartment, it was hard to move with all the knives she had in her coat. She didn’t want them to start clanging around, lest Emilio begin to wonder why she sounded like a coin purse. Something was…terribly warm. Under her coat, through her skin, between her ribs, her slow heart hummed. She blinked. Emilio didn’t have a dead body in the apartment, did he? How dare he keep that from her; dead bodies ought to be disclosed at the door. No matter, she was here now and she would liberate the body from Emilio’s grimy clutches. Where was it, exactly? She waddled forward, her wig tipped over. She was being led towards Emilio. She stepped forward again and again, her heels clicking. Eventually, she was facing him. He was telling her to leave. Her heart was singing. Her skin tingled. The concentration on her face broke and her lips twitched. She fell over, laughing wildly.

Siobhan was terrible at fake names and accents and picking wigs, sure, but she’d always had a talent for finding humour in things no one wanted her to find humor in. You couldn’t be an outcast for forty years without learning to laugh a little, or a lot. She threw her head up to the ceiling, clutched her stomach and wheezed with uncontrolled amusement; she was crying. A knife clattered out of her coat and she didn’t care. It was the irony that tickled her most—an undead slayer! Fate did agree with her idea of comedy, or rather, she had always agreed with Fate’s ideas. She threw her mind into Emilio’s and laughed harder; oh, how he must hate himself! Oh, how it must feel to become the thing you hunted! She’d offer all her coat-knives to read his mind just this once. Everytime she glanced at him, her laughter was renewed.

What flavor was he? A vampire? While the funniest option, she couldn’t imagine that he’d allow that to happen and she wasn’t sure it was possible. A zombie? When had he gotten bit? Would he have let it go this far? A mare? Could he have left his dreams so unprotected? No, he didn’t look like he slept. Well, he didn't when he was alive, now he couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to. A fury? It would fit his general sad-angry demeanour. If he was an upior, would he show her how long his tongue was? She wiped her tears and drew her knees to her chest. Her wig had fallen off during their fit of laughter and so she was sure she didn’t need the accent anymore—a small mercy for them both. “Oh, you poor, poor thing,” she said, setting her sunglasses aside. He could keep those, and whatever knives fell out of her, he could call it a Death gift. She stood up and brushed herself off.

It was true that the undead were vile, disgraceful creatures but Emilio had also been that in life. As far as Siobhan was concerned, the only thing that changed was how funny he was, and how much more useless. She snorted and covered her mouth, hoping to stop herself from descending into laughter again. She wanted to insult him; a thousand and one things to say fluttered across her mind. “I suppose you don't want to hear about my treacherous husband anymore, do you?” She wanted to tell him he was a mistake. She wanted to remind him that the thing he was now was the culmination of everything he hated. Yet, she was gathering the sense that he knew these things already. In fact, he must’ve known them better than her. After all, he was the one stuck inside his own corpse, dragging it around.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “I failed you.” She hadn’t meant to say it; through the laughter and the realization that nothing she could say to him was worse than anything he was already thinking, a truth slipped out. With a banshee in town—with two, even if Regan was as much a banshee as Emilio was currently a slayer—one needn’t develop into a mockery of nature. If a slayer was a fix for an existing problem, a banshee was preventative care; or they could be, should be. If Siobhan had been there, if she’d screamed, if she'd seen it, would she really have offered Emilio a proper death? Siobhan shivered as she tried to imagine herself doing something nice for Emilio.

“Do you want me to finish the job?” Siobhan asked, pulling out a knife. “Or have you got unfinished business?” In truth, she didn’t like killing (could it be called killing?) the undead. For a surety, they needed to go back to Death, but it wasn’t the same as taking a life. What was true—what would always be true—was that something was better than nothing. Some Emilio, no matter how putrid, was still an Emilio. He was himself, whether he liked it or not and from where she stood, it seemed he didn’t like it much. But then again, he’d always seemed miserable to her. “Your next family reunion should be fun.”

—

Back when he’d slept, Siobhan Dolan had been a common feature in his nightmares. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d share with anyone, least of all Siobhan herself, but in the privacy of his own mind, it wasn’t something he could deny. Siobhan had once been responsible for one of the most harrowing moments of Emilio’s life, had tortured someone he’d loved for days on end for Emilio to find and torn a promise bind from his throat to stop it. Seeing her here, in his apartment during the newest most harrowing time of his life, was not a welcome surprise.

Her laughter made it worse, of course. It cut through him with the same painful force as the blade that had ended his life, shoved itself into his ribcage and shredded everything in his path. The pain of it wasn’t even a useful thing anymore, was it? Pain was a signal sent to the body to warn it of damage, to warn it of something wrong, and what good was that to a corpse? It was as useless as he was. Siobhan’s laughter only drove the point home.

She was on the floor now, the force of her laughter having felled her and torn away whatever flimsy pretense she’d come here with. Gone was the bad wig and the strange attempt at an accent; he wondered how much of it had been a real attempt to fool him and how much of it was something she was doing only to prove to herself that she could. For the first time since his death, Emilio wished he’d been dragged back into his body as something else. A vampire could sink teeth into her throat and drain her dry; a zombie could tear into her skin no matter what she threw to protect herself; a mare could flitter away into the astral and attack her from behind. But Emilio wouldn’t gain the strength a fury boasted until he fed, and he hadn’t done much of that. He was weaker now than he had been in life. He wondered how on earth something like that was fair.

Rage burned through him, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but. He felt the claws trying to push through his hands; it was hard to remind himself why he shouldn’t use them. All Siobhan had to do was scream, and he’d be incapacitated at the least. His left ear was still dulled from his last banshee encounter, death not enough to repair it. If she took the building down, other people would suffer, too. Emilio could excuse petty rage bringing about his own demise, but he had a harder time allowing for it to doom his neighbors.

She talked about her husband, about the fake case she’d invented to push her way into his apartment. He wondered why she’d bothered. She could have barged in without it just as easily, could have shown up with no pretense. Was it a game to her, then? Was everything?

And then, the strangest part yet — she said she failed him, and his fingers twitched. He’d spoken to Regan often enough to know that banshees thought death a duty that belonged to them and them alone. Emilio disliked it with Regan, but he hated it with Siobhan. “Fuck you,” he snapped harshly, the rage making his voice loud enough to echo. He used to be afraid of her; he didn’t think he was now. What more could she do to him? There was nothing worse than what had been done already.

She held a knife, and he thought about the one in the alley that had ended his life. Would it feel the same going in now as it had then? He still felt pain, despite the fact that the signals it sent were no longer necessary. Would his body remember the blade that killed him? Would it recreate the feeling? His stomach twisted into a knot, his hands clenched into fists. She talked about his next family reunion, because she didn’t know enough about him to know that he had no one to return to. He kept his eyes on the knife, which was the only thing that could grant a family reunion. “I want,” he said lowly, “for you to get the fuck out of my apartment. Or maybe I rip your throat out. Either one is fine for me.”

��

“Such anger!” Siobhan clutched her chest. “Is that it? Is that what you…” She leaned in. Being a fury had a bit of a redundant stink to it. Did he really need to shove more anger into his tiny body? “Do you want revenge?” She flipped the knife around, pointing the hilt towards him, offering it out like the morsel of food it was. “I did hurt that man, didn’t I? Your brother? What was his name…” Rhett. She could never forget it; she had his foot. And she adored his foot, really, it was a great foot. Part of her wanted to ask Emilio how he was. Part of her hoped he was doing alright—she always hoped for it, like wishing good luck upon an old friend. The people she hurt were more her friends than anyone else. Torture was the most intimate act she knew; violence was a love language. But most of the time, it was just violence. She hoped the post-torture sentimentality was one of her more charming quirks.

“Is this not the bounds of your curse?” She continued, “what do you want? My blood? My brain? Go on.” She whistled low at him, like a dog. “Come. Rip my throat out. What are you going to use? Do you have claws? A tongue? Is there metal fused into your skin now? Magic—oh that would be dreadfully boring, say it’s not that.”

Siobhan wasn’t afraid of pain; all her life she had endured it. When she possessed enough shame to beg, no one listened. She stopped hoping that someone would. Her life could be catalogued by scars and blood and the last place to feel sudden shyness was on the precipice of something interesting. Meaning had been stripped from her life but she knew a place where she could find it again. It was inside Emilio’s mind, running down his cold skin and sitting on the tips of his fingers. It was what he could give her.

Siobhan wanted very simple things: bones, knives, home (never happening), appropriate worship for her attractiveness, fun. She was ravenous for fun. In any place she could find it, she hoped to pull it out roots and all. But even fun was secondary to this. “I want to hold your idea of me in my hands,” she whispered. And then she could know it too, and then she could have it. He could give it to her. Siobhan wanted a very simple thing: be told who she was. If Emilio could say it while giving her a show, it was all the better for her.

“Go on,” she said. “Come on. For what I did to Ringo.”

—

She leaned in, and he wondered what she knew and how she knew it. He knew so little about banshees; like furies, they were a rare thing. Even Rhett had known precious little about them beyond the most basic of facts. Emilio had learned a little more thanks to Regan (who was hardly a standard, when it came to banshees) and Siobhan (who never had any intention of helping him understand more), but his knowledge remained so full of holes that what he knew far outweighed what he didn’t. Siobhan seemed to know, as soon as she entered his apartment, that he was undead. Did banshees have a sense like slayers, then? Something that alerted them to a thing that was moving, but not alive? Was theirs more specific? Did Siobhan know exactly what he was, and how he’d become it?

He knew he’d get no straight answers from her. To Emilio, everything in this apartment was an apocalypse. To Siobhan, it was a game. This was a common theme between them, something that had been true in the warehouse where she’d tortured Rhett and in their online conversations where she frequently brought it up.

Of course she was bringing it up again now, too. Of course she’d mention it, would drag it out of the shadows and drop it on the floor between them. Look! She seemed to boast. Look at how easily I tore your world apart. Wasn’t the boasting proof that she could do it again? He’d exchanged a bind, made her promise not to hurt Rhett again, but weren’t there other people she could go after? Was the promise he’d fought so hard for even still in place now, or had it expired when he had? Were the dead bound by things they’d promised in life? He wished, for a moment, that Rhett were here to ask. But if Rhett were here, Emilio wasn’t sure he could count on his brother not killing him for what he’d become. The undead weren’t a warden’s usual target, but Rhett had never been picky.

The more she spoke, the more impossible it seemed to hold his anger in. It grew with every word, made itself bigger and bigger like a snowball rolling down a hill. Emilio hadn’t been good at controlling his rage when he was alive, and he was useless at it now that he was dead. Siobhan whistled, like he was a dog she could call, and the hilt of the knife was pointed towards him like an invitation. And wasn’t there something poetic about that? Stabbing Siobhan with her own knife, when it had been his blade that took his life in that alley… The thought sent a rush of something unrecognizable through him.

Her ‘misremembering’ of Rhett’s name provided a straw big enough to break the camel’s back, and Emilio didn’t realize he was moving until his hands wrapped around the hilt of her blade. He rushed forward with a hoarse, guttural cry, fueled by the rage burning in his chest. Nothing about it looked human, but maybe that was to be expected. After all, there were no humans in this shitty apartment, were there? Only monsters.

—

As the knife plunged into the soft skin of her abdomen, Siobhan realized that the issue with the knife was that it didn’t give her any new information. A vampire could stab her just as well as a zombie which was probably as well as a mare which was certainly about the same level as a fury. Did it look like he was slurping up the vague idea of revenge? Her blood gushed out over his hand, streaming on to the floor. Well, he wasn’t one of the vampires, that was certain—but she already guessed that. Did his dramatic battle cry mean anything? Was that the rage of a fury or the rage of a sad man? Honestly, it was so hard to tell with Emilio; it looked just about the same as when he skewered poor Ingeborg with a sword. He really hadn’t changed much.

She snapped one hand over his wrist and the other around his forearm. Her blunt nails dug in. She wanted to keep him there, looking at her, looking at what he’d done. There was always a moment of painlessness while the brain was catching up to the body. Siobhan could count the seconds to the exact moment her stomach would burn up and her legs would buckle. She’d been stabbed more times than Emilio had ever stabbed people, she guessed. She had about ten seconds before her need for medical care became too obvious. The knife was a terrible idea; what idiot thought the knife was a good idea? Ten seconds. “How does it feel? Does it feel good? Do you feel better? Describe it to me.”

She stumbled back, clutching the knife. Pain rammed into her, blossoming from her stomach. It wasn’t the pain she minded. Fates, there was so much blood. “Ha, I’m going to be inside your floorboards forever now.” Her back hit a wall and she laughed. The knife was small, the coat caught most of it, and it didn’t feel like he hit any of her jumbled organs, but she didn’t feel great. It was odd how stabbing had that effect. It was odd that some piece of her mind really believed she’d get a crumb of his catharsis. He was being so selfish about it. “I could scream,” she said, but she wasn’t going to. There was a terrible truth about love, it existed like a cockroach. Rhett loved him so dearly, and where there was one, there were more. So many loves spun out from his pathetic body, inside his pathetic life. She wanted to know them desperately. She reached out, grasping air; she could take them, they could be hers.

Her hand dropped. To Emilio, she was evil. The stabbing and that impassioned cry of rage made it all very clear. She had what she wanted to know and yet, all she could think about was fighting it, simply because it was there. Why was it that nothing ever seemed to be enough for her? “I know it’s disgusting,” she said, “what you’ve become. I know how you hunters think, it’s all monsters and innocents to you. But there are no monsters, Emilio. There never have been. Life is predictable and boring and undeath is just the same…” She trailed off, trying to find the door. Her hands were shaking. “How does it feel?” she asked again.

—

The knife sunk in, up to the hilt. Blood splurted out, got on her blouse, on his hands, and somehow, he thought it would look different. Somehow, when he’d imagined Siobhan bleeding — and he had imagined it, hadn’t he? So many times, in so many different ways now — he’d pictured her blood as something so completely unlike his own. Black, like a vampire’s or glittery, like a mare’s. But it was red. Like Rhett’s in that factory, flaky and half-dried. Like Flora’s on the floor of his living room, seeping into the floor. Like his in that alley, spilling out so quickly that his vision was going black around the edges before he realized he was losing it at all. Siobhan’s blood was red; he wondered if it was supposed to be.

It took him a moment to recognize that the color of her blood wasn’t the only unexpected result of the ordeal because normally, this felt different. Normally, Emilio sunk a blade into someone looking for solace and found emptiness instead, found nothing but more grief and anger swirling around in his chest with the already substantial amount of it that lived there full time. It never felt the way he wanted it to, never felt better.

He still wasn’t sure it felt better now, but it felt… different. Felt… good, maybe. It sent a surge of something through him, felt like a gust of wind on a hot day cooling his sweaty form. He swore his fingers were tingling with it, though Siobhan’s grip on his arm prevented him from pulling back to check them for changes. There was a hollow in his stomach that felt a little fuller now, he thought; an emptiness that still existed, but wasn’t quite as vast.

How does it feel, Siobhan asked, does it feel good? And it did. Fuck, it did. It took him a moment to realize why, took him a moment to understand it. Siobhan had wronged him, and he’d fought back. This wasn’t a temper tantrum, wasn’t an angry man lashing out against something bigger than himself and making no difference at all, wasn’t screaming into a void. This was a meal.

She stumbled back, and he watched her. Her back hit the wall behind her, and he clenched and unclenched his fists as if it was an experiment, as if he was figuring them out. Would he be stronger now? How much? For how long? He couldn’t unsheathe his claws in front of her without giving away more than he wanted to, so he shoved his hands into his pockets instead. The burst of energy that had come with the rage of the conversation was faltering now, like a brief rush of adrenaline that was difficult to hold for long. Numbness seeped back in. Siobhan threatened to scream, and he nodded. “So scream.” She would have done it already, if she were going to. He figured they both knew that.

She talked a lot, for someone who’d just been stabbed. He hated that he could relate, hated that he was just as mouthy when he was in pain, hated having anything in common with her at all. He hated it, too, that her assessment of him was right. It was disgusting, this thing he’d turned into. He’d spent his entire goddamn life knowing it.

He let out a laugh, sharp as the knife, when she continued. There are no monsters, said the monster bleeding on the floor to the monster who’d put her there. There never have been.

“You’re wrong,” he told her. “In here, there are only monsters.” But that wasn’t all she said. There was that question again, hanging pretty above his head. How does it feel? A good man would say it was harrowing. A hunter would say it was necessary. Emilio, when his heart was still beating, would have said it was empty. But he was none of those things now, was he? He’d never been a good man, and he could no longer claim the title of hunter. His heart no longer beat, and he wasn’t even sure he felt like Emilio now. So how did it feel? What would the monster say? “It feels pretty goddamn good.”

—

Siobhan slid across the wall, groping wildly. The door was here somewhere. Wasn’t the door over here? She croaked and sputtered. Standing in front of her was the man that had turned Ingeborg into a kebab, but she couldn’t find the other one. She was waiting for the man who cried, the man that begged, the man that would’ve thrown his life aside for a man who didn’t deserve it. The man whose desperation gave her a promise. The man who had loved so strongly that it was still Rhett and Emilio that came to her mind when she heard that cursed 4-letter word. Did Emilio seem flushed? Did he seem filled? Or was it that she’d finally reached the stage of being stabbed when her vision decided it wanted to swim?

“Not monsters,” she said. “Just a sad man and a…” She swallowed back her blood. “...sexy woman.” But he seemed so sure of what he was saying, that it felt good to him. Where was he? Where was the Emilio that Rhett had begged for? The one he swore was “good”? She found the door at last, her bloody hand slipping off the handle, again and again as it pinged, useless. “How lovely for you. Feeling generous with that ‘good’ feeling?” Even if he could transfer it to her, he probably wouldn’t. The door’s handle pinged again as she failed to find her grip.

“Was Rhett a monster too? Is that why you begged for him? You loved him.” Despite what he was, despite what he had done. She didn’t understand it then and she understood it less now, with this man staring at her. “Where is he?” She swallowed. “That… That Emilio. You said… You said…” Siobhan replayed the scene. Rhett was his brother, he said. He loved him, he said. It didn’t matter why, there was no why, he said. He wasn’t good, Rhett wasn’t good, she wasn’t good, Ingeborg wasn’t good, he said. Rhett said Emilio was good, though. Siobhan certainly thought Ingeborg was good, despite everything, though she’d never say it to her face. “Does it still feel good?” Finally, the door swung open and the sudden pull tossed Siobhan’s body against the frame.

She was watching him, she was still waiting to see it. “Still?” she asked in a whisper. There was always that moment after, when the victim started to look like what they were: a life, a person. When all that was left were the actions, and all of one’s past unfurling to join the present. One person could look so much like someone else; one drop of blood could so easily transform into the memory of another. It was the inevitable humanity. Siobhan had learned to work despite it. “You begged for him.”

—

She was sliding, was flopping, was moving with none of the grace she usually boasted, and Emilio wondered if he’d looked like this. Everyone wanted to imagine their final moments as a noble thing, wanted to believe they’d face it valiantly and bravely with their chins held up high, but no one ever really did. In the end, when death came knocking, all anyone ever was was afraid. Emilio had been, in that alley. He’d thought it so strange at the time, thought it preposterous. He’d spent years chasing death, longing for it, and when it came for him, it hadn’t come with relief. It hadn’t welcomed him with open arms, hadn’t embraced him and laid him down to rest. It chewed him up and spat him out as something else, something worse.

He wondered if it would treat Siobhan more kindly. She loved it, didn’t she? She talked about death like it was a god, like it sat at the head of every table and bowed everyone’s heads with a stern look. If he took her knife and slit her throat, would she die smiling? Or would she, like he had, learn that death was so much crueller than you’d imagined it would be?

She insisted, again, that there were no monsters. He stared down at the blood seeping into the floorboards, felt the stickiness on his hands, and remembered Rhett on the floor of that factory, his leg already starting to rot a few feet away from his body. If that wasn’t a monster, what was? The things he killed in the woods, the ones that didn’t look human anymore? Things like spawn, or ghouls, or wights that only ever wanted to eat? What Siobhan had done to Rhett wasn’t about earning a meal; what Emilio had done here had fed him only by coincidence. If this didn’t make them monsters, then the word had no meaning at all.

Was Rhett a monster too, she asked, and he thought yes. He remembered every terrible thing his brother had done, remembered loving him in spite of them. He thought of Eve, calling him her friend in the darkness of her van even as he snapped at her. He thought of Teddy, who he knew would love him just as much now as they had when his heart beat if only he would let them. And he thought about how he had no intention of holding himself back from snapping at Eve. He had no intention of letting Teddy love him, still. He wondered if that made him better or worse.

Was a monster that knew it was a monster better than the one that didn’t? Was the beast with sharp teeth and deadly claws that called itself what it was more forgivable than the one that tortured and hurt while insisting that monsters were things of fairytales? How much did it matter that he accepted the definition if he spelled it out with blood, anyway?

“He died,” he replied blankly, thinking again of that alley, of the knife in his chest, of the way death wasn’t an old friend but a mouth full of teeth that hadn’t bothered to swallow its meal. It was jarring, saying it aloud. He died. The Emilio from that factory, the one that begged for his brother’s life and would have fallen on the sword to save it, had died bloody and alone, with no one to plead for him.

The surge of the brief feeding was fading now, the morsel too small to provide a full meal. If he finished the job and killed her now, would it be better? Would the feeling last longer, would he be stronger? Or would the only change be that the monster was well-fed for a moment instead of starving? A hungry monster was dangerous, but was one with a full stomach any better?

He could have done it, he thought. He could have taken the knife and shoved it in her throat, and maybe she would have screamed and brought the building down around them both, but maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she would have screamed and killed him, and maybe the resulting explosives that came with a fury’s demise would have taken her out, too. It didn’t feel good anymore, he thought; it didn’t feel bad, either. He wasn’t sure if it was supposed to.

“Would anyone beg for you?” He asked it slowly, watching as she crawled towards the door. Would it change his mind if they did? If someone showed up now, if they pleaded for Siobhan the way Emilio had pleaded for Rhett, would the guilt seep in? Or would he still feel what he felt now — this deep, endless chasm of nothing?

He followed her towards the door, hands still shoved into his pockets. Maybe he’d kill her, still. Maybe it would make him feel better, make him feel something. Maybe the monster that felt anything at all was better than the monster that was empty.

—

Siobhan couldn’t find him. Her eyes darted between his, snapped to his feet, watching his hands stuffed into his pockets. She clutched the knife in her stomach, comforted by its familiar hilt. She wasn’t expecting remorse; something like that would require Emilio to like her and she was under no delusions that he did. She wasn’t expecting sympathy; something like that would require her to be sympathetic, and it was much harder to be delusional about that. She had stood where Emilio was hundreds of times before. She liked to watch them. She liked to be standing where he was. Always, the spear of emotion found her in the end—for just a moment, for a minute or for days. It wasn’t remorse and it wasn’t sympathy but it was some nameless swirling pit inside of her. It was something. There was only one person she’d never seen hold that something but her mother was not someone she wanted to think about.

Siobhan laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic.” She leaned against the wall and coughed, a stab (ha) of pain surged through her. “It didn’t die. You can’t—it’s still there.” She swallowed. She still had the sensitive child, the arrogant teen, the impulsive adult. She was still the girl that buried moths and drew wedding dresses into the margins of Austen. She was still the adolescent with the raw voice and the knife’s determination: steeled and sharp and carved into a line. She was still the woman who’d choked on dirt as her mother pulled her wings out. All of them there, screaming at her all of the time, inside her head. There was always something.

What did you become if there was nothing?

“I still see you holding him. They always—they always say they have family. Kids. They always beg for themselves. But I’d never seen someone… for someone else. For someone like him. For you.” Siobhan wasn’t afraid of Death; how could someone like her be? And yet, like everyone she had killed, she didn’t want to die. She limped away from him. She didn’t walk into his filthy apartment thinking he could kill her but she was certainly leaving it with that impression. No, no one would beg for her, she’d known it for more years than Emilio had been alive. Foolishly, she always seemed to hope that someone would. Even the twin scars down her back hadn’t worn out that optimism.

“Why…” She smiled. “You’d beg for me, wouldn’t you? The knife is practically a marriage proposal. I don’t accept, by the way.” She swallowed and puffed her chest out, tensing against the pain. She sucked air into her lungs and turned to face him. “You’re a little too dead for me.”

The scream was a weak one, there wasn’t much left inside of her to burst pipes or pop windows. She wanted a moment to limp down the hall and she’d always been skilled at tight, focused shrieks anyway; she could thank her mother for that, at least. She didn’t turn around to see if it’d worked. She pushed down the hall, out of Emilio’s path and away from his sight. Her nightmares would thank him for the fuel: his slow, steady walk; his hunched body; his blank face. She heaved, she winced and lurched around. She crashed into walls and groaned and dragged herself across gravel and dirt. She felt terrible. She felt hollowed out and reassembled. She felt foolish.

Most of all, she felt sorry for the man who begged for his brother.

—

Her eyes kept darting over him, and he wondered what she saw there. It had been years since he’d felt comfortable looking at his own reflection, but he’d avoided mirrors with a desperate vigor since waking up in the backseat of Eve’s van. Did he look different now? He thought, inevitably, of his daughter. He thought of his wife, of his mother and his siblings. He thought about how, even if you’d washed the blood from their corpses, they wouldn’t have looked like themselves. When a person died, wasn’t there something that left them? Not just the animated features of life dancing across their face, but something deeper.

No corpse ever looked exactly like the person who had once inhabited it. So what did Emilio look like, now? What tiny differences was Siobhan cataloging, what small changes could she notice? He felt as exposed now as he had in that body bag, like a thing on display. She was the one with the knife sticking out of her gut, but Emilio didn’t feel much like the person in control anymore.

She insisted that it wasn’t gone, that version of him that had used this body before the knife tore through his chest. She sounded so sure of herself, because didn’t she always? There was a part of him that wanted to believe her, a part of him that yearned for it to be the truth. He could still be him, even without a heartbeat. He could still be him, even if he was dead. But that feeling in his chest, the quiet hunger that had been awoken by the smallest hint of a meal, was so loud. The monster didn’t leave much room behind for the man. It was always going to be one or the other.

Had it really rattled her so much, the fact that he loved his brother? Was it really something that sat with her, still? If she were anyone else, some part of him might feel sorry for her. If something as simple as Emilio not wanting Rhett to die had tilted her world so fully on its axis, it must have meant that love was a hard thing for her to come by. But he could feel no sympathy for the monster that had haunted so many of his nightmares, could muster no grief for someone he’d hated so completely. Siobhan was unloved, and Emilio told himself it was because she’d deserved to be. He told himself that there were people who hadn’t earned any form of affection.

He told himself that monsters were unlovable, because wasn’t that easier than facing the people who loved him now? Wasn’t it better to pretend that he wasn’t capable of receiving that love? It would hurt less. He thought it would hurt less.

“I would never beg for you,” he said lowly, half-offended that she’d suggested it. He wanted to take it further, wanted to insist that he’d never beg for a monster, but hadn’t he begged for Rhett? Didn’t he love his brother, even now? He pushed the thought away, focused on this instead. It was easier, wasn’t it? Keeping the violence at the forefront of his mind, ignoring all the things that lurked behind it, that was easier. It had always been the thing he understood best.

She said he was dead, and she was right, but he wanted to flinch anyway. He wanted to close his eyes to it, wanted to pretend. He wanted to turn it around and taunt her, wanted to say, you will be, too, wanted to make it true as much as he didn’t. He wanted to do a lot of things, but she screamed and he did none of them. His hands went to his ears, a curse clattered against his teeth. He ducked his head away from the sound and, by the time his ears had stopped ringing and he looked back up again, she was gone.

He could have gone after her. He wasn’t very fast, but she was probably a lot slower now. He could follow the trail of blood to find her, could track her down without much effort and finish what he’d started, but he stood in the living room instead, staring at the bloody floor. His hands dropped from his ears, his claws resheathing. He wondered, somewhat absently, if that desperate screech to ensure her escape counted as a banshee screaming for him.

There were two monsters in his apartment, and now one. There were two monsters in his apartment, and now a lone corpse and a bloodstained floor. He stared at the red until his vision swam, watched it twist itself into imagined shapes. There was a monster in his apartment, still. It wouldn’t leave until he did.

Turning away from the bloodstained floor, he made his way back to the bedroom. The apartment door stood open behind him, but it felt like too much effort to close it, felt like too much effort to do anything. It was hard to worry that someone might come inside with poor intentions, hard to feel concerned that anyone might hurt him. Whatever damage there was to do had been done already, with a knife in a dark alley. Eventually, he’d probably face some kind of consequences for the blood on the floor for the same reason the open door didn’t bother him now.

Monsters, he knew, were hard things to kill.

#bex why do we have multiple threads with baby themed titles #also bex made me cry #:( everyone make bex answer for crimes #c emilio #writing #first foods for baby #b3 #emilio 003

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