haliotropes

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

16. Epilogue | Rated M

Thank you 🩷

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It takes about a month for everyone to heal enough, for Marie to recover from the trauma of having to see her mother with front teeth missing, 43 stitches in her face and reset ribs. Rust insisted on being up and out of the wheelchair before any meetings were held. He said it was to avoid confusing Marie. Kenny assured him kids are smart enough to understand something like that. He made them wait anyway.

Two more weeks and Kenny finally decides she's ready to have the talk. She was honestly terrified of having to sit Marie down and tell her the truth of the past ten years and so she put it off. But Rust has quit smoking, is going sober. These are not things Kenny asked of him, but things he did of his own volition. Not to prove anything, but for his own peace of mind. To be better for all three of them- four of you count Marty, and they all did.

Marie is outside at the picnic table, drawing a picture of Mouse. The crayons are all snapped in half because she usually presses too hard. Kenny watches her for a second, still putting off the inevitable, but also reveling in a fleeting image of Rust teaching her how to draw, how to be gentler in the ways he knows.

Kenny sits down, tucks a stray curl behind Marie's ear.

“Your braid's coming undone,” Kenny remarks.

“You can fix it if you want,” Marie says, eyes focused on getting Mouse’s ears right. Kenny positions behind Marie, sitting on the space of the seat she doesn't quite occupy. Times like these, Kenny remembers how small she is, and how there's still time.

“Mo, I wanna talk to you about something important. I want to talk to you about your father and why he isn't in our lives. Is that okay?”

Marie lifts two crayons, slightly different kinds of brown.

“Which one?”

Kenny thinks for a moment, twisting strands of hair, then nods.

“Left one.”

“‘Kay.”

“So, can we talk about that?”

“Yeah.”

Kenny finishes the braid, pats Marie on the shoulders. She shifts back to sitting beside Marie and clasps her hands together. Her leg still bounces.

“Okay. Your father and I knew each other for several years before you were born, and we loved each other very much. Things in town, and around here got hard. He got his mind stuck on something and it took him away from here. Away from me. What I didn't know until after he was gone, is that I was pregnant with you.”

Marie thinks for a moment, still coloring.

“Why didn't you call him?” She asks, the logical question.

“I sure did try. I tried everything. I had people who knew people try. But he disappeared. I didn't know anything but one thing. And that one thing was you. You became my world. And as much as I wanted him to be here, I couldn't will it.”

Marie sets down her crayon and faces Kenny.

“Do you wish he was here?”

“Well, that's kind of the second part. Detective Cohle, Rust, he is your father. And now that he's back to stay, and I've talked with him, I wanted to ask you, if maybe you'd like to meet him.”

Marie blinks at her mother.

“I have met him.”

“I know, but I mean, officially.”

Marie furrows her brow and looks down at her drawing. “Is he gonna move in with us?”

Kenny exhales. “I don't know about all that. I just think it would be good for you two to have a relationship.”

“Why?”

Kenny thinks of her father. “I guess I'd hate for you to grow up and go through life feeling like you missed something. Even if that something was a person.”

The small eyes narrow further.

“We don't need him. We're fine, aren't we?”

Kenny's hands grasp onto Marie's.

“Marie, hon, that's not what I mean. If Rust left tomorrow, I would be really sad and disappointed. But you and me? We'd be fine. But he really wants to meet you. And that's all I'm asking about. You don't have to answer right now, you know. Nobody's in any rush-”

“Yeah, fine. We can do it.”

Kenny pulls back, shocked at the sudden and bold acceptance. But then again, that's who Marie has always been. Ever curious but ever accepting. That's what it means to grow up, Kenny guesses.

“You sure?”

Marie shrugs. “Guess so.”

“Okay.”

Marie goes back to coloring. Kenny props her head on her hand. “Can I do the sun?” She asks.

“Mhm,” Marie replies. Kenny picks a yellow crayon and colors on the corner of the page. By the end of it, in time for supper, they almost have a complete picture.

-

Rust feels as though his teeth might shatter for how tense his jaw is. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel, despite the fact that he's parked in the gravel driveway. He's going to do this, he just can't quite move yet.

He cut his hair again, would've worn his favorite button down but it got ripped up in the fight with Childress. Not that Marie is going to care much anyway.

Rust slowly exhales, steps out of the truck. Muscle memory expects Froggy to come bounding out of the house and Rust bites the inside of his cheek. He steps up on the porch, knocks on the frame of the screen door.

Kenny comes over, opens the door and Mouse cautiously sniffs Rust's shoes. Rust gives him a quick scratch behind the ears.

“Hey,” Kenny says with a smile.

“Hey.”

Kenny puts a hand on his shoulder and kisses him quick on the cheek. Rust stares at her.

“Mo, baby, Rust is here!”

Rust hears rustling and sees Marie leaving the room that was once a shrine, then a studio, and now, presumably, her room.

“She's been nervous all day, so she may not say much.” Kenny mutters and closes the door.

Marie stops short of them, hands tucked behind her back. Her eyes, which had been on the floor, flicker up to Rust. And Rust crouches down to be on her level. He doesn't say anything, just looks at her. She favors Kenny, which is good. He thinks it would be too uncanny to see himself in her.

Even so, the traces are there. The way she stares at him is the same way he knows he looks when he's thinking about something complicated, about how something works and operates.

Marie shoots out an arm, offers her hand to him.

“Hello.”

Rust blinks and shakes her hand. “Hello, Marie. My name's Rust.”

“I know,” she says. “We've met before. I told Mom that.”

“Wanna show him what you made?” Kenny asks from behind Rust. Marie's other hand moves from behind her back, albeit slower this time, and she hands Rust a drawing.

“I traced it,” she says.

“It's remarkable,” Rust mumbles, staring at an attempted copy of a photo taken on one of their group vacations. Marie's finger moves to the page.

“See, that's you, and Mom, and Aunt Maggie and Uncle Marty.”

“Yeah, I see that. This is very good, thank you.”

Kenny says something about lunch and brings Rust up by his shoulder and he stares at the paper, entranced by her work.

They have chicken salad sandwiches and lemonade, and Marie starts to talk more, which is good for Rust because he wasn't sure what to ask a ten year old in respect to her life.

“And then I had a math test on Friday which I got an 85 on because I'm good at multiplication but I'm not very good at long division and Mom and I get into fights about it because she doesn't do it the same way as Ms. Armstrong-”

“We don't fight, we bicker, Mo.”

“Yeah, and I'm not good at division anyway. And then we're writing short stories and I'm writing about a frog who wants to be a knight and then I got into a bicker with Wayne because he said it was a stupid idea-”

“No, what happened between you and Wayne was a fight.”

“Not with hands, though,” Marie reassures Rust and takes a big gulp of lemonade.

“That's good, problems that can be solved with sense should be.”

“Well Wayne don't got any so we just stay away from each other. Which sucks because he has my grape smelling marker.”

“Don't say ‘sucks’, Mo.”

“Sorry.”

Rust clears his throat and tries to think of something to say. “Is Wayne one of your friends?”

“Well, he used to be, but until he apologizes, he's in the doghouse. That's a thing I learned from Uncle Marty. “In the doghouse”. If someone does something you don't like then you ignore them.”

“That’s right,” says Rust. “What about your other friends?”

“There's Samira, and she's probably the friend I bicker with the smallest amount. I really like her because she's really smart and so she always knows something I don't, and then she teaches me and then I know one more thing I didn't before. And then Becker- he wrote me a love note a few weeks ago but I threw it away so he's over it.”

“Are you and Shayla talking again?” Kenny prompts.

“Yes, I apologized to her and we traded sandwiches at lunch yesterday.”

“What'd you apologize for?” Rust asks.

“She fell down and I laughed because I thought it was funny and it hurt her feelings.”

“Oh,” Rust says. “Well, that was good of you.”

She's articulate, she's emotionally intelligent, she's spirited, and she gets bored easily. She's the exact concoction you would expect of Rust and Kenny.

And yet, since Sophia, Rust never thought he could see himself in someone else again, or not in a way that wasn't alarming, or devastating.

After lunch, Marie takes Mouse outside to play fetch and Kenny and Rust meander by the barn.

“Once she's settled down, we can look at baby books,” Kenny says, smiling up at Rust as he watches their daughter.

“Wish I still had my art set. She's got such a light hand.”

“She can have a heavy one, too. Especially with crayons.” They laugh to themselves. “Actually, Rust…your art set is in the barn. Up the loft, packed away.”

Rust looks at her. “What?”

“I didn't keep all of your things, but I kept some. Some of your clothes, your books, your art set.”

Words come slowly to Rust, his brain a jumble.

“Why on earth would you do that?”

Kenny hides her embarrassment with a smile. “It's not like I was sitting on the porch, wistfully watching the road for you. I guess it was my way of holding onto something. For all I knew, you coulda been dead, so what's a box full of momentos?”

Kenny can't avoid Rust's eyes for long, especially not with the way he's staring a hole into the side of her head. When she finally does look at him, and the mid afternoon sun hits her right, she looks just as he did when he left her.

Rust has always been a man of few words, so instead of possibly ruining this perfect moment with more questions or vague ramblings, he leans down towards Kenny, pauses, silently asks for permission. She looks at his mouth, a look very familiar to him and he kisses her, slowly, desperately slow. He can't rush this. He won't.

She shudders when they break apart, smiles, runs a hand over the side of his hair.

“Still taste like honeysuckle?”

Rust smiles. Yes, she still tastes like honeysuckle, earth, smoke, and home.

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

15. Let down and hanging around | Rated M

I mean... we're almost there, folks.

Btw, a HUGE shout-out to transcripts.foreverdreaming.org because I would NOT have been able to get all the dialogue accurate without their careful transcripts of the episodes 🩷🩷🩷

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Kenny doesn't sleep well that night. Not that she is often visited by it, but once during a case would be nice.

A case. Is that what this has come to? Something busted and final and at the end of their road? She'd meant what she said to Rust. If this really is the last, and if he really does stay, she'll give it a shot with Marie.

But the thought of it going wrong is so stomach churning that she has to perish the thought.

Luckily, it's 7:43 in the morning, and Kenny is sipping coffee, and Marie is playing with a handheld game she got from some kiddie meal at a fast food joint, and five minutes from school, she finally decides to start talking.

“Momma, you know that man that came by the other day?”

Kenny's heart lodges in her throat and she spits up a bit of coffee, bemoans her black blazer, then remembers it's black so it won't show.

“Yes, baby, I remember.”

“Was that Detective Cohl-ee?”

Kenny hits her brakes a little too hard at the red light. She twists her head around to look at her daughter.

“How'd you figure that out?” No response. Marie just looks at her, then past her.

“Light's green.”

Kenny sighs and turns around, keeps driving. Looks at Marie through the rear view.

“Mo, how'd you know that, baby?”

“Googled it.”

Kenny scoffs. “Googled it. Course.”

Then, Marie says quieter, “Looked in the attic box.”

Kenny curses under her breath.

“Marie Rene-!”

“But I'm right, though, ain't I?” The game is set aside, forgotten. “He's the guy you solved that case with, with Uncle Marty, right?”

Kenny's hands tighten around the steering wheel and she takes a few beats to breath, to stop the fraying pulses at the edge of her vision, like when salt water meets fresh water, two worlds that are not allowed to mingle.

She was beginning to under Rust a little bit more.

“That's right,” she says. “I don't want you looking that stuff up anymore, alright, Mo?”

“Why not?”

“Cause you're liable to see something you shouldn't.”

“Why not?”

The ‘why’ is geared towards the ‘shouldn’t’, Kenny knows, because they do this often enough. Marie is allowed to ask as many questions as she wants because she also understands that Kenny doesn't always have the answers, and that's just about how honest they can be with each other.

“Sometimes, things are too violent and scary for us. Even us adults. And when we're kids, it can change the way our brains develop if we see things like that, or read them. The case I worked on with Uncle Marty and Detective Cohle was very, very bad. It's not something you need to see or read anything about. Okay?”

“Okay. Thank you for explaining.” The game has found its way back into her hands. Kenny sighs.

“Thank you for listening.”

“Is he gonna come back?”

Kenny steals a glance in the rear view but Marie is still playing with her game, so she decides a half answer, yet still a truthful one, will suffice.

“Um, I don't know. Maybe.”

Not long after, they arrive at the parent drop-off. Kenny turns in her seat to look back at Marie.

“You got everything?”

“Yep.”

“Backpack, lunchbox, homework…”

“Got it.”

“Aunt Maggie is gonna get you from soccer practice today and I'll pick you up around 7, alright?”

“Fine!” Marie goes for the door.

“Wait! C’mere. Kiss.”

Mwahs are exchanged.

“Love you!”

“Love you too!”

Kenny waits until Marie is inside the building, probably angering the parent behind her who has to get to their 8-4 or 9-5. Kenny only thinks that she'll be very lucky if she shows up by seven.

Perish the thought she doesn't show up at all.

-

Rust and Marty are pouring over evidence when Kenny pulls up in her van. And though he does manage to stay focused, Rust's heart does hitch, even for a moment, when he sees her. When he thinks of her dropping Marie off at school. When envisions himself-

He shakes his head. Kenny enters with three coffees in one of those cardboard holders.

“‘Morning, gentlemen,” she says as she sets the coffee on one of the few bare spots on Marty's conference table.

“Good to know one of you has grown more likable with age,” Marty says, greeting Kenny with a smile.

“Couldn't be her, she had to put up with you,” Rust mutters at the wall. Kenny teasingly nudges his arm and hands him his coffee.

“Made it how you like it, asshole.”

And for a few seconds, in the morning quiet, there's a warmth to the room, to the three of them. Rust hides his smirk in the lid of the coffee but he knows he's been caught. Kenny lets him off the hook by taking a seat next to Marty at the table. Rust sighs, looks at the evidence.

“Alright… This old Sheriff Childress. He's got no kids, no location on any of his relatives.”

“You think they could have wiped out birth records?” Rust asks.

“I don't see why not.”

“I mean, half those hospitals along the coast are gone now,” Kenny muses, thinking of when she covered and then participated in relief efforts after Katrina, and how for some places, there still hasn't been full recovery since.

Marty’s eyes scan over the wall. “You know, we got a dead end on the relations and, uh, what else is there?”

“Case files. You want pre-'98 or after?”

Kenny stands and starts removing lids from file boxes.

“After.”

“We're gonna have to be looking at these records with fresh eyes, guys, alright? Like we're totally green.”

Kenny begins to unpack the boxes, her eyes drifting to the papers pinned to the wall opposite Marty. There hangs the drawing, the green-eared spaghetti monster. Something in there…clicks, almost, but Marty gets it well before she or Rust can.

“Why green ears?” He asks. “I mean, assuming that's our guy.”

“I don't know, exactly,” Rust sighs. “My thinking was it was probably leaves of some kind, you know, 'cause we do know that he came at her through the woods.”

Marty nods, turns back to his windowed wall of photos.

“Why?” Kenny probes. “What you thinking?”

Marty crouches for a box they haven’t uncovered- one from before 1998, and begins filtering through the files.

“Looking for '95 Dora Lange canvassing photos from Erath.”

“Why?”

“Well…” a few more moments of rustling. Kenny gentle sets down the box lid she’s been holding for the past minute and drifts to where Marty is crouched down.

“What, Marty?”

Marty’s fingers stop. He pulls a photo and presses it to the window.

“Y’all, come over here.”

Rust joins them, and together, they all three look at the photo. It’s a house, one Kenny has seen the original photo of a handful of times, but now Marty holds an older photo next to it. In this one, the house is painted green.

“Now, you think, back then, does that- does that look like a fresh paint job to you?”

“The green ears,” Rust mutters. Kenny goes to the opposite wall and unpins the police sketch of what the little girl had reported.

“Yeah. Maybe they were sticking out of his hat. Maybe he painted that house. I'm going to look up old addressees.”

Marty sits at the table but Rust can’t move. Even Kenny continues to stare at the drawing.

“Fuck you, man,” Rust mutters.

And Marty had found the residents of the home in 1995, one named Mrs. Hill. From there, it was easy work to find the name of the maintenance company.

Childress.

A name. And having a name makes him human, and possible to kill, and the idea makes Rust’s heart race, makes his fingers itch. He hadn’t woken up this morning expecting to find the architect of Louisiana’s misery for at least twenty years. If he were more of a poet, he’d have the constitution to call himself a king-slayer, invading Carcosa and dismantling its ruler.

If he were Kenny.

But he’s not, so he leaves that thinking to her, whether she writes it or not.

It’s late afternoon when they drive to the Childress address. It’s peaceful, despite the invisible live wire conducting energy between him, Marty, and Kenny in the backseat, who is nose-deep in case files.

Rust can feel Kenny’s eyes flick up from the backseat. He clears his throat, itches for a cigarette, then puts it out of his mind. No way he’s ever going to smoke around Marie, so he may as well quit now. Actually, he made that decision last night, after Kenny left. He had one more conversation with Marty. One they’ve been dancing around since Rust came back to Louisiana.

“You know, when she told me, she said not to blame you, that it wasn't your choice. You, uh, were drunk and... she made it happen.”

Rust remembers his erasure of the details of that night. It’s in fragments like a ripped up photo. Kenny came, Kenny left, Maggie came, Maggie left. Somewhere in there, everything fell apart.

Rust’s next words were as vague and almost noncommittal as he could muster.

“Everybody's got a choice, Marty.”

-

The car stops in a gravel driveway. Kenny’s tired eyes flit up to find a rotting, wheezing house, mossy and looking like it could collapse under the suffering they brought with them. Or, maybe, it was already here.

They step out of the vehicle and Rust squints.

“That taste.”

“What?” Marty inquires.

“Aluminum, ash. I've tasted it before.”

“You still see things, ever?”

The sound of a buzzing insect flitting by Kenny’s ear turns her head towards the green thicket that surrounds the house.

All other noise quiets. Marty and Rust’s conversations lowers to a dull roar. Even the bugs and the toads have hushed their chatter for this moment of silence.

Home.

Kenny takes an unconscious step. She looks up and the moon already looms over them, full, waiting for sundown. The sun elongates the shadows of the trees.

Another step and there’s a hand on her wrist. Kenny whips around and sees Rust holding her, and Marty halfway to the house.

“What?” she asks, like she misheard something.

“I said Marty’s going in. You going with him or staying out here with me?”

Marty hesitates. Kenny turns her head over her shoulder towards that jungle.

It never stops, not really.

“Out here,” she says. Marty nods, looks between them, then heads for the house.

Once Marty is out of earshot, Rust’s hand travels from Kenny’s wrist to her shoulder.

“You good?”

Ambient noise begins to return. Kenny nods and moves her tongue around her dry mouth.

“I’m good. I’m gonna poke around the treeline, see what I can’t find.”

Kenny draws her gun from the holster she finally invested in, shows it to Rust as a sign of reassurance. Even his stony face cracks in doubt.

“Ken…”

“Just the treeline. Perimeter. Yeah?”

Begrudgingly, Rust nods. Lets her go. Kenny does her best to offer up a reassuring look but she isn't sure it delivers. She is far from focused on how worried Rust is or isn't, how distracted he could be. In fact, once he releases her, she's already turned away and stalking towards the green forest of vines and moss and something deep and dirty and bloody.

Kenny doesn't keep the pretense. As soon as she spies a narrow, far from beaten path, she steps through the thicket and is soon surrounded by nothing but emerald, everything around reaching out to her in some way, to jab, to curl, to pierce, to take. To keep. The very nature of this place grows with intent to harm. Grows in the wrong direction.

Kenny whips her head to the left where it almost feels like a whisper passed by. Her arms are locked straight and she's aiming her gun in whichever way she's facing. You're not supposed to lock your elbows, she knows.

Kenny allows her arms to relax a little. Following whatever instinct, like magnets in her feet or where cicadas seem to echo, Kenny walks deeper into the greenery. From the house, a dog starts barking. Kenny gives one glance over her shoulder. Her foot catches on something and she stops. Looks down, through the kudzu and leaves, and spots a piece of stone. Masonry, not a rock.

Something snaps. Kenny breathes out slowly and continues in her direction. A brush of wind, and something seems to whistle, moan, like emptied gourds or bamboo shoots.

The gun moves to one hand as the other makes contact with the stone structure before her. Likely the remnants of some fort, and remnants almost entirely forgotten. At least, from the outside. Kenny finds a doorway and does a cursory glance inside, only to find curved passageways in both directions. At least if anyone else is here, she'll be able to hear them.

Kenny moves through the first hall. The passageway in the direction of the house, assuming she hasn't completely lost her way, is blocked by a cave-in of stones, so she goes to the right. There are holes in the masonry to allow for light but even those have been latticed by the jungle outside, so the sun can only cast strange shapes of orange onto the interior walls. But if the sun is low enough to hit this side, Kenny also knows she's short on time.

And all the while, exploring this crypt of something, she isn't sure of what yet, there is an expectation tugging at her gut. A sickening sort of sweetness. Nostalgia pulling at the small of her back. She hasn't been here, no, but she knows this place.

Both terrified and unbearably curious, Kenny steps from the passageway into a circular room. And in the room is a…a throne? No, her arms grow weak as she fully realizes…

This is a bed.

Kenny stumbles to it, tries to banish the images that are conjured to her mind too easily. So many suffering, so many dying alone, and afraid. Christ, Marie was so little…

Kenny retreats to the hall and leans against the wall. Squeezes her eyes shut. When that doesn't work, she digs into her palm. And when she still can't stop hearing the screams and cries, she hits her head.

Pull yourself together.

The shouting gets her attention. Heavy footsteps reverberate through the structure and Kenny blinks herself back to reality.

She can't unravel here. Not at the end.

“Come with me, little man.”

Kenny yelps at the voice, turns to where she thinks it came from, but sees no one.

“Come in here with me.”

Rust and Marty begin to shout for each other. Her name is thrown into the mix. The voice muses again, higher, lilting, carrying through the halls like a canary trapped underground. Carrying danger.

“Come on inside, little priest. To your right, little priest. Take the bride's path.”

Kenny makes a split second decision.

“Rust?” She calls out. She's getting the feeling that positions don't quite matter at this moment.

“Ken?”

Steps, lighter than the first set she heard, enter the circular room. Kenny presses herself against the doorway and peers around the edge. Her chest heaves in relief when she sees Rust and it takes everything in her not to abandon caution entirely and run to him. She kicks a small rock and Rust's gun moves in her direction lightning quick, but he sees her. Knows she's there. He holds up a hand, gestures for her to stay.

“This is Carcosa. You know what they did to me? What I will do to all the sons and daughters of man.”

Kenny looks down the hall but still sees nothing. Looks back at Rust.

“Come die with me, little priest.”

He comes out of nowhere, this hulking beast of a man, and gets Rust in the back with a tomahawk. A noise rips through Kenny and she shoots at Childress, clips him in the shoulder, to which he hardly reacts. He does, however, notice her.

Childress lifts Rust in Kenny's direction, almost like a human shield so she won't shoot. She ducks around the corner and feels the wall vibrate as Childress slams Rust into the other side.

“Ken, go find Marty-” Rust manages. The sound of Childress throwing Rust across the room shoots panic through Kenny and her body moves before her brain can, and she rounds the corner and shoots at Childress. She hits him again, this time in the gut, but he's much closer than she'd realized. He grips her wrists and twists to disarm her, then backhands her so hard she falls to the ground, hitting her head.

The world spins and rings as Kenny watches Childress retrieve a blade.

“Now, take off your mask.”

The blade sinks into Rust's abdomen and Kenny screams. Marty yells from somewhere in the fort. Childress rips the blade up, holds Rust higher before dropping him again. Kenny tries to stand, to get her gun, but in the same quick stride that Childress has used to get to her he kicks it away, laces thick fingers through her hair and pulls her from the ground.

“And you- priestess. Reggie told me about you. Is this how you come home to us?”

The man's giant frame easily eclipses her and he uses his hold to force her to her knees.

“Have you seen it?” He asks, his face dangerously close to hers as Kenny watches Rust writhe in pain through teary eyes.

“Marty!” Kenny screams. The next thing she knows, she's making direct contact with the floor with force, her nose breaking, teeth shattering- something cuts above her eye and tints her vision red with blood. He's slammed her face into the ground.

“Ah, Reggie was always an idiot anyhow.”

Snot and blood pull away from the ground in strings as Kenny peels herself up. She can hardly see Childress going back for Rust, and then there's gunshots. Three. Marty's frame enters a doorway but Childress almost immediately has the tomahawk buried in his chest. Kenny tries to pull her way towards Rust. One of their guns, it doesn't matter whose anymore, is only a few feet away. Kenny can't see well enough to shoot, so she grabs it, presses it into Rust's palm, and Childress has a hole in his head before he can cave Marty in half.

Silence falls, and with it eventually returns the hum of the lowlands. Marty can push himself up and crawl over, and Kenny removes her jacket and presses it to Rust's wound.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know-”

“He cut me pretty good.”

Marty picks up Rust's head and sets it on his leg.

“No, Rust. It ain't bad. It ain't bad.”

But Kenny is sobbing silently and thinking, for the first time, that killing Childress might not have been enough. That, if Rust doesn't survive this, it won't feel much like a victory at all.

“Rust?” Kenny says as best as she can for the damage Childress did to her face. “You can't die, alright?”

“Fix it or die trying…” He mutters.

“What?”

“Ain't that what you said? Before I left?”

Sirens wail on approach. Someone must've called Papania and Gilbough.

“Shut up. You gotta come home, okay? So, don't you die,” Kenny says.

“Hang on, Rust,” Marty says, looking over his shoulder at the doorway the police will come through.

Then, from a hole in the roof, a flare lights up the room. It covers the moon and for a moment, it looks like- well, Kenny already knew what it would look like.

“Here! We're in here!” Marty shouts. Kenny scoots herself closer to Rust, rests her head on his arm.

“It's over,” he mutters, half gone.

“Yeah,” Kenny mutters back, trying to get one last good look at his eyes, just in case.

“We got a deal to square…”

And that's the last thing Rust says before the police arrive and he loses consciousness.

[haliotropes]

chap 14 for black star is so good! i’m really excited to see the direction you have for kenny’s character and how she’s interweaved within this latter stage of the story! hope you’ve been well :)

using this to say

1) thanks as always and

2) chapter 15 is in progress and I anticipate it being the final chapter + an epilogue

Thanks for reading!!!

🩷🩷🩷

[haliotropes]

Anora Leeds (OC) x James Moriarty

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

14. in the ground | Rated M

thanks for waiting!!! hopefully there's lots here to keep you company!

as always, thanks for reading and enjoying. your feedback means the world <3

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The diner hasn't changed much, either.

It's the same place they always used to come to back in the day, when things were different and better and worse. The vinyl seats Kenny and Rust sit on now are cracked but still comfortable somehow. She can't help but stare at him, even as his steely eyes shift direction out the window. Like he's watching for something. 

He did shave that mustache, though. The ponytail she doesn't mind so much. 

Charlize, a twenty-something local whom Kenny knows in passing, approaches their booth in her yellow uniform with a genuine smile.

“Mornin’, Kenny! Mornin’, sir. What can I get you folks started with today?”

“Coffee and water, please,” Rust says, finally bringing his eyes into the room, but only reaching as far as to the end of the table.

“Same for you, Kenny?”

“You got it, hon.”

“Alright, I'll bring those right out.”

Charlize leaves, and with her goes Rust's thin attention. He's back to staring at the parking lot. Kenny tries to smile at him.

“Whoever they are, I don't think they're gonna get you here.”

It's that forced perception that finally, fully brings Rust to her. When his eyes lock onto hers, she knows she has him. Kenny breathes a sigh of relief.

“Sorry,” he says. He's hazy.

“‘Salright.”

It isn't, but she's willing to let it go. For now.

Charlize returns with their waters and coffee pot, two mugs. Fishes creamers from the pocket of her apron because she knows Kenny will need them.

“Y'all folks ready to order?”

“Usual for me, hon,” Kenny says, passing her menu to the young woman. Rust passes his, though he never looked at it.

“I'm alright.”

Kenny narrows her eyes at him.

“You ain't eaten yet.”

“You don't know.”

Kenny smiles at Charlize. “Get him the same as me, please.”

Kenny knows she’s right when Rust doesn't protest further.

They get settled with their drinks first. Kenny takes her spoon and dunks some ice cubes into her coffee to cool it off first, then follows it with two sugars, one cream. Rust, ever the simple man, drinks it as is.

After these few, peaceful moments of silence, the conversation Kenny genuinely thought she'd never have begins.

“So, do I even have to ask?” 

He says it with no malice whatsoever. He is quiet. Not secretive. Not ashamed. Just…soft. Kenny smiles small.

“No.”

“When’d you find out?”

“Two weeks after you left.”

“Did you go back to your daddy?”

That…that hits her different. It feels accusatory. Regardless of how he means it. Kenny decides to let it fly.

“No.”

“You did it on your own?”

Deep breath. “Nah. Village technique. When she found out I was pregnant, Maggie begged me to let her help me. Marty, too, in his own way, and on different days. There was Miss Renault, and Doucet had already raised three kids by that time… Macie and Audrey babysat a lot.”

Truth be told, the farm had become a constant hub of activity. Marie had known so few of her blood relatives, and yet she had so much family in otherwise strangers. Kenny smiles.

“You know…Tuttle had told me once that I should get out of town and find a new life because I didn't have one here, I couldn't have one here, I didn't have anyone. And I had been really fucking scared he was right. But wouldn't you know it…all I had was people.”

Rust's face doesn't change.

“Just not me.”

Neither does Kenny's.

“You were gone. Without a trace.”

“I didn't say it was your fault.”

They both break, take sips. Kenny clears her throat, voids the prickle of tears and snot. Thinks of something positive.

“She acts like you, sometimes.”

At this, Rust perks up a little, meaning his shoulders lift nearly imperceptibly. “How?”

The way she likes to sit in random places and watch sunsets. The way she smacks her lips sometimes when she hears a bad sound. How she watches people from the corner of her eye. How she is so quiet but has so much to say.

“The way she watches things. Thinks about em.”

Rust, finally, allows a bit of light to break into his eyes. He smiles.

“She could've easily gotten that from you.”

Kenny chuckles. He's right, in some of the ways.

“Maybe.”

He's out of his shell a little. Kenny's chest feels warm, and not just for the coffee. Rust leans forward.

“Can you tell me…I don't know. What I missed?”

“Ten years, Rust.”

“If I asked you, what comes to mind?”

Practically, Kenny imagines Marie's baby book.

“Her first word was doggy, and her first steps were towards Hawk. Learned to swim at five.”

“How is she at school?”

Kenny blows out a puff of air.

“She’s smart. She has a few close friends. Um, she gets in trouble sometimes. Gets into a few fights. Some she starts, most she finishes.”

Rust's eyes immediately narrow in concern and it's almost humorous.

“What about?”

Kenny shrugs. It's not that it's unimportant, but she's already dealt with it, has been dealing with it.

“People are mean and she don't like it. But she can be mean too, and she's learning not to be. I think she gets that from both of us, too. But she's never ugly and she's never hateful. That we make sure of.”

Another break of silence. For the duration, Kenny worries that Rust has it in his head that their daughter will somehow turn sour, turn out like them, or worse-

“Did she ever ask about me?”

Oh.

“Oh, uhm…A couple times when she was little. Once, when she was first old enough to start to wonder about it, and another time when she forgot she'd already asked. Eventually you just accept it as a fact of life.”

Rust nods and looks at the table.

“And, uh, has she ever had anyone…” 

Almost immediately, Kenny knows what he's trying to say, but she can't decide how merciful she wants to be.

“What, Rust?”

“Y’know, like a father figure?”

Kenny smiles into her mug. “I mean, Marty was always around.”

Rust scoffs at her, recognizing her joke, getting that she's being mean.

“That ain't right, Kenny.”

“Hey man, you asked.”

“You knew what I meant.”

“Then you should've just asked that. I mean, there were a couple guys, but it never got super serious, and I was always so focused on Marie. And myself. It took a lot to get my shit straightened out in time for her.”

Rust looks at the table again, as if ten years’ worth of words and sleepless nights and recitals and softball games and spelling bees are somehow trapped in there.

“Yeah,” is all he says.

Charlize brings out their plates. Rust digs in, exactly how Kenny knew he would.

She didn't come here looking for an apology. She never thought she'd see him again, so she never thought she'd get one. He wanted to know about their daughter, she told him. She suspects what comes next, and that can wait for a later date. Because, she knows he's hunting something, and he can't do anything else until that hunt is over. She knows that now.

“So…tell me about Lake Charles.”

-

He tells her about Lake Charles and more. About how Papania and Gilbough were all but investigating him for that murder; some sensation about a detective who went rogue, lost his mind and turned into a copycat of his old cases. It's a compelling story, to say the least.

Even so, as she looks around Marty's private investigation office, Kenny gets a sense of deja vu, for all the obvious reasons, but also for the distinct feeling that maybe they're in over their heads.

“So…all of this,” Kenny gestures to the wall, the dry erase board, the boxes and boxes and stacks of paper.

“All leads back to Tuttle's schools,” Rust says, lighting a cigarette. Marty and Kenny both watch him begrudgingly. Maybe Marty still smokes on occasion, but Kenny quit for good once she found out she was pregnant. 

Kenny's stomach twists before she even asks. “And the tape?”

Rust avoids her eyes, smokes towards the floor.

“I don't think you need to see something like that.”

Maybe he's right. And maybe he's at a very emotionally compromised point right now that he can't think even remotely objectively about her. Kenny decides on a second opinion.

“Marty?”

Marty shrugs.

“I threw up after I watched it. Rust didn't stick around for a second viewing. She was hurt. Bad.”

The look in his eyes, it was like that day he found out those men had been brought in for messing with Audrey, only a thousand times worse and more so defeated. They were going to stop this from happening again but goddamn what he wouldn't give to keep it from having happened before.

Kenny sees this and nods. 

“Okay, I'll take your word for it. What's your followable lead?”

“All roads lead to Vermilion,” Marty says.

Kenny's head sort of blanks for a moment at the mention of the parish, the one she hadn't heard of in so long and usually only prompts one of two things-

“Geraci?” She asks. Rust nods.

“He's where the line goes dead.”

Kenny's fingertips feel fuzzy. She grips the back of a chair. “Are you absolutely certain?”

“Yes.”

Geraci had been out of the CID for a few years, but after Rust's departure, he was still around for a bit. He and Kenny had even managed to somewhat pathetically patch things up, mostly due to time having passed. Kenny bites into her lip then straightens.

“Okay, then I'm going with you.”

Rust puts out his cigarette, looks cautiously from Kenny to Marty before speaking.

“Kenny, I don't think-”

“Look, I'm grateful you two got over your machismo war and are best pals but you are not going to shut me out again! I was on that trail. Me. Not Marty. Not even Geraci by the time I got to it. Even if all I get to do is stand there and stare at the mother fucker, I'm going to be there. I'm owed.”

Marty half chuckles and whispers, “You are owed.”

Kenny doesn't take her eyes off Rust.

“Rust?” She asks. A confirmation.

“You are,” he gives it.

Kenny nods. “Good. So tell me what we're doing with Geraci.”

-

Kenny asks for a few personal days. Doucet gives them in good faith. She and Rust board a boat that Marty is already sweet-talking Geraci on, towards the back. Even from here, Kenny can hear Marty begin…

“Say, Steve, I been wanting to ask, you know that Fontenot girl?”

Hazy in the heat, mouth practically watering to get her hands on Geraci and wreacking some vengeance for decades of deception, and Kenny still finds herself distracted by how good she thinks Rust looks in his black shirt, but how crudely he moves, how the lithe frame of his body has taken on new angles that are meant to injure. Like hostile architecture, he's not a man she's meant to find comfort in. Not anymore. Perhaps she never was. 

Even still, he looks back at her once they're inside, pulls on gloves. And that look can't compare and cannot be mistaken. He's checking, he's bought in. The only question now is how he'll handle having her around moving forward.

“Hide your gun. He'll see I'm armed and that'll be enough. With you, we'll have double the element of surprise,” he mutters. Kenny nods and ensures her Smith and Wesson, the same she carried with her to Vermilion all those years ago, is tucked securely in the back of her pants. 

“You alright to wait in here while Marty and I bring him in?”

Again, Kenny nods. For some reason, words aren't coming to her easily. She hasn't seen Geraci in years. Has no idea what he'll look like and yet can't even imagine the kind of pain she wants to cause him.

Rust's eyes search her face.

“You alright?”

Kenny blinks. Clears her throat quietly.

“Yeah. Out of practice maybe. I'll be fine.”

“Yeah.”

Rust, gun in one hand, places the other on her shoulder, then cradles her neck in some strange sign of affection, of gentleness. Out of practice, himself.

Without another word, Rust sneaks soundlessly around the exterior to where Marty and Geraci sit, their conversation growing increasingly tense. There's a counter inside the boat, so Kenny leans against it, crosses her arms.

There's the low rumble of voices, then the sliding door opens and in walks Marty, followed by Geraci, with Rust at his heels, pistol in hand. Geraci notices her almost immediately. His face turns into one of further frustration.

“Not all three of you. You let them drag you into this, Marsden?”

“Actually, I volunteered,” she croaks out. Rust forces Geraci to sit in a chair while he and Marty take a small leather sectional.  

“You, all three of you, are fucked.”

Rust cracks a small smile, one that doesn’t seem entirely void of satisfaction, and uses the gun to gesture to the general area.

“You're out of your jurisdiction, Sheriff.”

“You realize who I am now, you assholes?”

“Yeah, I wouldn't be here if I didn't.”

Desperately, Geraci turns his attention to Marty.

“Marty.”

“Don't look at me. I ain't never been able to control him.”

Then, Geraci turns his eyes to Kenny. Her taut wire heart suddenly wavers a little.

“Marsden, please.” Kenny bites the inside of her cheek. Tastes metal. “Kennedy-”

“Alright.” Rust pushes himself from his seat and gestures to the bag on the floor next to Geraci’s chair. “There’s a tape inside that bag. You’re gonna take it out and put it in the VCR, turn it on, and watch it.”

“Why would I do that?”

“‘Cause I just fucking told you to.”

Kenny watches Geraci make a decision, steel his jaw, and narrow his eyes at Rust.

“Fuck. You.”

Without a second’s hesitation, Rust fires into the wall above Geraci’s head. The older man ducks and even Kenny flinches in surprise.

“You're gonna lose a kneecap if I got to ask you again. Take it out of the bag and put it in the machine.”

Shaking, and waiting just a bit too long for Kenny’s liking, Geraci reaches into the bag and retrieves the tape. He slides it into the VCR, turns on the TV and it crackles to life. He presses play.

Kenny grits her teeth and digs her fingernails into her arm, imagines the fangs of her tattoo biting into her flesh. She had decided to watch the tape this time, to give Marie the witness she deserved, but also to see how Geraci reacts. And, selfishly, to relish in his discomfort.

But even as the tape begins and the scanlines shift like waves, Kenny’s gut twists and she knows she won’t make it through. Geraci must feel it, too, because he glances back at Rust.

“Don't look at me,” Rust says. “Look at the TV.”

As soon as Marie appears, Kenny’s world tilts.

“Rust,” she says quietly. He looks at her and nods to the door.

“Go,” he says quickly.

-

On the deck, leaning over the railing, Kenny can hear Geraci moaning, screaming, begging for the tape to be turned off. Meanwhile, she’s dry heaving and talking herself through her grounding techniques, reminding herself that Marie Fontenot is 20 years dead, and Marie Marsden is safe at home. 

Kenny gently rubs out the crescent marks she’d left in her arm. It’s easier, now. Years of therapy, meds, and Marie. Kenny figures she got lucky. It really was all it was cracked up to be.

And every once in a while, she allows herself to think that without being reminded of those who never get it.

Deep breaths, and Kenny hears Geraci calm down, so that probably means the tape is done. She goes back in. The tape isn’t finished, just paused. Geraci is sobbing, hunched over. Marty and Rust’s eyes are misty with tears.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Geraci moans. “Why are you showing me this?!”

Rust goes to the TV and points a gloved finger at a blurry still, presumably the image of Marie Fontenot or…what was left…

Kenny goes momentarily deaf. Or the room rings. She isn’t sure. Her mouth fills with sand and so do her hands, and her stomach.

“That little girl is the one you said went to see her daddy,” Rust says with venom laced through his words. “Marie Fontenot, circa 1990.”

Geraci stutters, tries to catch his breath.

“I took a m-missing juvenile report. And when I went back to follow up on it, the file said, Report made in error. I never wrote that. So I marched it right into the sheriff, Ted Childress. He's dead now. He did it,” he adds quickly.

Rust now has an iron grip on Geraci’s shoulder. Marty has stood and drifted towards Kenny.

“What'd the sheriff say?”

“He said he'd changed it, that he knew the mother and the father, the aunt and the uncle. It was a niece once removed from him or somethin'. It was the chain of command! No reason to change it! I just... follow what the big man says. It's how this all works. I... I tried to get back with the mother. I tried to get back with her. She was gone! She split!”

Geraci spittles out some more excuses and Rust straightens, comes towards Kenny and Marty. Kenny can’t tear her eyes from Geraci’s pathetic, tear-streaked face. For some reason, all she can think of is one day when Marty was still at the CID and she came to visit for one reason or another, with a one-year-old Marie on her hip. She was generally passed around from knee to knee, and when Kenny looked over and saw Geraci bouncing her, making faces, making her laugh, Kenny’s heart had actually softened for him a little.

“What do you think?” Rust asks. Marty sucks his teeth.

“I don't think he's lying... as far as he knows.”

“As far as I know?” Geraci spits, his desperation replaced with fury and indignation. “What the fuck is with you, man?! You’re crazy, you’re all fucking crazy! This is the system, it’s how it works, it’s how it’s always worked. It’s fucked up but it’s happening to everyone all over-”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish. Kenny has pushed through Rust and Marty, taken Geraci by the collar, and by surprise, and knocked him from his chair. On the floor, she straddles him and lands one swift punch into his lower jaw, just as she had the first time she hit him.

“You stupid fucking son of a bitch,” she slurs, and hits him again, this time going for his nose. If not to break it, at least to bloody it. “You looked me in the eyes and told me you felt pain for her.

You've met my daughter, Steve. You've talked to her, knowing she was named after that little girl, you knew! ”

“I’m sor-”

But Kenny’s laying into him so hard, and one of her knuckles catches on his teeth and it rips open. But she keeps going. And going. Until Marty pulls her off of him. Through blurred vision, Geraci looks sort of like a red blob, but he’s cursing well enough that she knows he’ll pull together in a day. She cradles her hand. When she looks at Marty, he’s leaned against the wall, smoking a cigarette, and silently admires her handiwork.

-

He wonders how long it would’ve taken for him to stop her. Or maybe he was counting on Marty to do it. Either way, Kenny didn’t come close to beating Geraci within an inch of his life, but she hurt him, and Rust was content to let her do it. 

They settle affairs with him, get back to Marty’s office, wrap Kenny’s hand. Talk next steps. And they are going to be a few.

In the parking lot, between his truck and her SUV, Rust and Kenny share a cigarette.

“If you tell Marty, I’ll kill you. I haven’t smoked in ten years.”

Rust chuckles at her. “Last thing I wanna do with Marty is tell secrets and braid each other’s hair.”

“Could yours.”

“Touche.” Rust clears his throat, tosses out the cigarette. Ever since Kenny mentioned Marie to Geraci on the boat, something’s been bugging him. He’s scared to ask, actually scared cold, but he knows he has to. “I was wondering…when all this is over, could I meet her?”

A painful mix of emotions twists Kenny’s face and it tears up Rust’s gut.

“Christ, Rust.”

“What?”

Kenny looks at the pavement, then back at him, and shrugs helplessly.

“I don't know.”

It’s a perfectly fair answer, and Rust knows it. Still, he doesn’t act like it.

“I'm her father, Ken.”

In an instant, he prays for her grace towards him. He watches as she decides to grant it. Kenny squeezes her eyes shut like she’s trying to block something out.

“What is ‘all this’? When ‘all this’ is over? When we close the case again? When there are no more dead girls? When the bad men of the world are in prison or buried?”

“Okay, I get it,” Rust says not unharshly.

“Do you? God's honest truth, Rust, do you understand?”

He’s put his hands on his hips and looks out onto the empty street. “I ain't gonna leave,” he tells her. 

“I want so badly to believe you. I would love for Marie to know you. I miss you, Rust.” That gets him to look at her. “But I am not gonna allow my daughter to feel abandoned if I don't open that door.”

My daughter. Rust works his jaw.

“I ain't leaving,” he repeats.

Kenny smiles a little, but in it there is something heartbreakingly resigned and it makes Rust feel sick. Like tar. Like rot. “I really want you to be right.”

[haliotropes]

Their daughter’s name being Marie 😭😭😭

It hurts in the best way possible!!!!!

Yeah I like being corny 🥰🥰🥰

[haliotropes]

I’m dying I adore your Rust fic immensely! I keep reading it over because it’s my number one source of comfort rn 😭 and your writing is simply the best ❤️ When can we expect the next chapter? Thank you for writing, I’m so grateful to have found this fic omg!

It's almost done- promise!!

[haliotropes]

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

13. like a bug | Rated M

A/n: thanks for being cool abt the trope 🥰

Tw: 2012 Rust's mustache

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“Can we get you anything? Water? Coffee?”

The CID hasn't changed much, save for some water damage and the conference room they're sitting with is now floor to ceiling with file boxes. The two detectives, Gilbough and Papania, have set up a camera.

“Smokes?” Papania jokes to her. Kenny shakes her head but still gives him a smile.

“Haven't smoked in ten years. Water would do nicely, please.”

Papania leaves the room, stops at the water station outside, and brings her back a cup.

“Thank you.”

Papania joins Gilbough on the opposite end of the conference table and turns on the camera. Kenny's hands flatten against the wood. She had to change a diaper in here, once. How times have changed.

“Alright, so we're just looking to supplement records we lost to the hurricane with some one-on-one interviews. So, we'd like to get your perspective on the Dora Lange case.”

“Why me?” Kenny asks, despite knowing entirely that's why she's here.

“We've read your article, asked around; folks speak highly of you.”

Kenny looks between them. Both handsome, in their thirties or so, confident. Gilbough seems to be the harder of the two. Kenny taps a finger.

“Uh-huh. Who fed you my name?”

“Does it matter?”

She shrugs. “Guess not.”

“You were instrumental in taking down Reggie Ledoux.”

Kenny laughs. “No, I wasn't. Best thing I did for that case was almost get myself killed.”

“Well, why don't you tell it, from the start, and you let us decide for ourselves?”

They're being too vague. Kenny knows. Well, Kenny guesses.

“Is this about that woman? In Lake Charles?”

Both detectives’ demeanors change. They shift, almost imperceptibly, but it's there. A light twitch or adjustment. A blow of the eyes.

“You hear about that?”

Kenny drinks from her water. “It is in my nature to hear about such things.”

“Ms. Marsden, we're just wanting to get different perspectives on the Dora Lange case. That's all.”

“What other perspectives are you pursuing?”

They don't respond. She has some idea and the thought makes her giggle. “Marty talk your ear off yet?” Again, no response, but they humor her with grins. Kenny sighs and checks the clock on the wall.

”Alright, but let's be mindful. I got a kid to pick up at 3.”

-

Rust runs a fingernail across a crack in the sticky tabletop, staring at Marty from the corner of his eye. Ten years and yet he hardly looks changed. Sure, the comb-over isn't doing him any favors, but he's still recognizable compared to Rust, who has somehow hollowed out even more. Who has defied all odds and become a recluse in every sense, even like a spider, limbs and back and venom and every part of him skittish and dangerous.

“A man remembers his debts,” Rust says carefully. Marty chuckles.

“I don't dwell on the past.”

“Well, it must be nice.”

“I'm not interested in whatever it is you think you owe me.”

Rust heats with defensiveness. “Oh, I don't owe you. We left something undone. We got to fix it, and I've been working on this for two years. Me, myself. Never called you, I never bothered you with it…” But Rust trails off because he can feel Marty winding up and he led him straight to the pitch.

“Yeah, why would you? Shit, man, what did you do? Alienate every other person in your life, and then finally you come back to me in the rotation?”

“You know, not for nothing, but if you wouldn't have clipped Ledoux back then, we might have got the whole fucking story out of him.”

Marty closes his mouth, nods, and grabs his drink.

“You know, I think I'm gonna finish this beer and say so long. Now, I'm not much of a drinker nowadays. In fact, I hadn't had a drop in three weeks till I ran into you.”

Rust thinks about how quickly he'd broken sobriety once he came to Louisiana in ‘95. How easy it had been. How he hasn't stopped since.

“Well, I don't need you to drink, Marty. I need you to help me.”

“Why would I? They say you can't account for your time. They got eyewitnesses placing you at the Lake Charles crime scene. You got some storage shed that you won't let them look at.”

“That's right.”

“Why not? Why not shoot straight with them? You're innocent. Help them stop wasting their time.”

Rust smiles without an ounce of entertainment. “Fucking- since when did guilt and innocence define the State PD, huh? Come the fuck on. Now, I don't know the sprawl of this thing, all right? The people I'm after, they're all fucking over. They're in a lot of different things, pieces, family trees. The only way for you to understand what I'm onto here is for me to show you. You got to come see what I got.”

But Marty's already shaking his head.

“No. You know what? I don't think I've been very clear with you, Rust. If you were drowning, I'd throw you a fucking barbell. Why would I ever help you?”

“Because you have a debt.”

And Rust believes it. He knows it's true. They both carry that burden because they left this job unfinished. The Yellow King still sits in Carcosa, somewhere. Alive.

But Marty…Marty doesn't see it that way. And why would he?

“Have you reached out to Kenny? At all?”

Rust's feet go cold but he ignores the sensation. The distant taste of cough medicine burns in his throat.

“She dunn't have anything to do with this.”

“Papania and Gilbough seem to think so. They brought her in for an interview, same as us, same as Maggie.”

“Fuckin amateurs,” Rust mutters.

“You ran out on so much more than the case in ‘02. A closed case!”

“And I'm trying to make that right. But you gotta buck up, too.”

Marty scoffs, shakes his head.

“You got some fucking sack. What's that mean, anyway, I have a debt, huh?”

“Means the way shit went down in '95, this is on you, too, buddy.”

Rust watches carefully and realizes with some relief that Marty, in his person, is also unchanged. Because he fights himself, on grounds of moral obligation versus what's fair and who is responsible for what, and Rust watches him give in.

“What do you got to show me?”

-

The next day. Rust's red pickup, still with a taillight out, idles at the end of a gravel drive. He smokes, worries his mouth with his hand. He can't quite make up his mind. He is decidedly not the same man he was ten years ago. He's rougher now. Meaner. Not to everyone and not always on purpose. But ten years, most spent back in Alaska, alone…

It was like being with his daddy again, but worse. Alone. No one to reflect with or on and even if he did have that, would he like what he saw? Would he even bother?

Marty had said something about seeing Maggie today. Maybe as a nudge to Rust. Not that it was any of Marty's business what Rust's relationship, or lack thereof, with Kenny entails. But then again, they had known each other long before Rust had ever come into the picture.

Rust flicks out his cigarette. Puts the truck in reverse and pulls back out onto the highway and drives in the direction of Doumain’s bar. Stupid. Why would she want to see him anyway? She should hate him by all rights. He certainly went through his fair share of self loathing for the way things ended.

It is strange that if Marty was trying to make Rust feel like shit, he'd only bring up Kenny and not Maggie. Certainly he hadn't forgotten that transgression.

Rust hasn't.

Thankful for the dead road, Rust burns rubber and U-turns into the opposite lane and heads back towards the farm. He feels like he did seventeen years ago when he came to ply her with beer and cigarettes so he could get some information about Marie Fontenot. Would he even be in this exact moment if that moment had never happened?

And just like then, when he pulls up to the house, there is some mutt standing in the driveway barking at him. Rust's eyes look for the headstones in the garden off the side of the house. One for Froggy, now one for Hawk. Christ, he forgot he left behind a dog, too.

Rust gets out of the truck. The dog, some sort of shepherd, is distinctly friendlier than any of the others, because he's stopped barking, and because he sniffs Rust's hand and wags his tail as they walk towards the porch.

When the screen door opens, Rust is expecting Kenny as she was in 1997, wild and nervous and mean and so so kindhearted.

Instead, it's a kid.

A girl, with unruly hair and a serious expression. She puts two fists on her hips and looks Rust up and down.

“Who're you?”

And Rust, a man who can count on one hand the amount of times he's spoken to a child in twenty years, tries not to gawk at her.

“My name's Rust. Is, uh, Kenny around?”

The girl squints, then seemingly deems him unworthy of intense security. Instead, she opens the screen door again.

“Mom, door!” She turns to the dog. “Mouse, inside, please.”

Mom. It punches a hole through him.

He had expected, in different ways at different times, for Kenny to have moved on. He could never have really been so selfish as to think, as to hope, she would wait for him. She shouldn't have. She wouldn't have.

Rust walks quietly closer towards the door, placing a single foot on the porch steps. He sees a taller silhouette in the doorway.

“Yeah, baby, I heard. Who is it?”

“I don't know,” the girl mutters. Kenny looks up from her daughter and sees him. Sees Rust. And finally, that reflection he felt he'd been missing, whether he wanted it or not, is standing right in front of him. And he does not like what she is showing him.

She is fine. Better than fine. Wears her age with grace and is just as beautiful and hard in the face as the day he broke her heart.

Kenny hides her shock well but it's clear in her eyes. She ushers her daughter inside by the shoulders.

“Hold on just a sec, baby.”

She closes the front door. Walks towards Rust. Rust, in spite of himself, unwillingly, backs up. Kenny stops. Opens her mouth, closes it, crosses her arms, huffs.

“What the hell is on your face?”

Rust says the only thing he can think of. He points to the house.

“Who's that?”

Kenny blinks. Indignant. “That is my daughter, Marie.”

Rust lets out a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a cry of irony or anguish. The name practically spells it out.

“How old is she, Ken?”

“Is this how you're gonna greet me? After a decade?”

“How old, Ken?”

Rust tries not to raise his voice, but he can't help it. His blood is hot. Tears are threatening him and he's not of a mind to stop them. Kenny sighs.

“She'll be ten in November.”

Ten. Rust braces his fists on his hips and stares at the ground.

“Goddamn.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What am I-? Clearly, you and I got a lot to talk about, last on the list being what I'm doing here.”

Kenny's mouth quirks up in that dangerous way where, she's not actually laughing, and someone is in danger. “Oh, I don't think so. High on the list being where the hell you've been!” Rust doesn't respond. Turns around, slams a hand on the hood of his truck. “You can be mad, that's fine. But understand that I've been mad. I was angry for a very long fucking time. So if you're gonna be angry, kindly take it somewhere else and come back when you're cooled off.”

How does he cool off? How does he connect that he's been back in the state for two years and still didn't know?

He doesn't. He can't. At least not right now.

Rust crosses his arms and tries to steady the buzzing in his head. He begs Kenny to understand his cues, even if he may not deserve it.

"I don't- I don't even know how to talk about this," Rust croaks. There's a moment of Louisiana silence, which is no silence at all.

“Okay,” Kenny sighs at the ground. “How about we meet at the diner tomorrow morning after I drop Marie off at school?”

The answer comes out quicker than Rust can catch it. “I gotta meet Marty ‘morrow.”

Kenny looks up at him and Rust knows he's done wrong. She scoffs. The fireflies have dimmed.

“Yeah. Shoulda figured as much.”

Kenny turns away. Rust holds her shoulder.

“Ken- okay, look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's been.. I am onto something big. Something I'm getting Marty's eyes on.”

“That girl in Lake Charles?”

And suddenly, they're both early thirty something again, standing in her front yard, deducing the Erath case. Green halos around Kenny's head.

“She's just one part of it. Ken, I think, I know, this all leads back to-” Rust chokes on the name. Because now it's her name. “The girl. And little girls before her. It was Tuttle, and it always had been.”

“Woah, okay, Rust- you're cracking this open again? The Lange murder?”

“You said yourself you thought it wuddn’t done. Lemme bring Marty along tomorrow morning-”

“No.” Rust stops. “Tomorrow morning’s gotta be just you and me. That's it. Anything else is…well, anything else.”

Rust nods slowly. Of course. He knew that. If he wants to hear the definitive answer, he's gotta bend a little. He'll bend for her. He'll break for her, even now.

“Alright.”

Kenny nods, smiles a little. Goes back to the porch.

“Ken. For what it's worth, I'm really glad to see you again.”

Kenny opens the screen door, squints at him.

“Shave that ugly thing off your face.”

[haliotropes]

also just wanted to say i’m looking forward to the decision u’ve made with kenny and rust, i think it’s fitting and i have been eagerly waiting for more <3

Thank you!! I toiled A LOT with that call, so much so that I considered writing two endings 😂 but I think, if I do it right, this will be the right choice. I appreciate the reassurance.

[haliotropes]

i just wanted you to know that your black star series means everything to me and it’s in fact my favourite fanfic i’ve ever read, and my god i’ve read a lot over the years lol

it is so seamlessly and perfectly written. the way you’ve carefully crafted the oc, and enriched rust’s character even more, brings such substance to your additional world building of season one’s story. i genuinely could read on about these two forever! this universe is everything. i can’t wait to read future chapters! i truly hope you have the loveliest day, always.

kenny, rust, and louisiana forever ♡

This message means so much to me. My biggest fear as a fic writer is that my writing is too niche or I'll lose readers due to a decision. It makes me so happy to know you're still reading and you enjoy not only the concept but also the writing.

Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

12. Crushed | Rated M

A/n: pls don't be mad at me/ sorry if this feels rushed!!! I need to get 2002 over and out of the way and this felt like a succinct way to do it.

₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ

2002. Seven years.

Seven years is a long time. It hadn't felt that way before, and wouldn't feel that way again until several seven years after, but the time between 1995 and 2002 had to have been some of the best of Kenny's life.

Yes, it leaves a bad taste in her mouth and a twinge at the base of her spine when the Dora Lange case is pretty much closed without another word. But after months of silence, she feels like she can relax. Hell, once she sees the tension slowly work its way from Rust's shoulders…that's when she knows. They're gonna be okay.

Moving Rust into the farmhouse happened quietly and quickly. It went from a few handfuls of clothes, then what few personal effects he had. Kenny noticed, didn't say a word. She wanted it, and it wasn't like Rust had much in the way of possessions.

Within the first year, he was fixing the barn to make a usable workshop. They repaired the front porch together, Froggy lacing between their legs the entire time. Together, they stored both their collections of case files into plastic bins and tucked them into a new attic Rust had put into the barn. To fill the space left in Kenny's spare room, they set up a better writing desk for Kenny. For Christmas in ‘96, she bought Rust an art set. The next reno project was to knock a hole in the wall for a new window in that room.

It wasn't just them, either. As the new millennium drew nearer, the world seemed to be cresting a brighter horizon. Marty and Maggie were the happiest they'd been since Macie was born. The four of them spent holidays together, vacationed together in the Florida Keys, in the mountains in Colorado. The plan was to save up enough to eventually get the girls to Disney World before Audrey felt she would be too old for it.

Yeah, they'd all made plans.

1995 was a timid year. 1996 was cautiously optimistic. 1997 was sunshiny. 1998 was bliss. 1999 was comfort. 2000 is when something turned.

There was no pinpointing it. There was no trigger. There was only the creeping, clawing sense that something was off day by day. At that point, Froggy had been buried a couple years, so they had a new dog- a pit mix named Hawk. When Kenny waited with Hawk for Rust to come home on later nights, that's when it began to hit her. It was the dog. It wasn't the dog's fault, but because it was Hawk and not Froggie…

It was a raw nerve, something new and terrifying. She had waited for him before, with an anchor to the life before the Dora Lange case. But now, as something started to slither through the weeds, she felt her heart start to break because suddenly she looked around and her home, which she loved, and her dog, whom she adored, and didn't recognize any of it.

Kenny goes back to the doctor to rethink medications after that. After a few weeks, they get something figured out to curb her anxiety, her mania, her dissociation. And this time, she'll actually take the medicine.

It's what she tells herself, anyway.

-

It hits Rust when they interrogate Charmaine. Seven years is a long time, and they were a good seven years. He has no plans to ruin that. In fact, his only plans are to save it.

But he's watched the world get worse. He couldn't pinpoint exactly where it started, but something got him going again. Maybe it was that televangelist commercial that kept popping up on Kenny's tv at the farm, or the other day when he was working on his truck in the barn, and every time he looked up, he saw right through that plastic bin and stared at those case files.

So he does the thing that always gets them in trouble. He digs. Rust digs and digs until he knows he's got too much dirt behind him to hide. And he's not bringing this shit home to Kenny. He saw that look in her eyes the last time he came home late, his frame hunched and exhausted. He wasn't going to let that happen again.

So, silently, Rust leases out his apartment again. Only for work. Only for storage. He takes the bins from the attic, he photocopies case files from the office. He links names and dates back to exactly where he thinks they'll go: Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle.

Rust never does a thing to hurt Kenny. He'd rather die. It's how he justifies moving a mattress back into that apartment. The less she knows about this, the better. She just as obsessive as he is, and the last time she got in too deep, it nearly killed her. Not again.

The apartment is where Rust organizes the reports about Kelly, the only survivor of Reggie Ledoux- besides Kenny, that is. Funny, he thinks. He never realized how similar their names were.

Meanwhile, Rust knows Marty is cheating on Maggie again. He knows because he can tell the difference. The on when they met, the off in the interim, and now he's on again, and it's just another thing turning Rust sour.

He's lucky the CID doesn't hear about his visit to Kelly. He pushes that luck with a visit to Tuttle.

All the while, Kenny sits at work and at home, wondering why Rust is pulling further into himself, and on the verge of asking.

And Tuttle has questions of his own.

“Are uh, you and Miz Marsden still seeing each other?”

Rust finds the switch inside of himself to force a polite smile.

“Yessir, Reverend.”

“And you still ain't proposed to that young lady? Hoo, you'd better be careful, boy. Hesitation like that is how a woman gets lost.”

Rust takes that silently and thinks of how Marty and Maggie have been married nearly twenty years and half of that has been marred by infidelity.

-

Kenny knows he isn't cheating on her. That would be too easy, too simple. She also doesn't think he's capable. Of course, that's what most people think about their partners. After all, seven years is a long time.

Three cigarettes deep, Kenny pulls into the parking lot of the CID on her lunch break. Rust's truck is there, but Marty's car is gone. They're out on a case. Kenny blows out the last of her smoke and crushes the cigarette beneath the heel of her boot.

Cathleen still manages the front desk, thank God. Nobody’d get by without her and she and Kenny are on good enough terms that she just may be able to bypass private information laws and get what she hopes she won't.

When Kenny walks into the office, Cathleen’s face lights up.

“Hey, hon! Marty n’ Rust are out.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kenny waves her hand. “I actually came here to talk to you because I know Rust will forget. We've been missing some mail and were wondering if maybe his old apartment address got added to the system again by accident.”

Cathleen is silent a beat too long and Kenny knows her lie wasn't good enough. Regardless, Cathleen types into her computer. Kenny scratches into her arm, one of her new medications swirling through her blood like bees. She wants to tear her hair out. She wants to peel her skin off.

“Y’know, Rust was in here all morning not doing a darn thing and couldn't think to ask me this himself?”

Kenny's smile is tight.

“Probably just forgot. Figured he would. He's been stressed lately. We both have.”

It isn't until Cathleen's eyes drift to Kenny's now raised and red skin that Kenny stops scratching, dropping both her arms from the counter.

“Anything come up?”

Cathleen looks at the screen, looks up at Kenny, lets out a long sigh.

“No.”

The keys to the Camaro bite into Kenny's palm. Harder. Harder. Was she stupid? Is this just a culmination of everything, everything with Maggie and Marty and her own parents and Rust's past life and seven years…seven years is a long time.

“Great, thanks.”

Kenny grits her teeth. Her vision blurs and stings. She's pretty sure Cathleen says something to her as she goes to leave but she doesn't stop. She cries all the way to the car, and once she's inside, she screams.

Is this really all it takes? Is she really so weak and pathetic, so thin and small and rudimentary that if Rust wavers even a little, she comes apart? Who is that fair to? Who does that help? If Kenny destroys herself, no vengeance is wrought, no discovery made.

But she doesn't think that. She thinks that this was just another stop along the long, lonesome road, and she was always meant to be alone.

She thinks of her mom. Her father had pulled away, too. He hadn't been cheating, just a coward. Rust wasn't a coward, and he wasn't a cheater. He was a secret, worse third thing.

-

Later, while camping out by the lakes in Alaska, or working the bar leading to that next stage in their story, Rust will think about how desperate he truly must have been to have blinded himself. Blinded himself to Kenny. Blinded himself to Marty. To Maggie.

Even if Marty and Maggie were blurry, Kenny was in perfect focus. He knew her better than anyone. And he should've known that she'd show up to his old apartment far sooner than he'd have wanted her to.

Ideally, it wouldn't have been until it was all over and he was moving out again. He should've known better.

Maybe he did. And maybe he really was just that desperate.

So he truly wasn't expecting it to be Kenny knocking on his door that night, after his suspension. His look of shock was unrehearsed. The beer bottle hung limp between two delicate fingers and his other hand gripped the wood of the door.

“Ken,” he says. Her eyes are red, her nose runny. She's wearing one of his old jackets over a pair of shorts. Strange for the weather.

Kenny slides into the apartment and Rust lets her. He closes the door and watches as she stands in the center of the room, circles, examines how everything looks almost exactly the same and therefore so horribly wrong. And Rust thinks the same of her, standing there. He knows her now, loves her now, and so she can't be here.

“Kenny…”

“I just-” Kenny wipes her face and turns to him. “Whatever it is you're trying to do, I wish you'd just let me help. I don't understand why you feel like you have to hide all of this. This is what we do. We built something together, Rust. We have the farm.”

Now somewhat relaxed she isn't livid at him, Rust sets the bottle on his counter and steps closer to Kenny. He cups her cheeks and she allows him to.

“The farm… it's peaceful. It's idyllic. It's home. And that's something I ain't had in a long time.”

Kenny grabs at his wrist. “But home ain't perfect. It ain't meant to be. Not when you're two people living together.”

Rust leans down to get closer.

“You are the closest thing I've had to family in a long time. I don't care about anything else. You almost died last time. I'm gonna finish this, and things can go back to the way they were. But this is what I gotta do to protect our life together.”

Kenny's grip on his wrists tightens and she pulls Rust's hands from her face.

Ash. Gray and burnt wood.

Kenny shakes her head.

“That's not what this is supposed to be. It's not some dream that you get to lock away. It don't just belong to you.”

And like he can't control it at all, Rust's focus shifts and locks onto Kenny's ear. The look in her eyes is something too foreign to him and he doesn't want to reckon with it.

Rust looks away. Kenny looks away. But then Kenny's brows scrunch together and she draws nearer to a desk where Rust has been stringing together connections of Tuttles schools. Shaky hands pick up a photocopy of Marie Fontenot’s polaroid.

“You used my stuff?”

“I made copies, I put all of it back-”

“You helped me take that room down- it was your idea.” Kenny looks at Rust and Rust freezes. He sees in her something he hasn't seen before. She isn't torn by heartbreak. She's rageful.

“Were you gonna solve Marie's murder again? Without me? While I just waited at home like a fucking idiot?”

Kenny's hands curled meanly around the photocopied paper and hot tears melted holes into it.

“Get yourself suspended, go rogue, get it all figured out, huh?”

Kenny hurls the paper at him and Rust's chest burns with guilt when he realizes her implication.

“Kenny, it ain't like that.”

“And if it's true, it'll fucking work! Because it's you!”

She approaches and shoves him in his shoulders; it unbalances him only because he couldn't have possibly expected it. Rust inhales sharply and tenses, raises his hands in a premature and immediate withdrawal.

“Kenny-”

“Did you use my notes, too? Did you listen to my hours of recordings for each and every one of those girls, or only the interesting parts you remembered from when you dismantled my evidence? Was the plan to push me out completely?”

She knows it's not about pride or accolades. He knows she knows that. But the accusation still stings as she pierces him with it and he can't stop himself.

“And I guess that is the greatest tragedy of all, ain't it, that this would get solved without you, and you would feel like a failure, despite the fact that's a trifle compared to the countless lives that could be saved.”

Kenny's mouth closes, then trembles. Rust's open palms, still in the air, curl into fists.

“Don't cry,” he says, his own voice tight. “Please, don't cry. I'm sorry.”

Kenny wraps her arms around his torso and cries into his shirt. His own arms slowly lower to wrap around her.

“Just- please come home.”

“I'll always come home.”

“No. Come back. Come back to me. Let me help. Don't do this.”

He knows she's more than capable. It's not her. He thinks of Sophia, of Claire, of Dora, of seeing Kenny in that hospital bed, and his response is easy.

“I can't do that, Ken. Just this one, and then never again.”

Kenny presses her forehead into his sternum until it hurts.

“I ain't gonna wait,” she says through gritted teeth, as a last ditch effort. Rust swallows through a stone in his throat and nods.

“Alright.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Fuck,” Kenny finally pulls herself away. “Fuck! I hate you, Rust.” She wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket- his jacket. He watches, and realizes he's never going to get it back.

“Yeah.”

“No, I don't. But God, I want to. Fuck. Fuck you. You better solve this shit. Fix this or die trying. Do you hear me?”

Rust nods again because he's out of words. Kenny chews on her lip, bounces on the balls of her feet, curses once more for good measure, then leaves.

Once Rust hears the Camaro leaving the parking lot, he picks the crumpled up piece of paper from the floor and takes it back to the desk. He carefully smooths it out, and gets back to work.

-

Kenny had heard it through the grapevine. All of it. About the fight, how Rust had gone off grid immediately afterwards. She'd even heard about what caused the fight, because she went to the cop bar and listened for about five seconds. She threw up in the parking lot before going back inside to get blackout drunk. Geraci had the decency to buy her a drink and drive her home.

It takes two weeks for Marty to show up. By the time he does, they are both worse for wear. He comes to her door with a 40 of malt liquor and an apology on his lips. She lets him into her haphazard home and they sit on the couch together, Hawk asleep between them.

“I never thought, when he came around, that this would all,” Marty says, and makes a motion with his hands like something being carried away in the wind.

Kenny rubs Hawk's head and sips her water. “Unstoppable forces, immovable objects, all that shit. Just another long walk. I think some people are meant to be alone, Marty, either by divine providence or their own design. I don't know which is Rust's, but he seems to have it bad. I do too. You…I ain't so sure.”

“Some would say my problem is I ain't lonely enough.”

“Shut up before I tell you what a fucking idiot you are.”

“Would you please take a drink of this damn thing? I brought it to share.”

Kenny's hand on Hawk slows. She stares at the wall.

“Can't.”

“Can't?”

Shakes her head. There's a silence filled only by the dull volume of the television. Then, lowly, Marty chuckles, though they both know, there's really nothing funny about it.

“Shit, kid.”

Kenny nods. “Yep.”

They don't say much more after that, but Marty sticks around to help Kenny clean her place a little, and organize her meds. And he promises to come back the next day to check on her. Check on her for what, Kenny can't imagine. But she knows he will, and he does. And even though Rust is gone, and Froggy is gone, and Maggie has sort of become someone else, Kenny thinks she has enough to be okay.

[haliotropes]

I assure you: somebody, somewhere, is on the exact same wavelength as you are.

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

11. and Hanging Around | Rated E

₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ

The night of the raid, though that particular event was unbeknownst to her, Kenny drives home in a frantic blur. She isn't even sure how far she was or when she left the field or when she arrived. It was still dark at any rate. She goes inside, pats a worried Froggy on the head, and is sure to lock her doors. She locks her bedroom door. She barricades it with a nearby trunk. Whatever she encountered in that field is not getting her in her own home.

The next morning she wakes early, almost like an omen. Cracks an ice cold Diet Coke and turns on the seven o'clock news, waits through a handful of commercials for urgent reports.

“A firefight turned major drug bust broke out early this morning in a neighborhood within Iberia Parish,” a newswoman says. Kenny fumbles for the remote and turns up the volume. “At least 23 individuals were taken into custody, many of the neighborhood sustaining anywhere from minor to major injuries. There are no reports of fatalities at this time.”

Kenny's hands fly for her phone. She clumsily dials Rust's home phone, knowing for almost certain he's not even there. It rings out and goes to voicemail. She hangs up, dials Marty's house. Maybe if Rust didn't come home, Marty did, or if he didn't, then maybe Maggie would know where they are, or would know something.

Three rings. Kenny chews on her fingers. The sound changes and her heart nearly beats out of her chest.

“Hello?”

It's Maggie. Kenny sighs in relief that she at least gets to talk to someone.

“Hey, Mags, it's Kenny. Have you heard from Marty this morning?”

“Um, no, I haven't. Why?”

Kenny bites on her lip, wondering how much to divulge- not that she knew much herself.

“He and Rust went on a job last night. They wouldn't tell me what. I think I just saw the aftermath on the news and I just, I needed to know if you knew-”

“That drug bust?”

“Yeah. But don't call Steve or anybody. It's… complicated.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“If you're working today, stay by the phone. I'll call you when I know something.”

“Kenny…”

“I'll figure it out. I'll do something.”

She hangs up. The something is loaded and weighs heavy on her tongue. She has no idea what that something is or if it even exists. What's she supposed to do, drive around the south part of the state and hope she bumps into them?

She only wants to feel like she has some semblance of control, of responsibility. In reality, there's nothing more she can do than get cleaned up and go do her job, try to ignore the double gut punch of what Tuttle had said to her the night before, and now having no clue where Marty or Rust are and if they're alright.

There is no possibility of a normal day, but Kenny tries. She cleans herself up and drives to work. Drifts into the office and types up the copy for the article Doucet had given to Stephon about gator populations. Discussion of the drug bust was inevitable.

“Did you hear about Iberia?” Asks Stephon from two desks down. Kenny flexes her hand and sets down her pen; she'd been writing Fish & Wildlife Department phone numbers to call.

“Saw it on the news,” is all she says.

“Wonder who'll get it,” Stephon says. Kenny doesn't have the heart or the energy to say that she hopes it isn't her. Call it a conflict of interest or selfishness. If that's where Marty and Rust were last night, she knows she needs to stay away from it.

There's still no news by midday. Kenny makes her calls, writes up more than what's required of her- well, Stephon- for the population article, and turns it in. The cursor of her mouse lingers over a document she could blow dust off of, but she opens it anyway.

The King's Court: My Day with the Killer of Erath

It was a shit title but she was feeling wistful when she wrote it. Kenny's eyes skim over the rough starting paragraph.

“It is strange to say, but I had the feeling early on that he wasn't going to kill me. Why he went to all the trouble to kidnap me in the first place only to have a ten-minute conversation is beyond me. But then again, it's beyond my pay grade to rationalize the mind of a serial killer.”

Plenty of it doesn't make sense and the rest isn't very good. It's dishonest to imply she doesn't try to rationalize anyone's behavior. She knows why he went after her. This wouldn't make for a good diary-entry and it sure as shit won't pass for a decent narrative piece. Kenny deletes the whole thing.

She leaves the office at four, but not before calling Maggie and checking in. Still nothing. Kenny's best idea now is to drive around and pray her scanner picks up something. Anything.

She makes it about twenty miles east until she does.

"We've got EMS en route to Lafayette General, one individual."

Thankfully, Kenny's on an empty gravel road because she slams on the breaks and drifts around.

"10-84, three individuals."

Kenny's mouth goes dry. One person in an ambulance, three in a coroner's vehicle. Maybe it isn't even them.

But she feels it in her gut. Something happened. Some shoe dropped. She doesn't have the wherewithal to question when the second will fall.

-

Kenny stumbles from her Camaro when she spots Rust's truck in the parking lot of the hospital. She runs in, barely slows her gait at reception, who directs her to the third floor. ICU.

The elevator is painfully slow. The creaking doors slide open to reveal a mess of cops, none of whom Kenny recognizes. Over their hats, she spots Maggie's brunette ponytail so she shoulders through the small throng. With Maggie is Marty.

Her chest collapses in relief. Kenny runs and catches Marty in a hug just as he turns around.

“Good to see you too, kiddo.”

Kenny pulls away to look at his bright blue eyes. He's riding some adrenaline high, though from what, Kenny still isn't sure, and she doesn't want to make assumptions.

“Where's Rust? Is he okay?”

Kenny's hands squeeze into Marty's forearms at the sudden thought of only one of them making it out-

“Ken?”

But there he is, turning from a conversation with- Speece, actually, but that means nothing to Kenny. Later, she'd feel embarrassed and slightly guilty about the immediate display of affection, but as soon as she sees him, exhausted but somehow wide awake, clothes soaked through with sweat and every bit of the last 48 hours evident on his body, she runs to him and wraps her arms around his lithe waist. At first, he doesn't return the gesture, if only for a moment. Kenny doesn't know what that moment means and she doesn't care. He's alive, he's here, and that's all that matters.

But his arms do wrap around her, and when they do they do so tightly, his hands in fists.

“How'd you get here so fast?” He mutters against her hair.

“Police scanner,” is all Kenny says, sniffling into his filthy shirt. She didn't even notice she'd started crying but it's not like it mattered. “God, I thought- I thought you were dead. I thought he killed you somehow-”

“Nah, he didn't even get close.”

Kenny pulls away enough to look up at him.

“So you were there? Did… Did you kill him? Ledoux.”

Rust closes his mouth; something in his jaw ticks and he looks back at a room for a brief moment before looking over Kenny's head. “Let's find somewhere more private. We got a lot to talk about.”

And so, in an otherwise empty corner of a hallway, Kenny and Rust sit next to each other in chairs. Kenny's head rests on Rust's shoulder as he recounts the epic tale to her. She wants to be as close to him as possible. Absorb the danger, should anymore come. She never wants him to get hurt again.

“What was he like?” Kenny asks quietly as she mindlessly traces spirals into Rust's arm.

“Who, Ledoux?”

“Yeah.”

“We didn't have much time to bond.”

Kenny lifts her head. “I know that. I mean…did he talk about it? Carcosa, the yellow king, black stars?”

Rust is looking at the wall adjacent to them. Kenny can't tell if that look in his eye is recollection…or choice.

“He mentioned em. Died all the same. Why you wanna know?”

Now, he looks at her. Kenny looks away and picks at her nails. Lies.

“I guess I just wanted it to mean something.”

“Wanted what to mean something?”

Despite herself, Kenny's gaze flicks down to her hands.

“The deaths.”

After a beat, Rust leans forward.

“No, that's not what you meant.”

Kenny's heart stops, her eyes widen, meet his.

“What?”

“You weren't talking about those dead girls. You know death dunn't mean anything, that it's just the light going out.”

“Rust-”

“We both know their deaths meant nothing but the end. That has nothing to do with any of us, not even Ledoux. And you know that, so what are you really asking me?”

Did he mention me? Whoever is really in charge? Did he act the same to you he did to me?

Rusty speaks in Kenny's silence.

“What'd he say to you that day?”

Kenny grimaces. “I told you.”

Rust wipes his mouth and it twitches under his palm. “Did you tell me all of it?”

Kenny's breaths grow shallower as his doubt begins to grow inside of her like guilt. “I told you what you needed to know to help you get him-”

Rust's hands come away from his face in a sharp movement. “Well, since it didn't matter then, why don't you tell me now?”

“I was fuckin scared, alright, Rust?” Kenny pushes herself up from the chair and bites her thumbnail, watches as the black spots on the fringes of her vision eat into a fake plant in the corner. She takes a shaky breath. “Ledoux took one look at me and knew something that no one else did, that no one else understands. And I don't- I don't know if it's real or if he was crazy or if I'm crazy…”

Kenny flinches when she hears Rust stand so she whips around, but he brings his hands up to suggest caution, like she's a wounded animal. Like she might bite.

“Why'd he let you go, Ken?”

“He thought he had no business killing me. Because I'm like him or something. I think he just meant batshit insane, but I don't know-”

“What else did he say?”

Kenny exhales, pinches the bridge of her nose. She's tired of the questions. Of the way she can't lie to him.

“That I was born there…I asked if where we were was Carcosa, he said no. I asked if he was the king in yellow, he said no. He said that one day I'd be called to it.”

“Yeah…you mentioned that.”

“Which part?”

“There being more than one. You know, we got two guys at the site.”

Kenny shakes her head. “No…no. it's more than that.”

“If there's an accomplice, we'll find him.”

“They're gonna close the case. Tuttle’ll shut it down and then it'll happen again and he'll be right and I'll be called to it…” Kenny's wrapped her arms around herself, hyperventilating, her mind racing with the rust and dirt of that day with Ledoux.

“Ken,” Rust reaches a hand out, waits for her reaction. She doesn't flinch, doesn't shake, so he pulls her into him by her shoulder and holds her tight.

“And what if we got it right, hm?” He muses into her hair. “What if that was it, and Ledoux was trying to shake us off?”

“Then I think we'll have gotten very, very lucky.”

-

Rust hadn't gotten angry at her, not really. Or, maybe he had, but he knows it wasn't her fault.

He and Kenny had gone back to his place. He wanted to go to hers but he needed a shower and fresh clothes. He asked if Froggy would be alright. Kenny said she'd put in a doggy door after she had to replace the screen he'd busted out.

Rust damn near falls asleep in the shower. The hot water breaks through the dirt and sweat and blood and coke and whatever else of the past 48 hours. It pelts his skin, stings him, but he likes it. Needs it. He closes his eyes and listens to the faint sound of Kenny ordering a pizza. Of course, when Rust comes out and lands on the mattress, he is once again close to sleep. Through half lidded eyes, he watches Kenny attempt to tidy his space: straighten stacks and clean the counter and make little adjustments here and there.

He was angry because she was right, and it scared him. It scared him to see her scared, and the idea, the reality that maybe this wasn't all over, that they were still entrenched in this nightmare and would be until it happened again…

“Ken.”

She turns around, wide eyed despite the dark circles and redness and slow blinking. He hates that they had her worried.

“Yeah?”

Her voice breaks a little. Rust makes a gesture with his hand, the mere action wearing him out.

“Quit that and c’mere.”

Kenny hesitates, makes a small movement to set down whatever she's holding (looks like a random floppy disk), but then stops, but ultimately sets it in its pile and tiptoes over to the mattress. She doesn't lay next to him but sits with her back to the wall.

“You really should get a bed,” she says. Rust presses his face to her bare arm and sighs. He feels the goosebumps raise against his cheek.

“Mhm.”

“You might as well move some clothes to the farm for nights like these…”

Rust plants a feather light kiss to her arm before he can't keep his eyes open any longer. He falls asleep to the sensation of Kenny running her fingers through his hair, and he doesn't even wake up when the pizza comes by.

[haliotropes]

Kenny Marsden & Rust Cohle

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

10. Hysterical and Let Down | Rated E

A/N: psychosis, feelings of hopelessness

₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ

“Ahem.”

Neither body stirs. Marty tries again.

“Ahem!”

Still nothing. He goes to the countertop and rattles a pot that's been left out to dry. When he does, both Rust and Kenny shoot up; Rust grabs a gun from god knows where and points it blindly at Marty, who raises his hands in defense.

“It's almost seven. Figured you'd like a wake-up call since you're never still asleep this late.”

Kenny secures the blanket around her chest and Rust puts the gun down and rubs his face.

“What the fuck Marty?” Kenny hisses.

“Relax, I didn't see anything. Good to know we all did well for ourselves last night though, huh?”

“Does that mean you get to move out soon?” Rust groans.

“Well, let's not get hasty. I'm going to go change. You two should get decent.”

Marty disappears. Kenny and Rust look at each other.

“Good morning,” she says sleepily, the adrenaline wearing off.

“Morning,” he replies. “That was the best sleep I got in a long time.”

Kenny smirks at him. “Sounds like you need to get laid more often.” She tries to roll over and sit up, but he hooks an arm around her waist and pulls her back into him, earning a squeal.

“Rust-!”

“Hey, I'm down to get laid plenty, alright? But I need you to know…”

He looks at her, cradled in his arms, looking up at him. She smiles slowly, warmly.

“Yeah, I know.”

-

They decide to get breakfast at a nearby diner, the three of them. Even though Kenny has hardly ever seen Rust eat, he orders a pretty hearty plate. She gets a tall stack of pancakes as a treat. Marty treats himself to a cheap steak and eggs. They discuss Tuttle's proposition, if it can be called that.

“I think you should meet him,” Rust says through a bite of eggs. Kenny gawks at him.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Otherwise, you're just reinforcing that we got something to hide. Tell him what was released publicly and don't go into any more detail.”

“He'll push.”

“Push back.”

Kenny looks to Marty for help. “Marty?”

He shrugs. “I agree. You're smart enough- and stubborn enough. Make him think you're not worth the trouble.”

Kenny stabs at her pancakes with her fork. “And what'll you two be getting up to?”

The detectives share a look. Kenny registers this and the table grows somber.

“So it's tonight, then?”

“Looks that way,” Marty says.

“And I'm sure there's no way I can convince you-”

“Absolutely not,” says Rust, cutting her off. She figured that's how it would be but saw no harm in trying.

“Am I gonna see it on the news?”

“Not if we do it right.”

“I hate the sound of that.”

Kenny sets her fork down and pushes her plate away.

“Ken, we'll be fine,” Rust says. Marty looks between them.

“Ken?”

“I know, I know. But my stomach’s in knots and apparently I gotta save room for dinner.”

-

Kenny hates figuring out what to wear.

She likes clothes, she even likes pretty clothes and dressing up- as long as she's doing it for herself. The thought of dressing up to placate Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle of all people makes her stomach churn.

Still, the pretty sundress with a cardigan and a single braid over her shoulder makes her look perfect for a Sunday service, so it should well suffice for dinner.

The restaurant he chose isn't high falutin, thankfully. More like a dressed up steakhouse. Even so, Kenny is self-conscious about her appearance, though that can never be helped. She clutches at the sleeves of her cardigan as she enters and the hostess leads her to a table where Tuttle is already sitting, sipping merrily on a sweet tea. He rises when he sees her, smiles and waves, and pulls out her chair.

“You really don't have to-”

“No, I insist. I invited you here, after all.”

Kenny smiles and bites her tongue and sits, thanks the hostess. She's hardly settled before the waitress comes to the table. Nothing but impeccable service when a Tuttle comes around. Kenny can hardly blame them.

“Good evening, miss. What can I get you started with to drink?”

“Water, please,” Kenny says, going for the safest option.

“Don't I remember you being a whiskey woman?” Tuttle asks. Kenny chews on her cheek.

“Maybe later.”

But Tuttle nods and winks to the waitress like they're in on some little secret, and she's off and away. Tuttle shrugs at the look Kenny is giving him.

“My treat.”

All she does is nod, because she can't think of a word kind enough to respond with.

“I appreciated the flowers and the card,” Kenny says quickly. Tuttle smiles mildly, looking at someone over her shoulder and giving them a small wave.

“Of course! Meant every word. Regardless of my particular investment into the Dora Lange case, I was shocked and horrified to hear that you'd been dragged into it.”

For some reason, it makes Kenny feel indignant.

“Well, I wasn't exactly a random civilian.”

“All the more reason,” Tuttle says, clasping his hands and tucking them under his chin. “Not that there's much of a pattern, to my understanding, but you are not like Dora Lange. You'd think the CID would be pushing more now that one of their own is being targeted.”

That lights Kenny up. She feels it in her shoulders, her neck, the backs of her eyes. She tries not to stiffen too much because she gets the sense he's trying to get a reaction out of her.

“Well, I'm not a cop.”

The waitress brings the water, and a glass of well whiskey. Kenny eyes the ice swirling inside and gulps. She hates cold whiskey.

“Y'all ready to order?”

They do. Once the waitress leaves, Tuttle takes another drink of his sweet tea.

“I know you're not a cop, Miz Marsden. But we both know you've formed a relationship with the CID and its members. You've always been close with Martin Hart.”

Kenny takes a gulp of water and crunches on an ice cube.

“Sure I am, he's a good man.”

“And now that new partner of his.”

“Yeah, I dunno much about him. You'd have to ask Quesada.”

Tuttle nods, grins. “I have.”

Kenny's chewing slows. Whatever that means. She starts to get warm so she removes the cardigan. The dress is short sleeved so it's not as difficult, and if her scars make Tuttle uncomfortable, she'll count it as a rare win and reckon with that later.

They talk about family. Tuttle goes on about his expanding empire, though he does wait until Kenny asks, because he doesn't want to come off as rude. He asks Kenny if she's still at the farm. She says yes, and that's the end of that conversation. There isn't much casual for him to ask her about.

He saves the heavy stuff for when they get their food- probably so she's less likely to run. Fair enough, she figures.

“So, down to brass tacks,” he says, cutting into his steak. They ordered the same thing, but he got his medium well. Kenny orders hers rare.

“You mean you didn't invite me here to ask me questions you already knew the answers to?”

Tuttle laughs. “You always had a mean streak. I never knew where that came from. Not from your parents.”

“Maybe not from my momma, but you and I both know my father can be a real bastard. All fathers can.”

Tuttle grows quiet for a moment at that. She isn't going to run from this, and he's paying, so he's going to get her, bad personality and all.

Be stubborn. Push back.

“If you feel up to it, I would like to ask about the attack.”

Kenny nods. “Because of the anti-Christian rhetoric?”

“Because you are a member of the community and because I care.”

Kenny takes a deep breath, exhales.

“I woke up somewhere, blindfolded and bound. I didn't see him, and I didn't hear his real voice. He didn't do anything to me. I talked to him about Dora Lange, and I guess that got through to him enough for him to let me go.”

It's the same story the press got. She doesn't mention the Yellow King or the second man.

“That must have been very traumatizing. I'm so sorry you had to go through that.”

“Mhm.”

“And there was no way you could identify the attacker?”

���No. He was very careful. But the CID and Detectives Hart and Cohle are working hard to figure it out.”

And I'm here, she thinks.

Tuttle nods in thought for a moment before speaking again, changing the subject.

“Have you thought very much about your future, Kennedy?”

Kenny shrugs. “Not much since it changed. I guess once you get a certain age, you stop dreaming about it.”

“Well, if you did dream about it, then.”

Kenny chews on this new line of inquiry and its strange and slightly off-putting genuine nature.

“I dunno. I like my job. I like my house and my dog. You know me. Survival's always been the goal.”

“Sure, but you didn't answer the question. What about a family? Or leaving Lafayette?”

Kenny chuckles dryly. “I don't think I'm suited for family life and I'm pretty sure anyone could agree. Why are you asking? Surely this isn't what you wanted to talk to me about.”

“I've known you a very long time, Kennedy. I know your nature, more than you'd like to think. You fight so hard because you think there isn't anything else for you to be doing. You find purpose in it and dig your heels in.”

“Well, I think some people call that integrity.”

“No matter what anyone else calls it. I think if you found something else to believe in, you could finally be free of this place.”

Kenny narrows her eyes at Tuttle.

“Why would I leave?”

“You've never been fond of Lafayette.”

“About as fond as a thorn in my side, but better a devil you know.”

“Better no devil at all.”

Kenny sets down her knife and fork.

“Why do you care so much?”

“I am expressing to you how…expanding your horizons could benefit both of us.”

“You're not doing a very good job.”

“I'm trying to be polite.”

“Then do us both a favor and cut the shit.”

Tuttle sits back, sighs, wipes his mouth with his napkin.

“Your journalistic ‘integrity’ is beginning to concern me, not to mention your father, and if you want to be pragmatic, not that you're known for it, it puts you in physical danger. But it also interferes with my work. I'm telling you that I think you should consider moving from a place where you have no real friends, to a place where you won't be obsessing over dead girls, where you could be a different person. A better one.”

Kennedy's drunk words ring in her ears. What does a person better than you look like?

There is a lot that Tuttle had said that Kenny wants to argue, but she feels a bit numb, and the first thing that comes to mind is, “I have friends. I have people.”

“No, Kenny. You don't.”

He's bluffing. There's no way he can know these things for sure but he's also right and that's what's confusing her the most.

“I don't understand. You're asking me to… leave? To quit my job, pack up my life? Abandon the things I care about?”

“I'm only asking you to consider what you sacrifice by doing this for the rest of your life.”

And what does he lose if she does?

Kenny’s steak suddenly turns to poison and she decides she's finished eating. She finishes out her whiskey which is half water.

“I'm afraid you wasted your time and money, Reverend,” she says shortly.

“Nonsense. Time and money spent to express concerns to a family friend is no expense at all.”

“How altruistic of you.”

“I wish all our interactions didn't have to end this way. I mean, I've known you your whole life.”

Kenny's teeth settle against each other. One deep breath in, one out.

“And I wish you weren't an evil sonofabitch who thinks he can buy God's favor and take over the state. But you wish in one hand…”

Kenny stands, at least manages to slip her sweater on one arm before turning away. “Thanks for the steak, Reverend.”

Her head buzzes as she stalks from the restaurant and to her car. The sky is dark and starry and the air is thick and warm. A quick wind blows her braid and she quickly undoes it. Gets in her car and starts it.

She hopes she said the right things. She already can't remember. The conversation becomes a blur, a black spot on her memory. Ink blots on water she tries to blink through. Wonders what she'll tell Marty and Rust when they ask.

She can't go home right now; she's too full, too much. So, she drives. Puts in a Johnny Cash tape and smokes and stops by a gas station for a clear and red bottle of Heaven Hill. Takes that with her to an unfamiliar crossroads with swampland all around. Every corner is marsh, flat, stretching for miles. About a mile north ways is some sort of processing plant with smokestacks that disappear into the night.

Kenny doesn't know this spot, but it's where she was found. She parks her Camaro and shuts it off. Gets out, takes off her sweater and throws it in the passenger seat. She tucks her pack of cigarettes into her bra, grabs the bottle, and hits the gravel.

It isn't all marsh, actually. To the south is field land so that's where she decides to wander. A gulp, a drag, and blowing smoke to cover the stars. Before she knows it, she's hit the bottom of the bottle so she tosses it aside. She usually detests litterers.

She wonders where Marty and Rust are right now, if they're on their mission and if they're succeeding. She wonders if she'll see it on the news before she hears it from them.

You don't have people.

Kenny stumbles but finds her footing. A cool breeze brings in the smell of something from the factory and it makes her dizzy. She looks up at the sky. The stars are bright here. Remarkably bright. Kenny blinks hard.

You're alone.

“I can do it. I can do it alone,” she mumbles to herself. Her right hand closes around nothing as she contemplates another drink.

“I can do it alone. I can do it alone. I can live-”

Tears stream down her cheeks and Kenny sniffs. She wipes her eyes angrily.

“I can live. I don't need…”

But she thinks of her mom and how distant her father had been from her when she was at her sickest and Kenny retches into the grass. Nobody needs, but everybody wants, and isn't that the answer?

Kenny's eardrums pulse with her crying and the faint sound of singing. She stops walking, she doesn't remember having picked up again, in front of a tent. Fresh, white, too bright for the darkness. She pulls aside what is meant to be a flap, something practical, but it's much softer.

Inside it is warm, and people are standing from their chairs with arms raised to the sky and they're singing and Kenny feels warm. Dim. Dim. The man leading them is draped in yellow liturgical cloths. Kenny tries to remember what yellow is for but she forgets because warm hands are on her shoulders pushing her forwards and she's singing too and she feels at peace she feels warm she feels like floating

And then she trips over something and falls face first in the field. Her bare arms are cold. Kenny flips over and sits up, looks around. She's barely wandered a few hundred yards from her car. There's only the sounds of crickets and the marshes. It's dark. She looks up and sees that the stars aren't even as bright as she remembers.

The hands are so gone from her, they never were there. She's so cold and alone I can do it alone but that isn't how it feels.

“You don't need it to survive,” she tells herself, getting to her knees. “You can do it-”

But she stops because she feels something wrong. Looks over her shoulder at the edge of the nearby wood where she can't see a thing. But she feels something there. Something vile. And even if it isn't real, it gets her to her feet and back to her car. In a cold sweat, Kenny starts the engine and tears down the road, hoping on hope that she can find her way home in the darkness.

[haliotropes]

Black Star (Rustin Cohle x OC)

9. Hysterical and Useless | Rated E

A/N: smut!!!!!!!

₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ ₊˚ ✧.* ೃ

It makes the most sense to Kenny for her to go stay with Rust. But that can't happen. And he can't stay with her. He has to go do whatever it is he's doing. Worse than that, he's taken two weeks of leave, so it's not like she can push anyone at the CID for answers. And, come to find out, Marty is staying at Rust's place because he's been cheating on Maggie and she kicked him out- rightly so.

Kenny always knew Marty had something of a fucking idiot streak in him.

Regardless, Kenny spends her nights at home with a cop outside and pushes her way into work during the day. Charlie tried to guilt her about wasting state resources by having cops guard her instead of just going to stay with him. In genuine argument, she pointed out that he still goes to work every day, (so does she but that's besides the point), and in bullshit pettiness, she argued that it's been so long since her father was on the force that he wouldn't know what to do if a serial killer showed up.

Perhaps it was a bit much, but it got him off her back.

At work, the idea of a personal narrative piece was dangled around but both Kenny and Doucet were too afraid to bite.

“Could be good for you.”

“Yeah?” Kenny prods in skepticism.

“Yeah. Think they call it ‘therapeutic’.”

“Think there probably needs to be some cognitive psychology involved for it to be categorized as ‘therapeutic’, Andrew.”

“I'm not even saying publish it. But maybe to get it in words…?”

“You're a great man but you're a shitty manager. Just ask me to write the story so I can say ‘no’.”

Doucet rolls his eyes and spreads his hands helplessly.

“I was never saying-”

“Alright, I'm gonna find a local hero to write about or something. A retiring teacher. A kitten-saving fireman.”

Kenny pushes herself from the chair in Doucet's office and is out before he can get another word in edgewise. She skirts past the desk of Stephon, the new hire, and knocks on it. He's elbows deep in a box of records and jumps when Kenny makes herself known.

“Jeez, Marsden,” he mutters. “Is this you in a good mood?”

“When I'm in a good mood, you'll know it.”

“Should you even be here?”

“As long as they keep letting you in, I think I'm good. Hey, you got any small stuff needs writing up? I don't have a story to be working on and I'm bored out of my mind.”

Stephon eyes her. “You don't have a story.”

“One that don't revolve around my current trauma? No, I've been a little busy with it. Or keep your workload, see if I care.”

Kenny starts to walk away; Stephon hurriedly turns in his chair.

“Wait! He wants six inches on the gator population control.”

“Wow, Stephon, I asked for work, not a walk at the park.” Stephon stares at her. “Kidding. I don't care. I'll take it.”

Stephon hands Kenny the assignment and just then, Caroline, the receptionist, is calling her name, so she goes to the front desk. Her heart sinks when she sees an egregiously large vase of flowers sitting on the counter, and an envelope with her name on it.

“Inn't that sweet? Someone sent you flowers!” Caroline says, but Kenny knows it's not sweet, because who is going to be sending her flowers at work? Who's trying to make a point she can't ignore?

Kenny tears open the envelope and inside is a card that features an image of a kitten in an arm cast, saying “get well soon!” Opening it up, Kenny sees a swooping, unfamiliar script.

Miss Marsden,

I speak for not only myself, but the entirety of the Tuttle family when I say that I am so relieved to hear of your safe return and your full recovery. No one was surprised when you returned to work immediately.

Once you've gathered your bearings, it'd be my pleasure to speak with you again, perhaps over dinner. Don't be afraid to call.

Rev. Billy Lee Tuttle

And featured at the bottom is a phone number. Kenny rips the front of the card off and hands it to Caroline, who takes it confused, and folds the written side up and stuffs it into her pocket. She grabs the vase.

“Tell Doucet I'll be back. I'm taking a trip to the CID.”

-

Kenny and Quesada have never gotten along, and it's because when they're alone in a room together, she can almost always get him to fold. It's what she's banking on today. She pulls up to the CID and unbuckles the vase from where it safely sits in the passenger seat. Grabbing that, she stalks her way inside. She can ignore the first wave of stares as she climbs up the steps, but once she actually enters the office and has to take off her sunglasses, it takes everything in her not to shrink away. She says hello to Cathleen and says the flowers are for the office and happily leaves them at the counter. Kenny can see over her shoulder, next to Rust's vacant desk, is Marty.

His desk being in the very back has to be a cosmic irony, because she has to walk past every single man in that room to get to him. No one wants to look at her, save Geraci, who looks like he's thinking of what to say, but can't quite get there yet.

“Lemme know when you figure it out,” Kenny mutters at him in passing. She almost sits in Rust's chair but thinks better of it, opting for a short filing cabinet behind Marty's desk. His eyes go wide when he sees her, and he watches wordlessly when she sits down.

“Guess I shouldn't be shocked you're out and about.”

“Guess you shouldn't.”

“And you being here cannot be good news.”

“No, not particularly good.”

Marty looks behind him and sees half the office staring at them, trying to eavesdrop.

“We, uh, we should maybe go somewhere a bit more private. Come on.”

Marty stands and Kenny follows him with crossed arms. He leads her to the archives room and they find a cozy corner to stand in.

“You look better. How are you feeling?”

“Like I ate something foul. The good Reverend sent me flowers and a card.”

“How thoughtful.”

Kenny digs the folded card from the back pocket of her cargo pants and hands it to Marty. He unfolds it, reads it, looks at her.

“What are you thinking?”

Kenny bites her thumbnail. “I don't know. He's gonna press me for information I'm not gonna give, but he knows that, which makes me think there's something else. I dunno why he's so obsessed with this case but it's rubbing me the wrong way.”

“Satanic panic is good for his business.”

“I dunno…this doesn't feel like that.”

Marty waits for a beat, digests her words. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing. I'm not. I don't know. But you're leading this investigation so I wanted you to know.”

Marty frowns in consideration at the card.

“Is that all you wanted?”

Kenny folds her arms over her chest again. Looks at the floor.

“How is he?”

Marty takes too long to answer, so Kenny knows he's at least considering lying, but his answer is honest as he folds the card back, and then some, thinning the seams with his thumbnail.

“He's not great, you know. Says he knows what he's doing and I trust him.”

“Still.” Then, because she knows they can't avoid it. “I heard about you and Maggie.”

Marty turns a bright shade of red and it's his turn to look away.

“I'm gonna make it up to her.”

“If she lets you, you'll be the luckiest man in the world, you know that, right?”

“I know.”

“I mean-”

“I know, Kenny.”

“Fuckin unbelievable.”

“You are not the first person to say it.”

“I've been a little busy and my turn was due.”

“Well, I hope you feel satisfied in getting a word in about my personal life.”

“Hey, shitter, I think we're past that point, don't you?”

There's a pause, and Marty breaks out into that stupid, toothy grin and shakes his head.

“God help me if I wasn't already planning on making it right. I'd have half the parish knocking down my door.”

“I have more in the chamber.”

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

“I'm gonna see if Quesada will talk. Listen, if I came by tonight, would he be there? Would he, I dunno, be in a position to talk to me?”

Marty shrugs with his hands shoved in his pockets.

“I have no idea, Kiddo. It ain't my place to talk about and you're just gonna have to take that risk.”

Kenny nods, the thought infinitely more stomach churning than the idea of going into Quesada's office.

Which she does, after knocking. When he sees her, Quesada lifts his hands.

“You're not a cop, Kennedy.”

“You don't have a sign outside your door,” she says. “May I sit?”

“You're going to anyway.”

He's right, and she does.

“Listen, you need to get Tuttle off our backs.”

“‘Our’? Who exactly are you speaking for?”

“Myself, Marty, Rust, you. The CID if you know what's good for you.”

Quesada throws up his hands and looks around himself. “What do you expect me to do, Kennedy? Ask him nicely to back off?”

“You could tell him that he, in fact, has no authority here.”

“Look, I know you don't like me, but there's no way you think I'm actually that stupid. He does have that authority. Not by title, but in power. And that's what happens when your cousin is governor. You know, when your father is a commissioner.”

Kenny slumps back in her chair and rolls her eyes.

“Christ almighty…”

“Marty and Rust have had more than enough time to figure this out. If they don't, they know what happens. That's out of my hands.”

“He wants to talk to me, almost certainly about the case. I don't want him to, and you should give a shit.”

“I can give a shit, but that doesn't have any impact.”

“Well goddamn, Quesada, what am I supposed to do?”

“Mind your business? Did you ever consider that from the start?”

“It is my business! I was kidnapped.”

“Yeah, and you know why. You got yourself involved.”

“Jesus, a random guy could shoot me in the face and you'd find a way to say I deserved it.”

“Kenny, there's nothing I can do that I'm willing to do. Think of that what you will, because God knows you will.”

Kenny is shocked into a momentary silence.

“So that's it?”

“That's it. And you shoulda known better.”

Kenny pushes herself from the desk chair.

“Fine. Waste of my fuckin time…”

When she opens the door, she's chest to chest with Speece, who looks over her shoulder at Quesada.

“There a problem here?” He asks in his deep, intimidating voice.

“There's a million problems here, Sergeant. No one's willing to figure them out. Excuse me.”

Speece allows her to move past him. Kenny stops briefly at Marty's desk.

“I'll talk to you soon.”

“Didn't go well?”

“What do you think? I'll pop by tonight if I can shake my security detail. He only hangs around the house, though, so it shouldn't be too hard.”

Marty sighs. “Well, hopefully I have a date with Maggie. We'll see how that goes.”

“Well, see you when I see you.”

Kenny passes the other cluster of desks and sees that Geraci's is empty. She exhales in relief.

Until she exits to the hot parking lot and finds him standing by her car. Kenny pauses, keys in hand. Not that she thinks he's going to hurt her, let alone in the parking lot of the CID in broad daylight. Once he sees her, he throws his cigarette to the ground and stomps it out.

“There a reason you're waiting for me out here?” Kenny asks, trying to keep nonchalant as she retrieves her car key from the ring.

“Yeah. Didn't wanna have this conversation in the office. Just wanted to say… Look, I've been dealing with Marie in my own way, alright? We all know how much you cared, but ultimately that was my fuck up, so don't think I haven't been thinking about it.”

Kenny squints over his shoulder. “I don't spend time thinking about what you think about, Geraci.”

“And I know you wanna get as close as possible to what you missed out on. But you won't get it. Everyone accommodates you, but as someone who actually thinks you shouldn't die, you need to back off. Don't talk to anyone about the case, stop writing about it, and stop coming by here. Just give it up. You can't justify Marie's death by sharing in it.”

Kenny hasn't moved, hasn't blinked. Just stares at the same spot over his shoulder and chews through the thin skin on the inside of her cheek. Once he's quiet, she looks at his face.

“You done?”

Geraci chuckles and sets his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, I'm done.”

“Good.”

Kenny unlocks her car door. She feels Geraci's eyes following her movements.

“What?”

“Just wondering…”

“In your head?”

“You fuckin just one of em, or both?”

Kenny freezes, her car key gripped tight in her first.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“I get Cohle, I get. Y'all are fuckin made for each other. But Marty, too? Seems a bit fucked up, given your relationship with him.”

It takes everything in Kenny to swing her right fist around and at his lower jaw instead of her left where she had her key. Geraci stumbles away, probably more out of shock than pain, and Kenny cradles her hand.

“Fuck!” She grits out. She opens the door and sits in the driver's seat, starts the engine, and is putting the car in reverse by the time Geraci has straightened and thought to advance on her.

“You stupid bitch!” He shouts at her as she peels away from the parking lot. Once she's on the interstate, she screams into her steering wheel.

-

By eight, Marty had come and gone from Rust's apartment. Trying to win back Maggie's heart. Damn fool. Both of them, fools.

And Rust was a fool, too, and he knows it. Microdosing crack was not high on his list of things to re-explore once he settled into Louisiana. He's sluggish, paranoid, hazy, more likely to stare at the crime scene photos rather than analyze them. He spends a lot of time in front of his tiny mirror.

At about nine, Rust damn near thinks he's hallucinating when there's a knock on his door, because it better not be Marty (because it would likely mean he fucked up again over dinner) and it better not be Kenny, because she should not be out and alone this late.

But of course, it's Kenny who's outside his door. Sober, at least, which is good. He doesn't want to set a precedent.

The first thing he notices is her bruises healing, then her red and exhausted eyes, and then her wrapped knuckles. Rust opens the door wider to invite her in.

“What'd you do?”

Kenny comes inside and Rust does a quick cursory glance outside before closing and locking the door.

“Socked Geraci in the jaw and nearly broke my hand.”

Rust runs his hands down his face.

“Jesus, Ken-”

“Hey, you woulda killed him if you'd heard what he said. He's lucky he got away with one punch.”

“Lemme see.”

Rust watches as Kenny catches her breath and obediently holds out her hand. Rust takes it and gently unwraps it. Her knuckles are shiny, red and purple. Cherries.

“Hmm,” he hums, and begins to rewrap, but Kenny quickly grips his forearm. His free hand flies to her offending one on reflex.

“What the fuck, Rust?”

He follows her eyes to the track marks on the inside of his elbow. He'd completely forgotten he was wearing his sleeveless undershirt. He felt her pulse uptick and watched as her eyes went wide.

“Nah, it's not what it looks like-”

A hollow laugh rings from Kenny's chest. “It isn't?”

“No.” Rust calmly uses his hold on her to make her release him. “This is part of the job. What I took off for. Why I didn't want you to see me.”

Kenny, promising a softer touch with her eyes on his, the vulnerability of the moment reassuring him, runs her thumb down his firm forearm and pulls at the skin around the injection sites. Rust takes in a breath but says nothing.

“Is it worth it?” She asks quietly. Rust's free hand comes up to encompass her shoulder and he looks at a spot over her head.

“I don't know yet. I hope so.”

Kenny plants a soft kiss on his bicep and looks up at him.

“How'd you get away from your security?” Rust mumbles and brushes her hair from her face.

“Told him I was going out for cigarettes,” she smirks.

“You'd’ve made one helluva father.”

“Fuck off.”

Rust seizes her mouth with his, hungrily, though not as firm as usual, given the perpetual slight high he's been living with lately. He's been miserable. To deny either of them this fact would be dishonest.

Kenny's fingertips slip up the hem of his shirt and caress the hot skin of his abdomen. Rust shudders against her mouth. His hands travel to her hips with a bruising grip and one palm dips lower to rub across the sensitive skin off her ass.

Kenny's hands explore his stomach until they graze his bullet scars. She stops, pulls his shirt up a bit.

“Rustin, you are never short of surprises.”

She moves her hands to his shoulder blades, taking the shirt in a bunch with them, and soon she's hiking it over his head. Rust pulls it from around his arms and discards it on the floor. Kenny is in a tank top and cargo pants and boots. Rust starts with the top. One piece for another. He removes it, tosses it aside, and groans internally when he sees her barely there bra, likely only present to maintain a sense of propriety. But her nipples peek through and Rust's mouth goes to her chest. He pulls the thin fabric of the bra aside and closes his lips around the stiff bud and nips against it with teeth. Kenny stifles a moan through biting on her lip and clumsily undoes his belt. Once she gets it through the loops, she breaks away from Rust and goes towards the counter, sets it down on one of the stools. Rust gets the hint. He presses against her back, kisses her shoulder and unclasps her bra. She shrugs it off and it too finds a new home among the floor.

One of Rust's hands flit around Kenny's stomach while the other flicks open the button of her pants. His long fingers play at the top of her pubis. Kenny throws her head against his shoulder and turns around to face him.

“What about Marty?” Rust asks lazily, alluding to the possibility of his failure and then coming home early. He pulls down Kenny's pants and watches as she kicks off her boots to free herself of them totally. She stands before him now, naked, save for a thong. Her hair falls over her shoulders, her scars and freckles continuing across the parts of her body that had previously been inaccessible. She smiles at him with newly red lips from the kissing, and the flush of her cheeks spread down to her neck, her chest. Rust thinks she's so beautiful, and she glows with the kitchen light behind her.

Kenny approaches him again and finishes removing his pants.

“Fuck Marty,” she whispers huskily. Looks up and in the eyes. “Yeah?”

Rust nods and chokes out the heavy word. “Yeah.”

Yeah to ‘fuck Marty’, yeah to fucking here and now. Kenny plunges her hand down into his boxers and wraps a warm hand around his already semi-hard cock. She moans in satisfaction and that does even to harden him completely. Rust steps out of his boxers and sinks to his knees. He grips the sides of Kenny's underwear and drags them down slowly, exposing her to him. She is as full and lush as he had expected her to be, as he had fantasized about her being. Already swollen, just like him. The angle kills his knees but he can't be bothered to care; Rust runs his hands up and down the front of Kenny's thighs and noses through her slit. One testing stroke of his tongue and Kenny shakes, gasps in a high sound Rust isn't expecting. He does it again, dipping into her and sucking on her clit. She doesn't taste anything like he had visualized. She tastes entirely like herself.

Rust pulls away and stands, wipes his face.

“Get on the counter,” he says. Kenny, though panting and pulling her hair from her face, still smiles.

“Say ‘please’.”

“Kenny,” Rust approaches her and she follows with his movements until her back hits the cold countertop. “Please get on the counter so I can make you cum.”

Kenny nods, brings herself up to sit on the edge of the counter.

“When you masturbate, how many fingers do you usually use?” Rust drawls. Kenny's breaths are shallow.

“Two.”

Rust sticks out his ring and middle finger and offers them to Kenny. She looks between him and his digits, then takes them into her mouth, licking between them and getting them wet enough to hopefully help her to the extent she needs them to. Rust's eyes are lidded with lust and he removes his fingers from her mouth. He trails them to her opening, then slips them inside.

Kenny tries to throw her head back but it meets the cabinets overhead. She's at the perfect angle to be at eye level with him. He works his fingers up and out, up and out, lighting her up at the base of her spine and coaxing a groan from her with each movement. For a split second, Kenny's eyes flutter closed.

“Nuh-uh. Keep 'em open. I wanna see those fireflies.”

He'd never told her that's what he thought of her eyes before. Something about her softens when she hears it. Kenny slips a hand between them and strokes him, pulls him lightly closer and closer until he realizes she wants to cum with his dick in her. It's nearly enough to push him over the edge then and there.

Rust rubs up, down, then slides in. Kenny hisses and gasps, but the way she twitches around him tells him that she's doing just fine. She exhales, inhales. Rust moves in and out shallowly at the start. But the more she gives, when she grabs both his shoulders and pulls him in for a kiss, he moves deeper. Kenny lets out a high pitch sound when Rust hits a particular spot and her head falls forward and she bites onto his shoulder. She's grounding herself.

Rust picks Kenny up from the counter and carries her to the mattress on the floor. He sets her down carefully, then kneels next to her. Kenny pushes her hair from her face and pushes Rust back gently until he's sitting back. Kenny throws a leg over his until she's situated over his lap and she lowers herself onto him.

They groan together and adjust to the new position as Kenny moves her hips lazily. Rust sits up and nips at her throat. Holds it carefully as she picks up her pace. They lean the other way, with Kenny's face buried in Rust's shoulder again and his hand slipping to where they meet to help get her to that edge. Her breathing increases, and Rust can feel himself close. He holds her close as his hips snap up to meet hers. Kenny bites down as she cums, and her fluttering around him brings him with her. He holds her by the lower back and lays her against the mattress and fucks her into it properly, chasing his high and bringing her to her second. He thrusts into her with a final groan, a curse, and then slips out, rolling over to his side. The ceiling swirls.

Rust looks over at Kenny, who is breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling as well. He bites lightly at her jaw and Kenny starts, almost like she'd forgotten he was there. She turns to him, holds his face, kisses him.

-

Kenny has slept on less comfortable surfaces than Rust's mattress, though it's thin and the floor is hard and the blanket is scratchy. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters to her but Rust's softening outline each time a car's headlights breached the slats of the blinds over his shoulder. Nothing but the way his breathing is even, soft, never held or heavy. His eyelids, always half-lidded, now seem so because of this rare pocket of peace and not because he's burdened with some horrific scenery.

Speaking of his eyes, they flutter occasionally, like he's trying to stay awake, but all he does is look at Kenny. Which is fair, because all she does is look at him. It's all she does, but what she wants more than anything is to follow the carved marble of his face. Her eyes trail from a muscle in his jaw that twitches, to the tendon it connects to, and then way the tendon disappears into his clavicle. And she laughs at her desired softness for him, and her stark nakedness, and the corners of her mouth lift despite exhaustion.

"What is it?" He asks through a small smile of his own, because Kenny's joy is sometimes the only thing that can save him from drowning.

"It's just ironic...you don't much like being touched."

He thinks carefully before responding. "Not unprompted, no."

Her hand, from where it rests between the two of them, flexes involuntarily.

"May I?"

He doesn't respond, but nods his head. Now, he holds his breath. He doesn't think she'll hurt him, far from it, but that her feather light touch on his volatile skin would shatter it. If that happens, Kenny would only get injured in the blast.

Kenny raises a hesitant hand, one delicate finger out, and starts by tracing a thin line from his brow to his cheekbone. From the first moment she met Rust, Kenny yeared to touch this sharpest part of him, wondering if it could cut. It doesn't, of course. He relaxes almost instantly, the lines on his face fall away and he looks nearly ten years younger. He closes his eyes. He sighs.

Her thumb travels from his brow bone to his hairline, where she brushes away a stray copper curl that has fallen onto his forehead. The tickling of his long eyelashes on the soft skin of Kenny's forearm proves to be too much so she pulls away. But he catches her hand- swiftly, but still gently. Slowly, he raises her wrist to his mouth and plants a sort of half kiss there, mostly allowing parted lips to linger over the thin skin. His warm breath spreads in stark contrast to the chill of the night and her skin raises in goosebumps.

Kenny dares. Lays her palm against the hollow of his cheek and strokes under his eye. His hand travels up and down her arm.

"Is this alright?" Her voice is barely above a whisper. His reply is no reply at all, only gentle breathing. When she eventually moves again to pull her hand away, he instead moves it to his chest, right over his heart.

He wants to be felt. He needs to be known. Someone needs to look at him and know he's alive, he's human, he's here.

Her elbow grazes his scars. With his other arm, he draws her closer, now touching her with more care than ever before, and like this, they both drift off into a dreamless sleep.