reidhalstead

[reidhalstead]

ANIKA BOOKER & REID HALSTEAD ⸻ MEMES ( 1 / ?? )

+ BONUS

[reidhalstead]

No part of him ever doubted that should would say anything else. All that hatred he'd once sharpened to a point is like a stake he was never strong enough to put through his own chest. A weapon locked away, and let free under the constant battering of her fists against his resolve. It's on the ground between them, teasing them to pick it up and throw it. See if it sticks. It'll make one bleed, another shrivel to dust.

Rage fizzles out like summer, and in its place comes the crisp fall, before finally, the bitter chill of winter. Reid can no longer hate her, because what did that ever do? It didn't do shit in captivity, not after when he were a black hole dragging everything mercilessly into his void. Not now. When everything he consumed in his abyss is finally ripping at his insides, screaming, tearing at him to be free again. As if it were so easy to spit out every life he'd taken and erase every foul line of speech he'd even spoken.

She claims she does not want to forget him, but this scene is something born from a tortured creative. Blood-soaked entities staring, jaws locked tight, muscles shaking; a war of wits that neither has the capacity to truly articulate.

Reid didn't know that in the time he'd forgotten what pain was, that upon its violent return, it leaves him agonised by the weight of it all. Left out in the cold.

Their voices are echoes rippling between cracks in a glacier.

You really want to love all this?

What does that have anything to do with it? Self-destruction means that there's no hope or joy in the idea of a life he'll never have.

Come on, princess, I'd spend every night I have left with you. He would've. He recognises selfishness in the same way he had before. The same astringent burn of his hunger spiking is all he needs to caution how they're not the same. He doesn't know if their definitions are the alike; he'd have never been able to give her daylight picnics, or bask in the sun after a long hike up the mountains, bickering about who read the directions wrong. But he can try to smile at the comfort of it all. The idea of what could have been, if he hadn't been — if he wasn't a monster.

But he thinks he would have taken whatever she'd have given him, whatever that looked like to her.

If he's lost everything, what else is there but selfishness, and excuses to dampen the crashing, and the screaming of flames erupting from every crack in his soul? What is there to stop him from turning it all down a little, dimming the switch so he can see the world in its darker shades, again?

Her.

An anchor that pulls him forward. Like those phantom chains are wrapped around him, and tied to her. She's dropped it from its store, and it's clattering to the ground. He's a creature choking on its tug. Reid surges, stutters in motion as he pauses, halfway across the distance between them. He can't do this. A counter chain pulls him back, yank, yank, snap — a wire that winds itself around the box of everything he feels. Desperate to have it back, to never reach anchorage.

"Anika."

A whisper of a plea, as he kneels before her; a hand reaches toward her face and whereas before he knew his dirty, stained hands were too foul to know her skin again. There's a balance of how little he can care, and how he only cares about this. Her. Her. Her. Like a possession that throws everything else to the wayside. Fuck guilt. Fuck grief. Neither will get to see tomorrow, because they've never been the type to live cautiously. She'll find Book, he'll dance with the sun — and they'll never know the others' death.

He knows that; it won't be him who snuffs out her life. Can't be. And before something he's pissed off comes to claim his clock, he'll be selfish for one more night.

They were never good at the talking thing, anyway.

"What do we have left to lose, princess?" Not this. A mouth that's too near, and hands that know flesh. Tears that mar their cheeks. Bloodsoaked clothes. Wounds laid bare, and the sharp of hatred left on the carpet behind them. Lose with me, Booker. Just —

Hate me afterwards. It's not going anywhere.

Lips too close, ghost ever so gently. A controlled, wary thing as they learn to taste their counterpart; Reid tastes saguinous notes and burnt caramel that elicits nostalgia. Mouths turn fierce as hunger wins out, and Reid's there, drawing her against him like a creature starved. Waiting, waiting for the pain of her uproar to strike his chest. Stop. He should, but he's thought about it in a monster's mind for too long to let it go twice.

Hate me. Because I'm the thing that cannot be loved.

No, he wasn’t the man she knew. That much was obvious from the cruelty that had just spilled out of him like venom, moments ago. Anika couldn’t quite parse what he meant, not fully, but if she had to guess, she’d trace it back to that night — the one where she hurt him. The moment everything began to fracture. Maybe that was where his cruelty took root, where whatever he’d become began to take shape. Maybe he was saying the man he was now couldn’t care for her the way he once did. And maybe that was the part that hurt the most.

"Neither am I."

Because she’d come crawling back, tail between her legs, remorseful and bitter, some kind of fucked up apology lacing her tongue — but never making it past her mouth. Why? Why?

He was right. In all his hatred, in all his mocking cruelty — he was right. She lost. Not just a limb. She lost. And now she was back, like she’d had some fucking epiphany. You’ve come to hurt me again. That’s what the look in his eyes said. That’s what the tears running down his face screamed. You’re only going to hurt me. I’m only going to hurt you.

That glimpse of sunlight in his eyes had her nerves frayed, her heart pounding against her ribs like it was trying to escape. She wondered how long she could keep running before she fell — before she softened under his hands and became whatever he needed her to be: the villain in his story, or the woman whose kiss didn’t leave scars. But not nothing. Never nothing. Not again.

Her eyes pleaded — soft, wet — I never meant to hurt you, either.

Would he tire of her, once he saw how deep the cracks really ran? His hands had slipped between them before — and still never found the bottom. Did he know she was a hollow, dark cave, crawling with things best left untouched? Had he always known? Or had she fooled him, too? Her mossy gaze drifted — pulled from the light, settling on the empty space beside her. A sigh slipped past her lips, soft and almost weightless.

"I think we’d be losers anyway," she said. "You really want to love all of this?" Kiss, touch, hold — every broken part, every still-bleeding wound, every cruel word sprung from a heart that’s only ever known hate, traces of warmth long buried. Dead things.

[reidhalstead]

When has that ever worked? The warning and the immediate dismissal. Reid hasn't forgotten his life as one of them; he knows the sharpness of a threat against the silence of an execution. It is blunt, sudden, and there's little in the way of coming back from it. Not if they were good at their job; their calling.

"Man, you look pretty free, chasing civs to return wallets." There's no rush on their timeline that Reid can see. He's beginning to think they simply don't want to talk. They're the one who got in the way to begin with. "What's the rush?"

What Kanta is failing to recognise is that, regardless of whether it's stupid or not. It's a little bit fun to push and pull. They've got to like it, because they're all about making reasonable their hunts. Come on, Kanta, let's play. Give Reid something to go for, after Shah's accidentally intercepted the evening snack.

"You did offer me tea, before." Like there's time for that, but not for this?

With the next step closer, the one that's supposed to stop Shah from going into their laundromat. Reid could be a bullet now; his next step will be without the distance. Before that, he fakes a wound, hand to heart. It's more satire, and all teeth: "My home could be with you, Shah. Ever thought of that?" His fangs. Their neck.

"No-" Reid takes one step forward and Shiv takes three steps back. "Don't."

One hand holds a scolding finger as the other reaches behind themself, tightly gripping at the door handle of Wash Tub’s front entrance. “You mistake my sympathy for hospitality. Do I have to spell it out? I don’t have time to play with you.”

There's an entire Brotherhood armory just a couple feet and one numerical code away. A promise of safety for Shiv; an active threat for Reid. Whatever doubts they still held were quickly dashed away once Reid smiles and waves them forward, reminding them the full depths of what he had become: a vampire. An undead leech, a seductive creature of the night who wields temptation like a fisherman’s lure.

Reid only has half the practiced poise preformed by vampires they have previously spoken to but Shiv still knows better than to bite. Years of Brotherhood training cemented that knowledge into them, the very same training he now tries to twist against them.  “Push me all you’d like. I’m only going to tell you that you’re being stupid. Like old times.”

Vampires thrive off engagement. Until it comes time to put a stake through Reid's heart, Shiv won't budge. They'll put their foot down as many times as it takes for Reid to leave, whether it be out of annoyance or the brink of sunrise. Hold off the hunt just a little longer. It's the least they could do for an old friend.

“Go home, Reid. Wherever that is for you now.” The hunter does not dare to give Reid even the miniscule opportunity to catch them off guard, dark eyes unblinking and glued to his own. “Don’t make me say it twice.”

[reidhalstead]

"Why would I want her to forget?" What kind of lesson is that? He wants her to know that it's him in the back of her mind when she's under threat. Reid had given her enough, he thinks, that she'll only fight when she has to (a mercy, no?) But isn't everything a danger when Rose is so out of practice? Lis is too young, he remembers. To understand the method of tough love. Barborous a brother, even if he could feel a fucking thing. He has no opinion on dying. He'll do it, knowing he's taken what he's wanted, what he craves like an addict who only knows sanity upon a relapse. Fear does not rule him.

It's amusing that Lis thinks their sister is going to be the one raising the stake to him, at the end of it all: "You think she'll be good enough?" All tears and sobbed words. He can envision it now, and it has hollow parts of him quivering with something lost. Pieces of him that as so far down the cliff, there's no saving them.

Turn it back on.

Neither of them really knows what that means. And it melts away in the tension rolling off a younger Halstead, fighting dirty.

He head turns sideways when the spit lands on his cheek. A hand slowly moves up to wipe away the glob and flick it to the forest ground. Disgusting. A baby sister's tantrum. With a flick of a wrist, he tosses the gun lazily beside the knife at her feet, offering it up like he's daring her to make a second go of it. As he's shaking his head, Reid lets himself step away. Flashes of a family home that would never have been this way. A sister with bright eyes and hope. She's not here. And neither is the brother whom they're talking about.

There's the slither escaping the cracks of a chained box inside his chest, telling him that she'll listen. It comes across like a snark, lip lifts on one side as he nods towards her mud-ridden thigh: "You'll want to get that leg looked at."

Because they're finished here.

It wasn't much, she knew that. It wasn't much to sink her knife into him, but the fact that it was infused with verbena was enough to at least let a small smirk come to her lips. It was enough, not nearly as bad as her gunshot she was sure. She watches the blood drip from him, seeping into his shirt and showed that if you hurt her, she would hurt you back dear brother.

She could no longer understand Reid's motives; though he had her questioning if she ever could. She was only fifteen when she was told he was dead, and no fifteen year old ever really knew what was really going on, had a lot less understanding than she thought she had. The pain in her leg brought her back to the present, trying to hide how uncomfortable she was as she struggled to stay stood against the tree, leaning on it instead. Fuck, this was painful. It wasn't as though she hadn't been injured before, but surprisingly she was sure she'd evaded gunshot wounds until now. How ironic it would be at the hands of the golden boy hunter, her protector.

"Because I went to Rose just after you had, last month. I saw the state you left her office in, I saw the state you left her in. And you messily compelled her, not telling her to forget the compulsion or to not tell anyone. Is that it, Reid? Do you have a death wish, even in the state that you're in?" Annalise knew that before the humanity switch was off, Reid hated being a vampire. Did he compel Rose in the way that he did to hope that by the time she made her way back to her own big brother, she would be strong enough to defeat him? "You want to die still, even feeling nothing?"

The knife is back at her feet, discarded like nothing important or deadly. Stubbornness throughout her blood wouldn't allow her to pick it up. . . That, and the fact that if she went so low to the ground to pick it up, she wasn't sure she'd get even halfway back up again. "Do you think so, Reid?" The blonde asked, tilting her head quizzically. Jaw squared, teeth grinding as she held back any words that may form. He told her to get up and what may happen if she didn't? With one hand she claimed back her knife, with another she braced herself on the tree, pushing herself back up properly until she could take a painful step towards him.

"Nothing is going to get me what I want, brother, because I don't know of anything I can do or say to get you to turn it back on. I think it will take a lot more than a siblings words to do so." She held the knife out towards him, eyes narrowing. "Leave. If you do not wish to kill me, then leave. I have nothing more to say to you." With that, she spat, aiming straight for his face.

[reidhalstead]

Brows knit together when Millie begins to play bold defender, talks about his jacket and his intellect — has his tongue poking the corner of his lip, eyes off the others for a moment to shoot the wolf something akin to aporetic.

But Reid does know what she's doing because he's seen that wandering hand wrap digits around resin. "That right?" Play along with a quick glance at the felt, then towards the pocket. Hunger crawls up his throat like he's barely trying to contain it. He's going to ram the cue through the guy's head he swears. He's in the middle of a game.

There's a flash first, red on red. Pieces of bone burst out of a mouth.

Reid's impressed.

Doesn't look like the rest of them are, though.

"She did warn you." It's a casual sigh, accompanied by a shrug. It comes right before he darts forward to intercept the next swing at the wolf. It's another stranger who wants to knock Millie sideways. There's a chuckle, a broken set of knuckles and a slap of a body groaning on the ground when a pool cue smacks the side of a guy's head. It breaks in two, and Reid glances at the sharp of the wood pieces like he didn't expect it to falter so easily to his strength.

He tosses one at Millie, winks. "Your shot."

It is a bummer that she couldn't finish schooling this guy at pool. Even more of a bummer that when the temperature starts to cook, Brett seems to be a real one.

"Yeah listen to this guy, he's smart - just look at his cool jacket. Guy'sgot a jacket like that you know he's smart."

It's all the distraction she needs - all the preamble too - because she knows where this is going. If it ain't in here, it'll be out in the parking lot. Or the next time she comes here. And there's a little tiny snarling part of her that decides, no, I like this bar, you get the fuck out.

So she shoots first, Han Solo style. "Hey Brett, free pocket for your Three. Your shot my bad."

The red of the three-ball fills her hand and cracks hard against the guy in her face's jaw. She's not sure which broke, the ball, or her jaw, but she's got a good guess because there' blood on her hand and teeth on the floor.

That's the match on the powder bowl though.

[reidhalstead]

Elyse, he says. Like Reid's supposed to know her name. Mine. A possessive thing, which feels very McCormick when considering staking a claim to things. Halstead thinks he's a bit like that lately, so he can laugh about it. A low, bemused thing out of a quaking chest. He's grabbing hold of things that he shouldn't have, squeezing too tight, without knowing the consequences of them breaking. Cam can't see the war inside him; the fluttering roof of a lockbox, puffing out emotions, and shuttering others away. If he could, he'd see that the lid is broken, and it's entirely dependent on which way the crate is tipped,to know what it's letting free.

There's guilt and there's remorse that shifts his features because he knows he's done everything wrong. He's had time to reflect, to figure this out and find a way to broach apologies. Reid hadn't needed for things to go like that, to be silent about his transgressions. Just like he doesn't need to say what he says about the whole thing.

Reid turns fully, eyes slipping down to the stake in his hand. So that's it then. McCormick's coming for him. And he should. Because he's got an arrogance around the hunter, that feels like old camaraderie.

It's not funny, but — "What if she liked it?"

It's not meant to stop the other man. Maybe there's a reckless hope that Cam's going to finish the job he never let the sun do. Maybe, Reid's not all that solemn, if he shutters away the parts of him that believe that. Be grateful, he says. What the fuck for? It's enough to slam the lid shut.

"If it's any consolation, man. I didn't know she was with you." Not that it means it would have stopped him, as he recalls the emptiness of the void he'd been desperate to fill with blood and desire.

Reid's mouth opens, tongue pokes at his teeth, and an unease that's rife within him blossoms from his chest, to his stomach until he's consumed with this idea that he's slipping away again; into the monster he's only just begun to free himself from. He can't hurt any more people. Kill or be killed — damn, he's not even wondering who the other one is: "We don't have to do this, Cam."

He doesn't want to. But there's a monstrous thing inside him that screams at him to not let the hunter walk away either.

Cam's head tilts as he regards Reid - there's an something off about the man that he doesn't know how to place. Maybe he might hesitate if it weren't about Elyse. He wouldn't pause for conversation if it were Declan or Devon. The stake would be in his heart, and he'd kick through the dust without a second though for the man he used to be.

But perhaps he'll allow him a moment.

"Elyse." He starts, simply. There's a thin wooden stake in his hand that hangs down by his hip - it's not brought up, though - not yet. "She's mine - and you. You overstepped. I don't particularly like to share - especially not with a vampire, Reid."

It's then that he flips the stake in his palm and approaches, jaw clenched tightly as he takes more steps. He's calculated in this - wants to provoke Reid to make the first move, if he can. "You and the other one have this coming - have for a long time. Just be grateful you're not a subject."

[reidhalstead]

"I'm not... who I was." That comes out easier, a long overdue confession. Solemn, but a trembling relief. There is no justification or reasoning for his monstrosities. He knows there is a weight he'll never shake off his soul. But even as the words hang, he already predicts her answer. Neither is she. How could she be? He'll tell himself she's never been a thought in his mind. How could she be? When there are months of waking up in the dark, starved and hungry. Barely a man, less a redeemer. "He'll be okay." It's Book. Difficult, stubborn, Book. A daughter he stopped raising, who mirrors the same traits. How could —

Reid traces the shape of her, equally defeated as he is on the ground. She's a lifeline, in the hellscape of his mind.

This would be where he'd laugh at the language of a Booker. Ever distinct. Always seeing the world in a different, darker light. It will always be a foul place, but Reid had seen other parts of it. Known better things than she had; he'd have liked to have shown her those pieces. Knows worse, nastier parts too. Understood the cold, like the snowfall of misery that melts across his skin. A melancholic winter that has him frostbitten beneath an avalanche. It carries the heaviness of regret, and it feeds into the burden clinging to his conscience.

Between every word, he feels like he hears that rage of you're nothing, repeated, over and over. Until it's etched into flesh and tattooed onto his bones by an artist who can leave deep scars on a monster. Ridges chipped away at that she might derive every pleasure from inflicting.

He wonders if he should ask if he's all that to her. A stench she cannot rid; a foul, disgusting matter at the bottom of her shoe. He is those things, inferior even. But he doesn't need an answer; his guilt deserves no relief. And she will not be staring at him after tomorrow, so there is nothing to say that may cool the blazing fire that inflames the horrors of his mind.

It's like he's operating on a delay, rifling through the words like address cards until he finds the one he missed the first time. Reid stares at where he'd known those bruises had left marks, knitted over by his intervention. There is no strength left in his voice, because all he sees in the purples, and the blacks, the reds and the embers as a nightmare he no longer only greets in his sleep.

"You didn't deserve that." This. Everything he'll never know. "Not..I never meant..." He'd meant those things, at the time, when nothing mattered but the hunger. Reid drags his legs closer to himself, creates a safety net between them.

Think it was always going to go this way?

"We lost." Wistful. Losing everything. Maybe it's madness. Insanity that's driven him to say regrets aloud: "You think if —" a broken laugh, scratchy even, fingers twitching in that gross carpet, "— think we'd have won? If those... if those curtains had stayed closed."

He thought he'd stopped playing the what if game when he died. But what if he realises, between delirium, is all he's got left.

I can't. A human sound. No monster. No hatred. Just pain, heartbreaking pain, written across his face, rooted somewhere deep in his soul. And Anika, who thought she’d lost the softness required to feel someone else’s grief, felt him.

"Why?"

She’d never liked his eyes on her. And as if to spite her, he’d never stopped staring. Staring, like he was now — like he’d made himself known here, made a home in the hollowed halls of her soul, while she was still expecting he’d find nothing of interest, nothing of value, nothing solid. And yet, of all places — he chose this one to hang his jacket over a chair. To drop his bag by the door. He looked at her, really looked at her, and it felt like a knock on a rusted door. She opened. And he never left.

Even when she hadn’t seen his face in months — he lingered, like dust, like smoke.

And for the longest time, when she thought she was completely lost — when every memory blurred and every image was discarded at the first sign of heartache — it was him who helped. In the way only a savior could. Anika hated that.

His hand went through the drywall a couple of times, and she didn’t even flinch. Holes the size of fists had once adorned the walls of her childhood — she’d long since learned not to startle at the sound. It was a familiar sight: a man wrestling his demons, loud and violent, like a wildfire swallowing everything in its path. She’d been caught in the flames once, too young to know not to breathe in the smoke. Things were different now. Or maybe not. Because here she was again — choosing to forgive a man for his monstrosities.

Did he even care for an answer? She’d argue he just needed one — more ammunition to fire back at her. Maybe the bitch was someone he knew. Vampires and their fucking little clans. Maybe she was part of whatever rotted world he crawled out of. It had to be the end of the fucking world — to find themselves here again. Tearstained and fragile. Sharing wounds like offerings. Breakable, like branches. Unafraid of what the other might do with the human pieces held in their palms. "My father’s a man with a lot of enemies." She used to think it’d be her own that finally caught up with her. Joke was, it didn’t even matter — she was just bait. Worm on a hook. Half-dead, still twitching. Tossed out the second the right fish bit. "You get close to someone, and it’s like stepping in dog shit. You think you cleaned it off. You think you’re safe. But it’s on you — in you. You reek of it. And every fucker out there who wants you dead? They don’t need a name. They just follow the damn stench."

It didn't even fucking matter what she took from her. She was alive, and she was out to end their fucking blood line, and Anika, once upon a time, would've been okay with that. Death was mercy. Death laid its gifts at her feet: ripe, red, rotting. She would kneel and eat the pomegranate seeds like a starving dog. But that was then. Now — now, looking at him, she remembered how warmly the sun shined right outside that window, and how all ugliness could fade beneath overgrowth. How the weight of the world could feel lighter, and less like a knife digging into her side. If she'd choose to let it. If she chose to live.

[reidhalstead]

His head has dropped into his hands, fighting, fighting, warring — capturing moments of her as she stands, then falls. Eyes that won't focus in his haze for too long; a monster trapped in a space too small, pushing against its cage. She's telling him to go: find him. I can't lose him. You care about him, I know you do. She doesn't know anything — nothing, nothing, how can she know? But she's right, because the dam has burst the locks of the box wide open and he can feel everything.

It's as though every horrible thing he's done has taken shape as ghostly apparitions, and they're trying to swallow him whole. There's a hollowness being filled in his chest that's explosive in its retribution. Why would I do those things? Veilview. His family. Death, death and a more sadistic role in playing man turned monster. He's in the jaws of his own perdition. He'd finely shaped that mouth, built the teeth with every life he's stolen; bloodied things formed in rows like a shark. Mouth so wide, he'd be gone in one swallow. I deserve it. I deserve this. All the pain, whirlpooling to his centre.

"I can't—" Choked out, between what she's saying and what he's thinking. Reid won't sob, even if tears are beading out of his ducts. There's nothing here except a murderer and his next victim. Not her. He can't do this to her.

In the quiet, Anika's body is still pitifully alive. Her heart beating, her blood gushing — tainted by him. A stomach craving to feed, the same as his.

She wants to forget. And now he knows her answer will be agonising. But he deserves the pain; he deserves more than that. There is no room for a selfish man — a selfish monster that only knows how to devour. It cannot give, he cannot give her anything. Reid had been selfish all those months ago; he allowed himself moments of contentment, where the world did not cause him to hate it so fervently. Cursing the fates for being unkind to him, denying him a good death, and making him this thing between worlds. Anika was not in his life. She's only ever been in his death. And even that had been too good a thing for him.

Head knocks back against the door, hooded eyes, filled with grief. Replaying the scenes of every life he stole. For what? Because he felt nothing but to restart — to rip up roots, and plant new seeds? He's been looking so deeply at her, and her agonies, he's never even looked at his own. She's done that to him. Made him remember he's a beast, pretending to be a man. Putting on a mask of mortality when that's never been on the cards for him again. Better to embrace, than to deny. It'd been bleeding into him since he'd crawled out of the hole. And he's done so much damage since. How do I live with this? How does he survive the one thing he'd sworn to never be — to always fight against? He never wins this battle. He never has. Hunger is always the victor.

How do I help Book, if I can't even do it for myself — if I couldn't help you, Anika?

He'd give her his hand if he could. If she ever wanted to have a blood-soaked piece of rotted flesh, with an even more betrayed tattoo. The same hand smashes into the wall behind him, once, twice, shattering the plaster as it rains down over his shoulder because he has to hurt something. And it can't be her, so it has to be him. He has to feel it, like how he feels where the skin breaks and heals on his knuckles. The wall is a picture of his frustrations. But he had never been the artist of the two of them. When he tears his hand from the wall after a few moments, he slams it into the carpet, so he can ground himself. Fingers clawing at the faded, dirty floor.

She drags his mind back to the motel room. And his muscles tremble, his thoughts fracturing because it's easier to turn it all off again — don't. He doesn't know which of his voices it is, but his gaze belongs to Anika.

Not you.

Something stills. An undeserved peace blossoms, caressing that volatility like a blanket. Anger comes so easily; a byproduct of anguish, and he's full of it. He can manage to temper it because his voice is strained. Choking on the thought of how much he has to repent for. There's no God who'd listen, he knows that.

He manages to shake his head and fangs scratch at his lower lip. His words translate to so many things unsaid between them: "I tried too."

And maybe, in places he did manage that. To hate. To forget. To shut it all away like a memory box; photographs that would eventually fade from his mind, as time went on.

But it's not gone far enough, because he remembers, even if there's no Tower still standing to reminisce about. It doesn't go away. What did she think happened to him after that? Reid doesn't know if he wants that answer. She's told him she's been... captive, months she'd said — like him... months, months — But, he has to focus on the words so he can keep himself levelled to something.

There's a bite under the crackling of the sound that breaks from his mouth, but it's potentially the last thing Reid will ever do. So he has to know; he has to understand something. Because there's so much he fucking doesn't. "Who —?" Her father. her. A quieter, even more broken question: "Who did this to you, Booker?"

Other than me. Because if she tells him, then he can let her forget. That's a thing he can do. She'd bled out in front of him, and he'd brought off the brink — yanked her out of the arms of a reaper. He knows there's no verbena in her blood to stop him. That's not who you are. He feels the fine line skewing between the man and the monster, but they're both him. And all parts of him have lost their wars.

She's the truce of 1914, a ceasefire that can never last.

He wants to change history, but after all this, it is undoubtedly too late for Hail Mary's or martyrs.

The urge to flee died in her chest, and something heavier took its place — a terrible thought, planted in a fragile mind: What if he left? Was that all the time they were given? Suddenly an hour felt too short, just a fleeting second for people like them, who always thought the last time was the last. His eyes were still his, still his, the way they lit up when he said her name. The last time was supposed to be the last. Then what was this now?

You can't go.

But leaving was always supposed to be on her terms — leaving meant she didn’t have to watch him disappear, or disintegrate, or die like all the rest. Back when she was forced to make a home out of the darkness and cold of that basement, she used to think about it — about coming back to a place rid of his presence, rooms emptied of all his sentimental boxes labeled do not open — the same ones she shoved greedy hands into, because there was nothing about him she didn’t want to pry open and steal. You can't go. Because it was never him who ran. You can't go. Their eyes met. Don't let me.

Anika had always been a slippery thing; hold too tight, and she’d slip clean through your fingers. There was no place that could anchor her down, no chains strong enough to hold her, but the monsters were so, so loud, and she struggled to focus above the frantic pounding of her own heart. She remembered how his touch against her spine, or the way his hands brushed along her arm, had been enough to ground her. Enough to keep her here. Gone. Gone. Gone. Mossy hues traced over limbs cold and shaking with hatred, stained with her blood. She assumed it was her blood — there were still traces of it smeared across her face, that much she could feel.

"Then you go, and find him. Bring him back before it’s too late. I can’t lose him." She paused, her breath unsteady. "You care about him, I know you do."

She wanted to give herself a minute, a moment to look at him, as if he was a mirror. Where gravity had pulled her down too — a weightless body, too tired to stand, slumped against the bed, knees drawn to her chest. He fell, and he dragged her down with him. It was just a moment, enough to satisfy the hunger, to fill the void inside her chest, the one shaped like him, so it would all grow silent. So she would have some peace. Her stomach growled, a sharp reminder of how long it had been since she ate.

You want to forget it all? An arrow jamming into the frost of her heart. Not all. No — just all the good parts, the ones that made her crave normalcy, the sun on her skin and the warmth of a hand, a home inside a ribcage that could not be shattered or ripped from her. Wants and needs she had never allowed herself to have. There were nights when she wanted to forget his laugh, or the way hers had melted into it, a sound so foreign she could barely recognize it as her own, and yet there it was — vibrant and hers, all of it — his creation. She wanted to forget how she fed the flames what they wanted, how it only made them grow rampant instead of drowning them completely.

But no —not all. There was a reason his eyes adored the pages of her sketchbook. There was a reason the canvases still hung somewhere. Not all — just the hope, that filthy thing she swore would never live inside her again. But it did — it lived through every murder attempt. It lived no matter how hard she tried to drown the fucker. It was living now — breathing and growing, swelling up in her chest the longer she looked at him.

Not all — just my mistakes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry— "Not you." Things would be so much easier if she could just exhale him out of her, like cigarette smoke.

She waited for the frost to spit him out, for her body to reject the very memory of him. Waited for the ghosts to come, to devour the kindness he had offered her, to paint it red — to remind her who he was at his very core. A monster.

"And I've tried. I really fucking tried." Because she was nothing if not intense — stubborn to the bone. "Didn't stick." she shrugged; small and exhausted.

[reidhalstead]

"I think you're beyond that." He doesn't have to keep looking around the arcade to know there are no precautions in place. She invites, lets them stay, and maybe he doesn't need any more of the puzzle to believe she's befriending them too. A little network of danger, operating in and out of Retrocity. Morgan Moss, you're in quite the mess. Reid's watching her shift into that assertion, a backbone he believes is new from the one he'd seen in the graveyard, in October. "Yes. You and Brad were perfect, weren't you?" There's no bitterness (but maybe it could be mistaken as such), it's a wistful amusement. Because she'd spoken of him, like the man hung the sun.

Maybe that's why she's so infatuated in the night; she's lost her sunbringer.

Reid follows her into the office. He's wearing the smirk of the people laughing at her, too. It's twisted, but there's some broken... kindness in his intentions. A harsh, violent version of it. Colder. Crueller. Moss doesn't have anything but a magnetism for the wrong kind, and she's either going to end up bled at the foot of Pacman, or she's going to be driven off the edge of something less merciful.

He's not even begun walking all over Moss, yet. But maybe he will. Just so she's aware of the difference.

"An honest man, then." Halstead pushes out his lip, confirming Brad had kept his secret, instead it's aired by Reid. "I don't know why your dead husband came to visit my hell, but I'm sure that was something to do with you." The connection, he doesn't know. He and his history of magic have never been particularly well acquainted. But if she does have an answer, he'd quite like it. Just to sate a curiosity

But she provokes a scoff, mostly surprise. A lowering gaze that has Reid across the office in a blink. Hovering iInches from Morgan, as he reaches a hand to brush her hair away from her neck, to fall down her back.

A thumb slides across the side of her throat, it's a soft, almost ghosting gesture.

"Tell me what privilege you think you have, Moss." He's wondering if she's as mad as those obsessed with the idea of it all; he's met plenty now, who get off on the bite. Moss, you were better. And he can feel that burning in his stomach, warning him that he's too close. That he's shaking the constraints of the feelings he's shuttered away. She'd been important to him, in some way, before. But it's not enough to snap the chains. Hunger instead envelops everything, shrouding it in that abyssal emptiness. His eyes darken into something less blue, more red; his teeth ache with the idea that he's merely goading, not hunting or taking — "Does that line work with all the monsters you know? Do they watch their mouth, tongue and teeth?"

Something has come over him, but it's a matter of what that has her worried. Vampiric compulsion or some demonic entity seem far more likely than just a slip of the mask revealing that Reid Halstead was just a charming creep all along.

Morgan's thoughts of concern now share space in her mind with a level of guarded self-preservation that hasn't been as present as it should be. But she's learning about the real Port Leiry, and she can't afford to be careless anymore. And when he throws the question back at her, she's fearfully reminded of the way another man -- a monster, even -- walked right into her arcade and told her what she was and what he'd do to her.

"You... you think I ask for this?" She scoffs, but there's a hint of bemusement to the words. How could anyone think that, let alone say it out loud? Morgan's features harden into something as sharp as she can manage before continuing. "Bradley and I almost had a perfectly happy twenty years together before the world threw a rock through our window and now we're the ones everyone points and smirks at?"

She's going to get heated or emotional or loud, and she isn't sure which. Morgan makes a harsh gesture at Reid to move to her back office and she might not have compulsion powers, but it's not a question so much as an order.

When they're inside the office, she closes the door and wheels on him. "Yeah, you know what? Maybe I'm not smarter. I've never been smarter, okay? But that doesn't mean everyone gets to walk all over me."

Isn't that exactly what it means? To a world of monsters and magic, kindness and trying your best never mattered. Especially when creatures like vampires think their worst is still better than an average human best. Morgan tries to blink back the stinging emotion rising in her eyes as he throws her husband's name in her face again. "Brad didn't... he didn't tell me he met you. Leave him out of this, let him rest. I don't know what issue you suddenly have with me or what you want to prove, being smarter than me. But having these so-called dangerous friends has some privileges, so you watch your mouth -- tongue and teeth."

[reidhalstead]

She's gunning for his heart, and he's sure she believes she's getting through. Worming her way through his armour and taking a knife to his pericardium and slicing it away millimetre by millimetre. Maybe she is succeeding, but he can't feel it. It's a scratch against his aorta, and that's as far as she gets. A pang of discomfort, as she spits her aggressions at him, like it is vengeance.

He doesn't need to say anything when the bullet rips through her thigh.

Reid thinks that says enough.

He drops into a crouch, hands lazily resting over his knees, the gun dangling in his hand between them. It's at least something when she snaps into action and tends to her injury. No weeping, or crying as she bleeds and bleeds — Reid swallows the urgency to lunge, he can scent the verbena in the air, staling his hunger if only by a notch. There's suddenly a flash of a blade in her grasp, and it's coming at him, puncturing through the dip beneath his collar. There's an involuntary grunt when the verbena knife buries deep. It's uncomfortable, and he feels torn between laughing and hissing when his empty hand reaches up to slowly pull the blade out. His jaw tightens as he bites back the growl. The verbena stings, and he can feel his body struggling to heal it up instantly. Blood bleeds through his shirt, and he can feel the stickiness of stolen blood river down his chest.

She's taunting him, and it feeds into her careless narrative. There's no answer she wants and none he can be bothered to give. Because it isn't him who needs to unpack whatever buried crap Lis has about their parents. He's heard it from her mouth already, oh poor Lis, left in a household that was falling apart without him. He's not afraid. He can't be afraid. There's nothing there for him to go back to; just ashes and memories, and things he doesn't need. He doesn't need sentiments.

"Who says you're being targeted?" He muses, glancing once at the wound that she's struck on him, before dropping the blade back at her feet, like it's a dirtied thing. It's laced with his blood. Smiling, he waits. Wondering if she's going to reach for it. "You need a bit of help after all, little sister." It's right at her feet, if she wants it. But maybe her stubbornness is her brother's, too.

Reid chuckles, slowly easing himself back into a stand. Allowing her to scramble her life back together. "I'd have put lead through your skull if I cared for you dead. You know that." Swift. Sudden. A brutal, but brazen end. "This is just a lesson from the brother you used to worship. You should get up, Lis. Words aren't going to get you what you want."

Actions will.

"Like you, you mean? You couldn't find me by yourself. You had to send your sire to do it, and even then it was a little shit of a human wishing he was more that took me, not a vampire whose had centuries to prepare for her every move." Annalise spat, the venom clear and dripping from her words. If he thought he had some kind of one up over her because he'd sent Nisha like his little fucking lap dog to get her from Nolan's grasp, he was sorely mistaken. She would much rather he had just left her there, if this was going to be how he'd rub it in. Nolan wouldn't have killed her, wouldn't have harmed her beyond draining her blood and keeping her drugged. Whether that was because of whatever their bond was, or because he didn't have it in him in his current form was another question.

"Hate to break it to you, but you haven't been the golden boy since the minute you were turned. You should have shoved a stake in her hollowed out chest the moment you woke up. A real Halstead would have done that, their golden boy would have done that. Then again, their golden boy would've stepped into the sun too. I guess being turned showed you they're not always right, and you don't always have to listen to others." Except he did, it seemed. Out of his parents grasp and straight under Nisha's thumb. He had never been his own person, never had to work to prove something to himself; just to others. She was in control of herself, made her own decisions and had no one telling her what she could and couldn't do. Lis had worked hard to leave that behind, and even now her standing in The Brotherhood swayed, she was sure. When was the last time she'd shown her face, joined for a hunt? She needed the hunters mark, she should join at least now and then, she knew that. They excused her though; poor little Halstead, gone through so much in such a short space of time. Underestimated and overlooked, always. Was that because she was the youngest, or simply because she didn't have a cock swinging between her legs?

BANG!

The blonde collapsed to the floor with a gasp, unsure now which was the dead wolfs blood and her own. Was this it? Was she dying? Had her brother snapped that much? Annalise worked mentally, taking stock of each body part before coming to the conclusion that it was her thigh that was hit. Grunting, she sat up slightly, pulling her belt from around her waist to torniquet just above the gunshot wound, biting back a yelp. Unclipping her thigh holster to do so, once she was done, fingers wrapped around one of her knives.

It flew through the air quickly, towards Reid, hoping the it would hit his hand or his arm, something that would make him hiss and drop the gun. Her aim hadn't been great today, but just one graze from the verbena infused blade would be enough to weaken him even a little bit. "Big brother, I assure you, you don't want me dead yet. You haven't even had a glimpse of what I plan to do next. Trust me, you'll want me to stick around for that." She growled, dragging herself to the nearest tree in the hopes of using it to help her stand. "Can you smell my blood? Are you salivating, wondering what it would taste like? Come on, have a little drink." He wouldn't be stupid enough to drink from the poisoned well, she knew that, but gods it would be entertaining if he did.

She was up, precariously leaned against a tree, all of her weight on her left leg but up none the less. "I am curious though. . . why target your adoring sisters, the same ones that once worshipped the ground you walked on, and not the parents who left you for dead? Even under all that bravado, you're still terrified of seeing them again, aren't you?" They would kill him the first chance they got, she was sure of that. In her opinion, they were worse than they had been when Reid knew them. She was sure Rose didn't see it, Reid hadn't had the opportunity to; Lis had been stuck there for years after her brother died. Saw them for who they were and good parents was something they never even came close to. Their children were expandable, not to be loved or looked at if they weren't human. . . They may still have beating hearts in their chest, and they may not wolf out every full moon, yet Lis wouldn't use the word human to describe her parents either. Not anymore.

"If you're going to kill me, just fucking get it over with, Reid."

[reidhalstead]

As of late, Reid's found that he doesn't enjoy small rooms. Months spent contained in a dingy hole, to the months after that were spent avoiding closed spaces, have him realising that he's developed an uneasiness about anywhere with too many walls. Graver's Isle is an old memory. He's not welcome there, really. And it's a freedom he doesn't deserve. But the island is quiet when no teenagers are lighting up bonfires and burying their bottles of bud in the sand. It's a Monday night, and it's still. Reid's fighting that never-ending war within himself; tormented still, by terrible memories. Yet the idea of being indoors anywhere, in the limited time he's able to be outside, means he doesn't waste it.

He's neared the top of the cliffs because he remembers the first few months after he'd woken up as a monster years ago, standing at the tip of the descent as the sun rose. Burning a line in the rock, a slow-moving beam that tried to catch him. He used to take tentative steps back, one, two, three, until the gutlessness told him that it could be strength if he found a way to be a man, instead of what he'd turned into.

He'd do that for days, weeks — playing games with the morning light. And he's back there now, but it's not the sun he's there for.

Reid's gotten used to knowing when he feels himself slipping into the lockbox of his turmoil. Sometimes it's easier to pry it open, and sometimes it closes without a hitch. He knows that he cannot allow it all back out; the remorse, the guilt and the grief; a broken man is no use to anyone. A helpless, grieving thing that needs to be put down. It feels like he's learning control all over again, not with the hunger but with regulating himself to understand consequences and morality.

At the edge of the cliff, nobody else gets hurt. Even if he recalls enjoying parts of that, in his mania.

He doesn't even hear Cam approach from behind him. There's no excuse; he's distracted and concentrating on his hunger is an excuse to not address the dimmer switch that's turning up and down uncontrollably. If he doesn't focus on that, then he'll lose inhibitions entirely; he knows it.

"McCormick," He half turns to see Cam standing across from him, like a blockade that might stop him from walking away from the cliff edge. For a moment, he wonders if he's followed him up there, because it's hunter territory. He'd known Cam before. There's more than a hunt on his mind on his best days, and less than on his worst. It'd been Reid who'd stumbled upon him, months ago. Heard his name in others' mouths right after — Oh. Birdie's roommate. Masquerade chick. Likes getting bit woman.

He figures that McCormick's talking about his girl; that's the busy part. Reid wonders if there's any use justifying anything to the hunter. He doesn't know how to explain it, and maybe he doesn't want to.

Reid's jaw twitches, and he offers Cam a side profile, because he's not entirely sure what this is yet. "Depends on what you've heard." It's unlikely that he'll be able to set the record straight. Cam has spared him once. He's not sure he's known the man, or a hunter to do it twice.

closed starter for: @reidhalstead

The marks on Elyse's neck were obvious, and even before they'd made it 'official', Cameron found himself jealous and overprotective of the woman, though she could handle herself in most cases. Against a vampire like Reid, though, Cam wasn't sure what to make of it --

The last time they'd met, there was the underlying idea that he might be the one to put the suffering out of his misery, and here they are.

Tonight is not a friendly meeting between old friends. It will not be a tension-filled moment of wishful thinking for times that could have been, for journeys that might have taken a different path. Tonight was a hunt. The goal isn't to kill him, but to bleed him dry until regret colors his features and the city is safer for it.

The bite marks on Elyse were mismatched - and he's not a stupid man - he knows there's another, but this is the first step.

"Reid. I hear you've been busy."

[reidhalstead]

It's difficult. Knowing that there is a monster in place of the man. An active, constant awareness that there are pieces of him locked away because he cannot stomach the weight of it all. It's dimmed; the gravity of his transgressions, not because he wants that. But because it has to be that way. Enduring comes at the cost now; an agonising fragility of how easy he can dive off the cliff and lose himself in the emptiness that had him committing atrocities. Reid can still taste the blood on his mouth; he's stronger on humans, less weak than his former self. He's had to sacrifice his ethos to tread the precarious line of his humanity. He can't go back to what he was, so he has to accept some parts of the monster just to survive his own guilt.

A balancing act that feels like Halstead might plummet at any given moment. A volcano on the precipice of an eruption. So it's difficult, because he isn't versed enough to explain that to someone. What does understand the complex tremble of his emotional stability is the bottle of beer in his hand and the buzz of a bar he's not sure he should be in.

It's not the size or the shadow of a body planting itself next to him that he cares to notice. Eyes are too busy following the patterns on the beer bottle, trying to keep his mind occupied, where he sees the flashes of red alongside the flames; stares at the tattooed hand of his like it's a stain, not a lost honour. Pictures the same hands he's wrapped around throats, and hearts and —

Reid's head turns because he knows that gravelly voice. A gaze that hovers over Book's face, like he's expecting something to be wrong with it; a ghost of a man coming back to goad him about all he's done. Maybe Book would blame him for his daughter's loss, too. Push him off that edge with both hands, smiling.

But the man is pale. He's got a scent around him that's not the hunter he knows; some stale, bloodied musk hanging off of the man's shirt, or his speech. It's not the hunter who pointed a gun at him in the lane almost half a year ago, offering him ultimatums. He's quiet on the inside. Reid coughs out a laugh, but it could almost be mistaken as a broken plea.

"No..." The creature within him wants to taunt him for this; an irony that's come to shellshock a man, from the second one of his wars. Reid's instinct wants to ask him if Anika knows; if he's crawled out of hell, as this and has only shown his face now. Cowardly. Reid would know; he did it for seven years; the hiding thing. So after the realisation settles, and the threads of his sanity stay unbroken. There's a calmer, more pointed remark: "I could ask you the same thing." He's watched Anika destroy herself at night, worrying about her father. And here he is.

Reid had told her he's tough, he'll pull through.

Is this what it looks like?

There's no need for smugness, because Reid's fucking sad to see a great man in the ranks of the dead. "Sucks, doesn't it?"

He knows he's delaying the inevitable, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth when he thinks about how easily he had judged Reid for doing the same. He wonders briefly whether his daughter might forgive him for the latest of his transgressions, or it would be better for her final memory of him to be one of sacrifice, where he actually played the role of dutiful father as he should have all those years ago. The cigarette between his fingers is burnt down to the filter and he tosses it aside with a disgruntled noise.

The hunger inside him is ravenous, never-ending and he tries to fill it with anything he can. Nicotine, alcohol, and the blood of two hikers who had stumbled across him in the woods. His revulsion wars with his self-hatred, amplified a hundred-fold since that bitch turned him, and it's a monumental effort not to fall headlong into the despair that burrows deep inside him.

He learns some things too, in the few weeks he lurks in the shadows. The building that once housed Reid and Anika is gone, a terrible 'accident' that no one knows how exactly it started but Book has been doing this long enough to know it wasn't an act of God. The urge to track his daughter down is almost as consuming as the hunger, but his fear stops him. For his entire human life, Book stuffed that emotion away, deep in the crevices where it never saw the light of day. Fear had no place in his line of work, as a soldier or as a hunter. Fear got people killed.

Fear rules him now.

It's not as unfamiliar as he would have hoped, but the intensity of it is still crippling. A thought turns to anxiety turns to terror turns to rage. There is a hurricane of emotions trapped in his chest with no outlet, and it becomes harder to face with each passing day.

So instead, he finds the next best thing. He strolls into the bar that he followed Reid to and sits down next to him without greeting. A smart man would be able to hear his lack of heartbeat. "Where you been, kid?" As though Book hadn't also been missing for months. / @reidhalstead

[reidhalstead]

She can have her own deluded version of whatever the last months wrought. But ultimately, Reid has stopped caring about the torment. Instead, he's lingering more on how much time she wasted because now he's everything she'd wanted to stop. Reckless? He's got no compass to follow anymore. Nothing to hold him down. Not Nisha. Not family. Nothing.

They're not going around in circles about this. They don't need to.

But his sisters?

"Yeah, I've seen them." It's funnier than it should be, offering her that part. They know he's alive (to whatever degree) and they'll mind themselves, if they know what's best for them. But he hesitates in telling Nisha what kind of reassurance he did give them that he was fine and well and all that shit. What difference does it make? She'll find out eventually. "Put a bullet in one, and I encouraged the other to be less sad."

He doesn't need to lie about it. But there's a hunger clawing at him that he can't settle. It ignites every second he's around Eleazar. He knows what it's like to put his teeth in her, and it should disgust him; the things he imagines doing to her when he does.

Reid steps toward her, it's not in threat because he's smiling; it's mere interest: "That all you want to know, bitch?"

"I did, though." Nisha said, having justified it to herself already. "Maybe not for that long but... I did have to do that in order to keep you safe." And to show him that drinking from animals and avoiding verbena was not going to help him become strong. There were many lessons to be learned and it seemed as though he'd managed to get them through his stubborn skull.

Hopefully the lessons stuck.

"No, Reid. This is me asking if you've checked in on them. If you've seen them at all." Nisha no longer needed to leverage them. At least, not in that moment. She was finally able to get Reid to embrace what she'd turned him into and for now, that was enough. That, and the fact that he was better at listening now. But she knew that he was used to her threatening him. Using his family to her advantage in order to get him to do what she pleased. It would take time for him to understand that she was no longer motivated in doing that. "You've been gone several months. They are probably worried. It might be good for you to reassure them that you are alive."

[reidhalstead]

There's nothing wrong with winning. In fact, it's likeable. And it sits a little skewed inside him because he's not really been that pressed about being likeable lately, even less so about anyone else's disposition. It's a time filler, all of this. For someone so recently nonchalant about how much time he's actually got. He'll be around long after Millie's finished pumping her dick about how good at pool she is. But it kills a bit of the night for what this is all worth.

Reid's eyes follow the paths she carves across the felt, smirking at how she's wrangling herself all over the table just to reach.

It's not his motorcycle, so he has no qualm about keeping the bet.

Though, he doesn't think she'd like his hobbies all that much, even if he did answer. And his gaze says plenty about her smart mouth. So he meets her tone with equal bemusement: "You've not cleaned up the table yet." She still might fuck up her streak.

No. Somebody else does.

The cue twists in Reid's grasp as he walks around the table. Millie's already giving it a real wolf of an attitude. It's funny, really. Even more so, when the table across the bar stands up and starts to descend on her. His mouth twists into something more akin to a grin and he can see her hands scrambling for something to use. Reid's perfectly fine with the cue in his hand, hell, he might even snap it, and hand half over. Give them a fighting chance. But he's put himself nearly beside the wolf, because they've interrupted a perfectly civil game, and interrupting his fun.

"You'll want to listen to her," It's not a warning. "Because she's asking nicely." There's the warning. And a vicious part of him that keeps the box of his sensibilities closed weighs heavier on his chest. Halstead hopes they might go off, so he can level the group; he's getting a little peckish, anyhow.

"Shows how much you know." She says, eye locked into the line of her cue like it's a sniper rifle - she can almost see the lines between the balls laid out on the table like this is some kind of video game. Brent makes fun of her, asks if she needs a kiddie table. "They ain't." she says before the clack of wood on chalk on resin CLACKS out, filling the space. Twelve in the pocket.

She hops down, smiles at Brent, moves away from him. "I just like winning shit, man, it ain't no simpler or more complicated than that. Sometimes I get dinner out of it - no free lunches or some shit, you ever read Heinlein?" Another line-up, another CLACK. Ten down the tube.

She senses another spike of hidden scent in the air as she moves through the bar, now opposite on the table from Brent. "You strike me as a guy who needs hobbies - no offense - you just got this I'm the biggest baddest bad boy, which like, fair, you are tall. Like a big, weird ass giraffe with wit." Her nostrils flair imperceptibly. "You really wanna bet that motorcycle?" She says with a shit eating grin. Her eye lines it up. CLACK. Eleven. Pocket.

Another grin, and another pass around the table to line up something new, but that spike of scentful warning gets louder in her nose when she passes by the table where the man she's just hustled sits, muttering about cheats and young assholes and 'how things used to be'. She smirks to herself at first, lining up the shot, feeling him turn to glare at her, so he can see that, sorry, he's dumb and she's good, but there's a soundful rush between his chair and the floor as he scoots back, too far, and smacks the end of her pool cue, scratches it into the velvet, and she sinks the cue-ball along with Brent's Three-Ball.

"Hey!" She turns, "The fuck, Mr. Clean lookin ass, monopoly man haircut havin' lookin-ass, motherfucker!"

Old-hat stands up, his boys stand up too, and he gets all up in her space until she's backed up against the table. It ain't the first, and it ain't the last - but this is probably bouta be a bar she doesn't come back to, as her fingers scramble around on the table behind her until they web themselves around the hard cool resin. "H-hey." she says. "Careful, me and my friend here don't want you to blow a gasket, fuckoff." You get one warning, motherfucker - everybody gets one.

[reidhalstead]

It is as though she had been feeding a fire. Fuelling an inferno with every sentence, and fanning the blaze with every forced, broken breath. Reid's choking on the smoke of it all, hot and warm. Like the sun on his flesh, when she'd thrown him into it — the same as that flash on his shoulder, when she'd darted for the door. He's burning up, seizing at her confessions. This isn't her, and it isn't him — she doesn't suit his memory where there are purple and black bruises banded around her wrists. The withering shell of a gasping corpse on the desolate concrete of an alleyway.

Anika is in his mind like an infection, transformative in a way that dysregulates his very core. He doesn't know how to come down to the ground; when it feels like he's panting, reaching for something to steady himself. But there's nothing but the wall that he's got his hands braced against behind him. Don't give up. He'd said that to her, right? Thought he had. Cruel. Cruel. Cruel. Be that, because it hurts less. He can't hurt. Doesn't want to remember the hands on his flesh in that pit, or the taste of gasoline on his tongue. Knows the sanctity of his honourable nature is tarnished with his brutalisation of everything he'd once held dear. If Reid holds things close, they get charred and scorched in the fire. He'd hurt his sisters, he'd laid waste to the kindness and been merciless to those he'd once called his friends.

He'd put his hands on Booker, and she'd left him to the sun.

You said I was nothing. It's there, right on the edge of a vicious tongue. Withheld only by the confliction that's haunting him. A peep show of memories that's pinholed a focus on all she's said in the wake of this rift between them. Reid opens his mouth, to say something, but it's simply the exposed chest of everything he'd locked away.

Pandora's box is open, and he can't get the lid shut.

Everything's free-flowing; he knows guilt now and grief. It's heavier than his strength, and it brings him to collapse to his knees. A thunk of bone on the dingy carpet as he tries to swallow down the realisation of what he's become. She walked out over self-hatred, not because of —

I did that. He can't stop the words from finding his tender parts, and burrowing deep. Eyes that had been blackened before, trembled into navy to find the parts of Anika that had been mutilated; the parts he had mocked and torn at, in place of acknowledging his own torment. His existence is a thing that needs ridding, she needs to finish what she'd started, hate or no hate. He can't do this. They can't do this — How is he supposed to come back from what he's done? The woman who'd been a chest of secrets for as long as he'd known her, sprawled as flesh and blood, offered out to him to devour. And he's spitting it out, like it's foul — but he knows the taste of her skin, of her lips, and she's anything but.

How have you done this to me? Months of endurance that eventually snapped his cords, only for those around him to rip him apart at the seams. he'd felt the similar constraints quaking in the presence of his family, making fissures in the healed and knitted closed parts of his pain. Fought it, only for her to take a knife and slash at the thread so he might never sew himself back together.

"Anika — I—"

He doesn't recognise his own voice on his knees on the floor. The broken string of vocal cords is a shredded mess. He'd learned the nastiness of nothingness, felt the silence like a comfort with everything he'd said. A contented creature, operating on its own volition. Not for anything else. Basal instincts and hunger had dominated the vessel of a broken man. He's still fighting it, and he's tired too. Exhausted, he wants to tell her how tired he is; wants to tell her he knows, he knows.

Reid would crawl to her, torn between tearing her apart as he'd done to Nisha that night of freedom and offering her the final act of this play; the tragic end to the villain who couldn't complete their redemptive arc. He might do both, if he weren't so utterly sunk by the iron vice of guilt — of disgust at himself and all he is. He's trying to pack the open wound of his soul fracturing with new realisation, but it doesn't come easy. There is just water in his eyes and teeth piercing his tongue; his blood tastes wrong, he's all wrong.

He thinks if she ran at the door now, he would find it easy to bury under the sand. To go back to a beast. But not when she's there, reminding him of her torment. Having him stare almost eye-level with the absence of a piece of her, imagining what that must have felt like. Did she deserve that?

Something's wrong with me, Anika —

"You can't go..." That's not changed. "You can't go." He says it firmly, between the cracks in his voice; a strained, inhuman-like sound. She's got his blood inside her; she can't die. She can't be this. He won't let her be this.

Reid doesn't know if words are enough. He can't undo everything he's done, or said; he can't take any of it back. The war inside of him tells him he's a monster, but it tells him that the monster is him and that he'd meant all those things. No, I didn't... I can't have — he's hungry and confused. He's allowing hatred to come find him, because it's better than the anguish Anika's set free in him. Hate is easy. Easier still, to loathe himself. She does too. How empty they are; beastly things that are their own worst enemies.

Finally, when even monstrous strength cannot win, he slumps back against the door, like defeat is better served here, on the ground. Reid despises that he's back in the wilderness of being a prisoner, this time, in newly built chains he's put himself in. He escaped a set once, and he'll try to be faster about it this time around. But he doesn't know where to start when his eyes search Booker for something other than a harsh, corrupted — contaminated memory of them. Something other than this. Because he doesn't deserve the comfort of remembering a woman drawing a moth on his wrist, or the way she held his hand through a nightmare. The determination that had knitted her features when she'd barged in, like he needed saving. She'd found out that night that she can't save him from himself.

Reid has never known how to save her.

But the volcanic flare is simmering as it makes its descent down the mountain of his sensibilities. A crawl of lava that doesn't know anything but the fall of gravity, to spill and spill, devouring the land until it cools. It leaves behind the evidence of everything it's destroyed, flowing into his throat and forcing a hiss of frustration to come out of his mouth. Blood tickles his lips as swift hands hold his head, frantically rubbing through his hair, like he can kick out the bad, shitty parts of himself; the pieces that the monster owns. But it's just a ceaseless act. There's something that manages to bounce around his mind, and his voice remains that wavering piece of humanity that's crying for help within:

"You want to forget it all?"

She did what she was supposed to. She ran — vanished, left him behind, because that was the smart thing to do. And she was a smart woman, one who didn’t allow herself any foolish moments. No man turned monster had ever earned mercy from her. Not him, not any of the empty, hollow things that had once been human. He was meant to be abandoned. He’d known, all along, how this was going to end. And Anika knew, from all the time she’d spent knowing him, that he feared that this, was all he was ever going to be. Rejected and scorned. Unloved.

But that was the problem with running back to your ghosts (she was certain they'd harm her less than he ever would), they were made of air, evaporating when you pressed too tightly. Memory was a slippery thing, and vengeance? It rotted her to the core. It seemed there was no place to store everything she felt for him — too much bitterness, too much anger, and yet, beneath it all, there was something else she wasn’t ready to admit. Something she hadn’t let herself feel in a long, long time.

"I walked out, because I hated me, not because I hated you."

And it took her months, bloody, brutal months — to strangle her own ghosts and learn how to rot with the part of her that still wanted him. Wanted the good and the bad, the monster in him and the monster in her, all tangled and ugly.

Look at you.

It was alive now, like a dragon breathing fire in front of her. Every shattering, self-loathing word, every snap of the whip across her own back — echoes of all the times she had torn herself apart. The ghosts of every man she’d killed, every friend she’d never let herself truly call a friend — lost, buried. His ghost — a pair of cold eyes and truths that hurt.

The truth always hurt. Lies were easier to swallow.

But there were no more lies left at her disposal. No bullets left to tear him apart. No knives, no malice. No armor thick enough to protect her. It was all shattered now, metal pieces scattered across the floor. She was nothing but a mortal woman now — small and wounded, and he was the dragon, staring back at her — fully formed, flesh and bone, a three-headed thing that should have been slain and forgotten. Fairytales never said what to do when you stood before the monster, broken and afraid — and chose it anyway.

The weight of it was suffocating. It wasn’t just his face, or the cruel things he had said. It was everything she had tried to bury, now alive, clawing its way to the surface. It was too much. Too fucking much. “You want to know what I want to find? I want to find my father and get the fuck out of this goddamn hellhole. I want to forget it all. That’s what I want to find — some fucking peace in this miserable fucking life. One fucking second where I’m not fighting for air. You want to stand there, pointing at every fucking broken piece of me? Go ahead. I’m so fucking tired, Reid.”

She didn’t realize she was shaking until the words broke free, ragged and clawing their way out of her throat. Her arms had dropped to her sides, useless now, hanging limp like snapped ropes. "I'm tired." she said — again, and again, and again — a string of quiet sounds that crumbled out of her, brittle as a crack in the hollow space between them. No anger left. No fire. Only the low, scraping sound of something giving way.

[reidhalstead]

Kanta's satirism must be why Reid liked them so much before, because it's appealing to a wayward piece of him that's cracking under the weight of their bullshit. Halstead isn't enjoying the way something is seeping out of the fissure they've created, but it's difficult to mend, because Reid's torn between taking a chunk out of them, and forcing a drink down their throat.

"Which one of us has changed? I don't remember your method being so callous," Had that been Reid's role? Callous meets calculation in the brothers' partnership.

Hunger creeps up on a dead man, and it grows restless in all the idle conversation. Something's prickling in waves off of the hunter, too, but Reid can't tell what it is. Ready to make a move yet? It's becoming more and more unclear who played the part of calculation.

"Oh? You have a cure, Shah?" It's sarcasm, because there are versions of this pairing that don't come with so many teeth and a lot more bullets. And it comes across as even more odd that Kanta is spoon feeding him suggestives like he's got it all figured out. "Here's an idea." Reid begins, stepping forward once, before offering a wily grin back at the other, there's a hand that waves them forward. "Why don't you come over here, and you can show me how it's done." With the clans, the taking care, the running out of the glare of the sun.

Reid would like to see what Kanta might do with a set of teeth and an innate drive for the hunt. He's seen his sister's, but they're working through the teachings Reid's left them with. His memory delay doesn't feel like the most tragic part of this affair.

"Come on Shah, you want to surprise me in the dark?"a beat, to give opportunity for Kanta to be a little bit of what he's reknown for: "Have I really got to push you, like old times?"

“Real shame but that’s just Shah service for you.” Excellently exemplary. Cut-throat even. Shiv is a hunter at heart but he is also a businessman now. And what kind of businessman lets an active customer become streetside finger food? 

“Eh, you’d be surprised.” I can be a lot more than nice in the dark.

That almost rolls off the tongue when he catches the glint of interest in Reid’s eye but Shiv reels himself back, standing straighter and scratching his throat. Right reflex, wrong time. There’s a certain feeling in the air mere moments before a hunt. A thick tension in the air that makes Shiv’s hairs stand and the cobra tattoo along his nape tingle. An anticipation that could be easily mistaken for sexual excitement but Shiv knows better. 

“Yes, Halstead,” Shiv nods firmly. “Fucking tea. But, maybe you’re right. We can skip tea tonight. Perhaps it would be wiser for you to leave. We'll catch up when you’re yourself again. ” The hunter rescinds his invitation with a heavy heart, hands clenched together as if he were addressing an upset client and not a childhood friend. Shiv can hear his father saying the exact same words in his head, holding himself back from cringing as he meets Reid eye to eye.

“Take a walk. Catch dinner. Elsewhere. Far from my establishment Then walk some more. Whatever it takes to completely clear that foggy memory of yours.” Shiv sighs and shakes his head, “There's better places to feed than a bloody laundromat anyhow- Do you not have a clan to care for you? Where have you been running off to after sunrise? Your sister’s?”

[reidhalstead]

Whilst his memory is a brutalised and battered thing, he does remember where he came from and what he'd been before. Once upon a time, he'd known Belle so well that they could have read each other's thoughts from across a room. She'd come to him when she'd had a hard day — when a parent pushed, and he'd tell her to keep her chin up and take a breather; it's a new day tomorrow; the sun always rises.

He's tilting her chin up still, now. Issuing those same words of comfort, but they're without their emotional attachments. It doesn't cause too much turmoil inside of him when he watches her shoulders relax, and he can see the want in her face; she wants to say something, convince him of something he's not there to hear. But Reid's hesitation doesn't linger, and he's watching his words sink in, metamorphosing her actions into something of his command.

A part of him wants to think she's being smart about it. Pretending to comply, but there's no trickery in the way she eases into the lull. Rose isn't good enough to fake this, even if she were still at her hunter prime.

His gaze lingers on the streaks marring her face where his sister's tears have left stains down her cheeks. Swallowing down the sudden rush that threatens to come clawing up his throat, and have him saying something else, he shakes it off.

"Sunshine, this isn't good for you, is it?" Her easy compliance; no fight, no drive. Nothing. A war-torn hospital escapee who's in over her head. She's fighting herself when she should be focusing on the monsters who'd use this weakness, for their own self-indulgence. He pins her eyes again, staring back at him like she doesn't recognise him. "You're going to start fighting, Belle. Train. Be fucking better. And then when you see a bloodsucker, or a wolf and it's got you in its sights. You're going to fight til its dead and gone. You're not going to die." No running. A threat is a threat and she doesn't get to offer her blood to whatever kindness she might think she has.

Is it a kindness or a cruelty? Because he leaves her a promise in amongst the compulsion: "And then, the next time you see me, sister, you're going to show me how far you've come."

He releases her gaze and lets the words settle in. Waiting. Allowing her to blink, so that when she might open her eyes again.

He is gone.

Rose fully expected him to take the offering. To grab her hand, or wrist, and to press his fangs against her skin in order to take some of her blood. But instead, he's laughing and it doesn't sound like actual laughter. It causes her to flinch again, her head tilting away from him as if it would lower the volume of his laugh.

Her stomach twisted as her brother's fingers found her chin, forcing her face upwards until their eyes met. Fresh tears bubbled in her eyes, beading down her cheeks as she stared up at him. This isn't Reid. Her throat swelled, threatening to close completely. His name was at the tip of her tongue but she didn't even have time to say it again before he was speaking.

She felt it. The way his voice wrapped around her body, her mind, and tugged her towards compliance. Rose knew what was happening and she'd like to say that she tried to fight it but she didn't. She was too tired and this was her brother. It was clear, as she sucked in several deep breaths, that she hadn't consumed enough verbena to resist a vampire's compulsion.

Her tears dried and she blinked, staring at him as he let go of her chin. Rose continued to take deep breaths, calming her heart rate and causing the adrenaline in her veins to subside some.