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scorched-sunrise · 5 months

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TIMING: Current LOCATION: The Jones Household PARTIES: Ophelia (@scorched-sunrise) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: By chance, Emilio sees the letter left to Ophelia by the fae that abducted her father. This results in some very heartbreaking news for the young nymph. CONTENT WARNINGS: Parental death (mentions), child death (past, mentions)

—

Reluctant as she was to involve her surrogate uncle in the search for her father in any meaningful capacity, Ophelia recognized at length that she was making no actual progress and that her hope was wearing thin. She had nothing new or helpful to offer to him, and wondered what the purpose of this visit would even be, other than to say “I’m scared and upset”, because what else could he do to help outside of searching the mountains himself? It would amount to nothing, she knew, so she didn’t present the visit to the home he was staying in (his home, then?) on the Isle as a matter concerning her father, though it sat heavy in the back of her mind.

She’d been there an hour before her fingers dug into her pocket to retrieve the familiar piece of paper. It was the one that had been left on her mother’s bedside table, the one that detailed the fae plot to kidnap her father and the hardly regretful admission that they’d slain Mariela for attempting to stop them. She rubbed the corner between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes raking over the message for the millionth time. It always managed to light a fire in her belly, to reignite the embers that turned cold after days of no news and no discoveries.

The writing was a messy scrawl, distinct in its way. She wondered often who had been the one to write it—Barley, perhaps? He’d always eyed Rhett suspiciously, and had not even been overly fond of Mariela and her daughter when Solomon brought them to the aos sí. Outsiders, he’d called them for a while, before finally relenting after seven months. She wouldn’t put it past old Barley to do such a monstrous thing, not now. Not having seen the true brutality that her kind were capable of. She imagined his hand scribbling out the note she gripped tight, imagined the smile on his face as he did so… perhaps even the blood on his hands, creating the curious stains that dotted the paper here and there.

Emilio came back into the room after having stepped out a moment, and Ophelia looked up at him. Her gaze was hard and soft at the same time, bitter but glad to see him, glad to be near him, even though it hurt. She sighed, setting the paper on the coffee table in front of her and pulling her socked feet up onto the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest. Again she stared at the thing, shaking her head. “I’m never going to find him, am I?”

—

Family was a difficult thing to navigate. Emilio used to think himself good at it, arrogant enough to consider himself a professional. Every scar carved into his skin by someone he loved was a lesson, clusters of them forming classes worth of lectures and things learned. How many years did people go to school to achieve elaborate titles? Didn’t Emilio, with his thirty-two years worth of lessons in family, have them all beat? He used to think so, used to believe he was an expert. He’d been wrong.

It hadn’t been Lucio’s revelation that revealed this. It hadn’t even been his betrayal years before. No, the thing that made Emilio understand just how little he knew about family had been holding his daughter in his arms for the first time. She was such a tiny, fragile thing, and he’d felt so helpless. Nothing in his life had prepared him for it. Even helping his sister raise her son felt like poor practice compared to what was expected of him with Flora. There was no way to adequately ready yourself for parenthood, he thought. No amount of lessons in the world could make you ready for that.

He felt a similar cluelessness with Ophelia. It had grown since her mother’s death, since she showed up in town to tell him that Rhett was gone. She had so much hope, and Emilio had no idea how to approach it. He didn’t know if it was kinder to let her hold on to that desperate belief that they’d find Rhett alive or to rip the bandage off and tell her that he was certain they wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure either was the better answer. There seemed to be no approach that would spare her, no way to keep her from aching. And he hated that.

There was a heavy feeling hanging over the living room today. He got up to get a drink, but it was more of an excuse to escape that suffocation than it was anything else. He lingered in the kitchen, and he wished Teddy was there. They’d know what to do better than he did, he thought; they were better at being a person, even if they’d spent most of their life as something else. He gripped the counter for just a moment before nodding to himself, sucking his teeth to return to the living room. He would have been more comfortable walking into a battlefield; at least in a fight, things were simple.

Ophelia looked up as he reentered the room, setting something down on the coffee table. He moved to sit beside her, stiff and uncertain but trying all the same. She asked the question he didn’t want to answer, and he tried to find the best way to reply. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he didn’t want to hurt her, either. It was an impossible thing.

“What happened on that mountain…” He trailed off. “Rhett knew his odds going up there weren’t great. He must have known that.” He chose to go anyway. And Emilio couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t have made that decision if not for the fight they’d had just before it, couldn’t help but wonder, as he always did, how much of this was his fault. He cleared his throat, trying to distract himself by letting his gaze wander to the paper she’d been clutching before he came in. He nodded to it. “What’s that?”

—

She closed her eyes and buried her face in the pillow for a moment, unwilling to let Emilio see the way pain flashed across her face. “I just don’t get it,” she said finally, lifting her chin again to instead prop it on her knee. “Why come to us if he knew it was so dangerous? Why not stay here?” She knew of the fight, of course. And that was probably it, wasn’t it? He’d felt abandoned, even though Emilio had begged him to stay, and he saw no other course. Such a fool. Ophelia heaved another sigh, knowing that Emilio would not and could not answer the question, knowing that they both had the same idea in their minds, though one inspired guilt where the other inspired anger. So instead she turned her attention to the letter that he was pointing out now, biting down on her lower lip for a moment before answering.

“The letter they left behind after—the one they left for someone to find. For me to find.” She glanced away again, feeling suddenly embarrassed for having carried it around all this time. “I should probably toss it out. There’s no reason to keep it, it just makes me angry and scared all over again. But I…” She didn’t know. “... maybe that’s why I keep it. To keep me motivated to find him.” Her gaze raked across the room as she turned her head to look at him, her eyes gleaming with the heartache of it all. “You… can read it, if you want. I don’t imagine it’ll help any, it’s just an account of what happened and why. Bullshit it may be.”

—

Guilt sliced through him like a knife, and the silence that followed on its heels was heavy and poignant. He could try to explain it to Ophelia, try to make sense of the tangled web of shit that had led to Rhett storming out of that apartment and marching off towards his doom without so much as a glance back in his brother’s direction, but what good would it do? There were things that couldn’t be held in words, explanations that would never quite fit the way they were meant to. To properly explain why Rhett left, Emilio would have to go back to the very beginning — to an angry teenager who didn’t know how to grieve properly and the angry man who slid into his family by feeling just the same. No words could fully encapsulate what it felt like for the both of them to love Flora, or what it felt like to lose her. Anything he said would come up woefully short.

So, he focused on the piece of paper instead. It had always felt like an odd piece of the puzzle, from the moment she’d told him about it. He’d chalked it up to not fully understanding fae customs, though there was still something undeniably strange about leaving a written confession when the perpetrators could have just as easily let Ophelia assume that her father was the culprit and avoid any retribution. He’d never pushed on it; it had seemed cruel to ask. But now, with it sitting in front of him, curiosity tugged at his chest. “Might give us some kind of clue,” he offered, leaning forward to pick it up but hesitating, looking to her for one last nod of permission.

—

For her own part, Ophelia had never considered it odd that the fae had left behind an explanation. Maybe they feared retribution upon their return, she thought—which was wise of them, because that had been her intention all along, but… they hadn’t returned. Or maybe it was more a matter of gloating. Barley, the assumed author of the note now sitting perilously between them, was one that would surely love to do this. I told you so, she could hear him saying. I told you that stray and her pup were nothing but trouble! Sun above, she should like to carve him open from sternum to pelvis, she thought, and then recoiled. That was a violent desire, even for her. Up to now, they’d all been nameless, descriptionless things. She didn’t spend the day imagining how she’d kill Barley and his company, only that she would, sun help them, if she ever found them.

“Might,” she muttered, watching his hand reach for it. At the pause, she met his gaze again and nodded, hugging the pillow closer to her.

She knew there was nothing helpful to be gleaned from that message, and yet her heart sped up as Emilio picked it up from the table, watching him intently as he read it, searching his expression for any kind of sign that he’d discovered some truth she’d overlooked. He was a detective, after all. She hugged the pillow even tighter still, realizing she was holding her breath when the look on his face changed. But it wasn’t to something that she’d hoped to see: the revelation, whatever it was, did not brighten him. No, instead it seemed to drag him down, and the young nymph felt fear rising from her gut. “What?” she barked impatiently. “What is it?”

—

He would have liked to have claimed he knew the moment he picked up the paper, like some invisible jolt went through him and revealed the truth all at once. He would have liked to have claimed he knew before then, even, and maybe a part of him had. After all, his mind had jumped to certain conclusions the moment Ophelia told him her mother was dead, even if he’d chased those conclusions away the best he knew how. He’d come to accept the version of events she placed before him regardless of the inconsistencies or puzzling questions, because it was easier. It was easier to live in a world where things were simple, where you could tell yourself that the heroes were the people you loved and the villains were the people you hated and there was no complexity beyond that.

But the world was not a simple place.

Emilio didn’t know the moment his hand touched the paper, but he knew the moment his eyes found the words. What was written didn’t matter. The letters on the page might as well have been hieroglyphics for all the difference they made. It was the handwriting that sent his heart plummeting down to his stomach, made his mouth go dry.

Rhett would never let Emilio claim that they’d lived together in Mexico. He’d had his van, and if he’d parked it outside Emilio and Juliana’s house so he could use their shower or eat whatever Juliana made in the kitchen that night, it wasn’t the same as living there. Emilio would roll his eyes, even if he’d known better to argue. And when Juliana noticed Rhett at her table more and more, she’d done things like demand he write down his favorite meals so she could make them from time to time. (Only when he deserved them, she’d say, pointing at him with a sly grin.) Those notes were always scattered around the house, Emilio laughing every time he found one. How the fuck is she even going to read this, man? This looks like you’ve never seen a pen before.

There had been others, too. Secret notes to Flora, left in the hollow space behind a brick on the porch. Emilio used to read them to her, pointed at the lettering on the page in hopes that she’d learn to read better than her father had, in hopes that she’d be more than barely literate the way most Cortezes were. Letters when he was away for long periods of time, little reassurances to his family that he wasn’t dead yet. Responses to the crude jokes Emilio scrawled by hand into the dust coating the outside of the van.

Suffice to say, Emilio knew his brother’s handwriting, knew it as surely as he knew his own.

He knew when he recognized it staring up at him from a page.

Ophelia was talking, was asking him what he saw, and he clearly wasn’t as good at schooling his features as he used to be. His hands trembled a little and he thought, with a bitter jolt, that Rhett would have made fun of him for that once. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to respond to his niece. The room felt tight around him. Her world had ended, and she didn’t know it. How did you inform someone of such an apocalypse?

“Who… Who did you say wrote this?” Maybe he was wrong. He clung to the idea, though he knew it wasn’t true. There was no mistaking this.

—

She wished she could decipher what it was in his expression that had him asking that question. Her gaze jumped from his face to the note and back again, trying and failing to make sense of his reaction. He was on the precipice of something, but she knew not what. He shook as whatever it was that he now understood settled in his mind, almost imperceptibly, but not for someone who was looking as frantically as Ophelia was. She searched, and he gave nothing. Nothing but dread, which she couldn’t understand. What was more dreadful in the note than what she already knew? The death of her mother and disappearance of her father, who she was feeling less and less certain would turn up alive with each day that passed? What could be worse than that? What?

“Barley,” the nymph answered slowly, terror constricting her throat. She was afraid to know what he knew. She didn’t want to share in whatever it was that had him questioning what he was seeing, but she also needed to. She couldn’t go another moment without knowing, and yet it seemed to be the worst thing she could ever hope for. “I… think. He never liked Rhett. Never liked us, either. Not really. He was a bastard, and he went missing that night.” She swallowed thickly, realizing that she was trembling just like her uncle. “Why? Why does it matter who wrote it? What does it mean?”

—

He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for in her response. Some piece of the puzzle that would make the picture it created into something less harrowing, some explanation that would make sense in a way that didn’t leave him gasping. But her answer wasn’t some magical key that unlocked a kinder truth. It was a guess at something she didn’t know, something she couldn’t know. How could she? Ophelia had never received letters from her father the way Emilio had in his absence in years past, had gotten no secret notes like the ones left for Flora or dinner requests like Juliana demanded. Ophelia knew her father, but only on the surface. She knew the parts of himself he chose to present to her, and it seemed that those parts weren’t as true as he’d let himself hope they might be.

It was funny, in a way; part of him could understand what she would feel when he answered her question. The part of him that still lived on those bloody streets in Mexico with his uncle murmuring useless apologies in front of him, the part of him whose hand still held the hilt of a blade that disappeared into the gut of the only father he’d ever known, that part of him knew exactly what it was to find a betrayal like this waiting for you at the end of an already harrowing experience. It wasn’t something he would have ever wished upon his niece; it wasn’t something he would have wished on anyone.

He struggled with how he could answer her question, tried to find words that would make sense. Would it be easier for her in Spanish, where his tongue better understood the syllables bouncing off of it? He sometimes thought that bad news should be delivered in a language you had a poorer grasp on. It made him sick, sometimes, the way the people who’d killed his daughter had done so screaming the same language he’d once used to read her the silly notes her uncle left in their secret hiding spot.

Would she even believe him if he said it? Ophelia trusted him, but Rhett was still her father. He was the only biological family she had left in the world, and now Emilio had to tell her that he was also the reason why. Deciding, as he usually did, that action was a thing he understood better than words, he set the note aside and reached into his pocket. He retrieved his wallet, fingers still trembling as he opened one of the folds.

He hadn’t always carried sentimental items like this. It was something he’d started after Flora’s birth, though he’d always been sure to keep it a hidden habit. His mother would have found some way to punish him for it, for daring to make some attempt to be something he wasn’t, something he couldn’t be. Even now, years after her death, it would have been difficult for someone who didn’t know what to look for to find the small cut in the worn leather of the wallet, to know to open it and slip their fingers inside. There was more there than there used to be, more than just the photo of Flora that sometimes felt like the only proof she’d ever existed at all. Things like notes from Wynne, Teddy, and Nora had joined it over the last year. There were a few other scaps — momentos from Xó and Jade and even one from Zane that he’d deny if pressed.

But the scrap of paper he pulled out now was older than those. Worn and faded, creased in a way that spoke of how many times it had been folded and unfolded. He unfolded it now, setting it down beside the one Ophelia had brought with her. It was one of those secret notes to Flora, her name scrawled out carefully at the top of the page. But, like the note Emilio had just finished reading, the content of it didn’t matter. It was the handwriting that was important. It was the way it sloped and sprawled in letters identical to the ones detailing the ‘truth’ of Ophelia’s mother’s death.

Emilio let the two pages lay side by side, damning Rhett and Ophelia and himself, too. He didn’t know what to say, how to add to it. No language seemed correct for something like this.

—

Confusion laced itself into her anxious expression as she watched Emilio take out his wallet. Her gaze jumped to see what he was digging for, but staring didn’t make it make any more sense. Eventually he pulled it free, and her dark eyes followed his hand movements as he unfolded it carefully, then leaned forward to set it beside the letter. He said nothing, and she squinted at the second piece of paper for a second before looking back at him.

“What…” Ophelia began, turning to the letter once more. She unfolded her legs, setting aside the pillow and leaning forward to get a better look. She jumped between the two of them, startled to find that the writing was the same.

No.

She read the second letter, the note left to Flora, Emilio’s dead daughter. Something Barley couldn’t have written, obviously. That made sense to her brain, but the rest didn’t. Then who? Who wrote the letter she herself had discovered in her mother’s bedroom? The answer was clear, of course. It was staring her in the face and she was squinting her eyes tightly shut, turning away, refusing to see it. But now it grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her to attention and forcing her to make the connection.

“No,” she breathed, drawing herself up from the couch, snatching both pieces of paper in her hands and comparing them a final time. Tears sprang to her eyes. “No! He can’t—he wouldn’t—” He would. She knew he would. He was a warden who did not let grudges go, and he’d been crossed by her mother. Apparently, in all that time he’d been chasing her, he’d become an excellent actor too. Good enough to fool both of them into thinking he had changed. And Mariela, sun above, she’d been right to be wary. For all Ophelia’s desperate insistence that he’d changed, that he was different from the man that had run her off decades ago… she’d been wrong. She’d been deadly wrong, and it had cost her both of her parents.

Barley would not be returning to the aos sí. None of the missing fae would. Her father, be he dead or alive, had seen to that. All this time she’d been harboring a hatred for the victims, and defending the man she’d called her father when he was the one who—the one who—

Ophelia wailed, dropping the papers to the floor and letting her hands fly to her face. All that anger was gone, replaced in a flash by a bottomless sorrow. She fidgeted on the spot, panicking and needing to flee. She didn’t want to desert Emilio like this, but how could she stay? How could she not be reminded of everything she’d lost and the lies she’d been fed any time she looked at him?

She looked at him. It hurt just as much as she expected. “I have to go,” she squeaked out, hurrying to gather her things. “I-I can’t stay here. I have to go.” She didn’t know where, she just knew away from this town. Away from this state. To some place her father had not touched, where his far reaching influence could haunt her no longer. “I’m sorry.” She was speaking quickly, throwing on her jacket and shouldering her bag. “I won’t bother you anymore. I’m sorry.”

—

He’d heard that when people witnessed tragedies, they later described it as feeling as though the events happened in slow motion. For the most part, that hadn’t been Emilio’s experience. The massacre in Mexico had happened in flashes, in blinks of an eye. His sister was screaming, and then he blinked and she was dead. His brother was running, and then he blinked and he was laying motionless on the ground. Lucio was apologizing, and then he blinked and there was a knife gripped in his hand and more blood under his nails. Tragedies that happened after that were always sprinkled with moments of bitter time travel. In the basement of the barn where Zane’s clan nearly killed Wynne and their roommates, Emilio had traveled from 2023 to 2021 with a brutal effortlessness. In the factory where Rhett lost his leg, Mexico and Wicked’s Rest existed in the same space. To Emilio, tragedy was a quick and savage thing. There was never even any time to flinch.

This one seemed slower. For the first time, he understood what people were talking about when they described car crashes as a thing that happened at half speed while you tried to look away. Her eyes darted between the two pages as metal grinded against metal, her eyes widened as airbags deployed. The realization that slammed into her seemed a physical force, a thing she couldn’t get away from. Emilio longed to pull her from the wreckage, to turn back the clock, but there was no use, was there? A factory, a barn basement, a living room. He was useless against every tragedy that struck, no matter how hard he tried not to be. He’d never been particularly good at rescues.

The thing he hated most, he thought, was that he should have known. He should have realized it from the very beginning, should have understood it right away. This story was one that had been written long before he’d even met Rhett. It was always going to end the same way. No hunter Emilio had ever known could let something like that go, no matter the circumstances. A tragedy was a tragedy was a tragedy, even when you dressed it up in something else’s clothes. A hunter was a hunter, even when he let you hold his hand.

“I — I’m sorry.” For what, he wondered? For telling her this, for not knowing how to make it easier? For loving the man who’d killed her mother, even now that the proof was on the table? For loving her, too, even when that only ever ended one way? She fell and she wailed and he didn’t know how to comfort her, didn’t know how to make things better. There was no recovery from a thing like this. There was no moving on. There was falling and there was wailing and that was it. That was all.

She looked at him, and he flinched as if her gaze was a fist swinging towards him. He thought he would have preferred a fist, would have been more comfortable with a physical blow over to look on her face. What was he to her now, he wondered? An uncle, still, even if the person who’d created that connection between them had likely relinquished his right to be called her father? Or a stranger who’d delivered to her the worst news of her life, the way he was to so many of his clients?

“You — You don’t have to…” He trailed off, unsure of what to say. How could he tell her she could stay when he knew how badly she wanted to leave? He wouldn’t have stayed in Mexico for anything, even if it had been safe for him there. No one could thrive in a ghost town, and wasn’t that all this could ever be to her now? “It’s not — You don’t bother me. I want…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t figure out how the sentence ought to end. He wanted something, maybe, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t know how to ask for it. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Opie, I’m sorry.”

—

Pinning her wrist over one of her eyes, Ophelia overflowed with agony that she tried in vain to shove back down into the pit. She suddenly hated everyone that had ever told her how much she reminded them of her father—they were mostly other hunters, anyway. Others who saw her as a curiosity more than a person, she realized now. Others who… who probably knew, somewhere deep down, what was to come.

Others like Emilio.

He was speaking to her, apologizing and telling her she didn’t have to leave, and she couldn’t decide if she felt angry or heartbroken. Both, probably. Deciding to lean into the latter, knowing that the former would only burn another bridge that didn’t deserve burning, she stopped in her frantic hurry to leave and walked over to him. “I know,” she said, misty-eyed as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “It’s—” It wasn’t okay, but… “It’s not your fault. It isn’t.” Her lower lip trembled and she sniffed, closing the distance to pull him into a tight hug. “You’re a good person. I know that. You are, no matter what you think.” Not like his brother. Not capable of such monstrous things. A good heart. A steady hand. A troubled but functional mind. He was fair, and kind when he chose to be, when it was the people that deserved it. Rhett’s kindness had been a mask. He was a faker, a fraud, a liar. Emilio might have guessed what had happened, might have worried about it after having met her, but he couldn’t have known. Rhett had fooled all of them into thinking he wanted to change, that he just wanted to have family again.

“I just… need space. From this town, from… anywhere he’s been. I’m sorry.” She moved back again, wanting to be able to smile for him and tell him she was okay, that everything was going to be all right, but she couldn’t. That would be a lie. She wasn’t a liar. She had no idea how she was going to make it through this, but she knew she couldn’t do it here. “Te amo. I wish… I was stronger.” But she wasn’t, and she needed to run. The girl stepped back, letting her arms fall from his shoulders. “I’ll… write you, okay? Once I find somewhere else to… be.” Running the back of her hand across her eyes, she kept her gaze turned down toward the floor. She had this address at least, so she could send a letter here, should she ever gather the courage to write one.

“Take care of yourself, tío.” There was nothing more to say and she couldn’t bear to stand there and give him more time to protest, so she just turned and headed for the front door, feeling her shoulders start to heave again the closer she got to it. Would the hurting ever stop?

—

She moved towards him, and Emilio stiffened the way he always did, froze like the only way anyone had ever touched him had been with the intention of making something hurt. But that hadn’t been true in a while now, and never with Ophelia. She wrapped her arms around him and it wasn’t a blow, but he ached, anyway. He thought of the world they lived in, of the shitty place where they all existed with no place else to go. He thought of his mother, who would have killed him no matter how much he told himself she’d cared. He thought of Ophelia’s father, who’d done something unforgivable and lied about it. He thought of his daughter, who would never be anything more than a ghost. How were any of them expected to live like this? Was this all there was? He wondered if everyone ached the way he did, or if he was just doing something wrong.

His throat felt tight as she spoke, like someone’s hand was closed around it and tightening more and more with each word. He didn’t believe her words, though he thought he might want to. He thought he might want to think that he was a decent man, even if he knew he wasn’t one. He thought he might wish the things she said sounded true, even if they felt as fantastical as a storybook. Rhett had lied to Ophelia, had done everything he could do to make her think he was something he wasn’t. And Emilio, without meaning to at all, had somehow done the same.

Maybe some things still ran in families, even if those families weren’t connected by blood.

“I understand.” He wished he didn’t. He wished neither of them knew this ache, but that wasn’t an option on the table. Other people made choices — people like Rhett, like Lucio — and they were the ones left to deal with the fallout. Emilio was still in that living room in Mexico. Ophelia was still in that house on the mountain. They could, both of them, travel nations and worlds away, but it wouldn’t matter. There were rooms you never left. There were moments you never forgot. He knew that.

He closed his eyes for a moment, nodding his head. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. He wondered if she ever would send that letter, or if he was something that would be easier to forget, too. He wouldn’t blame her for it. “You take care of yourself, too. Okay, kid? You… You stay safe.”

And then, she was leaving. And Emilio hated himself for how much it felt like watching Rhett walk out of his apartment those months prior, hated the fact that, even now, he couldn’t help but think how much she looked like her father. He watched her go, watched the door shut, stared at it for a moment longer. The house was empty. Everything was silent. And he was alone.

Wasn’t that how this was always going to end?

#. thread ;#. with ; emilio cortez #. the truth comes when it must ;#parental death tw #child death tw

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itzbridiebitch · 1 year

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@mortemoppetere replied: [pm] [user forgot that this was the excuse he gave her. it feels like a million years ago now.] No. [...] Have you been feeling [...] weird lately?

[pm] what??? […]

[pm] why?

#c; emilio cortez #pm: emilio #mortemoppetere

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skiptomy · 2 years

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gettin a handle on my new tablet, have some of my boys

#character; Teddy Jones #character; Emilio Cortez #bexwrites #ship; temilio #OCs #skiptomy art #skiptomy doodles

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plunderwater · 1 year

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Slayin' Alive, Slayin' Alive

TIMING: Recent, before Emilio got cursed LOCATION: Somewhere Downtown PARTIES: Emilio (@mortemoppetere) & Fang (@ronin-for-hire) SUMMARY: Fang and Emilio cross paths when their respective quarries end up together. CONTENT WARNINGS: None

—

There was a moment, then, when it all came back to her—how it was to be ignorant: to have no knowledge of the shadows that lurked underneath all that she knew; to sleep soundly at night believing light always triumphs over darkness, that love and peace and heroes would always find a way to make sure everyone was safe; to not chase after stupid vamps on what could have been a sensual Friday night. “I could be boning someone by now,” Fang groaned to herself as their chase finally ended.

Her target was trapped. Between her and a dead end. Fang smiled underneath her oni facemask as her fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of her katana, a borrowed weapon from her late mentor. She narrowed her eyes at the creature, who mostly just resembled an idiot boy if not for the fresh blood around her mouth, almost challenging them to come at her and fight back. Her target looked like he was about to…but then he threw a kick at her, sending her shoe flying toward her face, which the slayer instinctively slashed in half, all while her prey threw themselves over the dead end and continued to run. “Motherfucker!”

Sure, she could have continued to chase after the damned vamp, but maybe she didn’t have to. Fang squinted when she caught a glimpse of a piece of crumpled paper on the ground. She quickly retrieved it, and upon opening it, smirked like she just won against a stupid idiot. “Is this his address? What in the actual fuck?”

—

In the beginning, just after the massacre, it felt like Emilio was tracking down another one of the vampires responsible every week. There’d been so many of them and, just after it happened, they’d been so proud of themselves. Bragging about it in bars and street corners, excited to say that they’d been a part of the group that finally took down the Cortez family of slayers once and for all. Finding them had been easy. Picking them off, slowly and painfully, had been simple. He’d learned a lot, in those first few months, about how much a vampire could take before its body gave out, before it exploded into dust, before it begged for it. He missed that, sometimes.

It was harder now. Word had gotten out, eventually, that someone was tracking down everyone involved. No one knew it was him — as far as both the undead and the hunter community knew, Emilio Cortez had died with the rest of his family in Mexico — but they knew enough to stop their bragging. Tracking down just one vampire who’d been involved now took weeks instead of hours. It took months, sometimes.

So finding one in Wicked’s Rest felt like a win.

He’d tracked the thing to an apartment building downtown. It was a hell of a lot nicer than Emilio’s apartment, which might have pissed him off if he’d cared anything about where he was living. As it was, it felt about as empty as everything else did. The slayer sighed, making his way towards the building… only to pause when he felt someone nearby. Not someone undead, which seemed odd given why he was here. Just a presence, watching. He turned towards the shadows, slayer vision allowing him to see through them to spot a figure in a mask, holding a katana in one hand and clutching a slip of paper in the other. Huh. That was new. “What are you supposed to be?”

—

It didn’t take long for Fang to track down her prey’s apartment. Despite the way she looked and acted, she was pretty savvy with all the new tech. Well, at least for someone in her line of work. A quick browsing of Google Maps and she was all set. What she found more difficult was to not get annoyed at the fact that the monster she was hunting lived in a better place than she did. Probably some place they stole from its original owner. Probably even murdered the original owner. Yeah, that’s probably it. Fang strengthened her resolve by thinking the worst of the damned vamp, which she believed was what they deserved.

Fang had slinked into the shadows when she realized she was not alone. She raised an eyebrow when the man easily spotted her. The slayer was already on a roll with thinking the worst of others, so in her head, she instinctively thought he was an associate of her prey. How else would he had seen him so easily? Another slayer? Pfft, what were the chances? And even if they were truly another slayer, then they might be after her prey. No way she was sharing her bounty. There’s rent left to pay this month. So she took out her katana and swung at him. Like a complete psychopath. “Your Maker, monster.”

—

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this. Emilio had dealt with plenty over the years, but a woman in a mask leaping out from him wielding a goddamn sword? That was new. He jumped back just in time to avoid getting cut in half, whipping out his stake instinctively. She wasn’t undead — he would have sensed it if she were — but the stake happened to be the most easily accessible weapon he had on him at the moment. And a stake through the heart would kill most things, to be fair. It just happened to work especially well on vampires.

“You practice that line in the mirror at night?” It had been pretty well timed, and he had sort of unintentionally set her up for it, but it sounded like something out of an action movie. Or… what Emilio assumed would come out of an action movie. In all fairness, he supposed, he’d never actually seen one. “You come at everyone like this, or am I a special case?” He wasn’t sure whether to fight her or just walk away. This wasn’t what he was here for, after all.

—

When Fang saw the stake in the man’s hand, she had to take a step back. It wasn’t a weapon a vampire would have, at least not any vampire she’s fought before, though to be fair, the rules here were different from the rules in Japan. Also, not that many vampires in Japan. At least not the ones like in this town. Or maybe even in this part of the world. But she digressed. A vampire didn’t need a stake. Even with just its fangs and claws, it could take down a fellow vampire. A vampire with a stake just seemed as dumb as a Charmander with a bucket of water on its head.

“You’re not a vampire, are you?” That much was fast becoming obvious. Maybe if she took a second to check, this awkward and definitely dangerous moment could have been avoided. But Fang’s quarry had been testing her patience since they first encountered each other all those days ago. She didn’t have the patience to hesitate going into this place, this supposed hideout for the undead vermin, certainly not the patience to trade quips, even though she wasn’t that creative. “A thrall?” With a stake? Maybe a jilted lover, an annoyed servant here to take vengeance on his master through murder? But her quarry looked nothing like Nicolas Cage, and this man was no Nicholas Hoult. “Are you here to… The creature in this place is mine. You should leave.”

—

He felt oddly offended at the question, the very idea that he could be mistaken for something undead, for something like the things that had ruined his life before it began at all feeling more like an insult than a general inquiry. It made him feel a little sick, with a tightness in his chest and an acidic taste on his tongue. “No,” he snapped, a little harsher than was absolutely necessary, “I’m not a pinche vampire.”

And then she continued, and Emilio found himself impossibly angrier. She wanted him to leave? He had every right to be here, had more of a claim to the vampire in that apartment than she did. What was she after it for? Did it matter? To her, it was probably nothing more than another undead thing. But to him? This was a deeply personal mission. He was far too stubborn to give it up. “Fuck off. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve been looking for this pendejo for months now, and I’m not letting you take it from me. I’m going to go up there, and I’m going to kill it slow. You can go home.”

—

Fang began to lower her weapon when he confirmed the obvious but raised it again when he declined to leave. Fact was, Fang wouldn’t kill an innocent civilian, even if they were wielding a stake, even if they were making her job harder. It wasn’t a wrong vs. right thing either, not a morality issue. To her, it would just be a waste of time. Innocent civilians could never defend themselves against people like her, slayers, hunters, trained from a young age to contend with monsters the former wouldn’t even know existed, wouldn’t even be prepared to fathom.

But Fang was now thinking of making an exception just for this asshole. “Look, dude,” Fang used that word in a derogatory manner, which was barely effective compared to the many other words she could have used. “Someone wants this vamp from down under dead so much, they’re paying top dollar, and I’m not sharing that bounty with you. So you either leave, go home to your video games or whatever, and spend the rest of your miserable, lonely life doing whatever makes you sleep at night…OR you can go up there, die to vampire Hugh Jackman in give or take five seconds, and then I’ll swoop in to get my rent money. Your choice.”

Fang growled at the end to emphasize her point, but she did get a few things wrong: One, the vampire she was after wasn’t Australian; it was from New Zealand, a foreign exchange student who had been alive for much longer than they were in school. Two, top dollar, the bounty wasn’t. It was just double her rent money, which wasn’t really a lot to anyone with a stable job. Fang did not have a stable job, though, so this was all she had. Three, she didn’t have to share that second part with him. Fact was, if she did just let him go at the vampire, believing it would make quick work of him, then she’d still be able to get her rent money after. Now he could just leave, making her lose a would-have-been advantage. Fang was no sly, cunning mind.

—

Ah. So it was money she was after. Emilio had heard of this, the side of the supernatural underbelly that exchanged lives for currency. Even in Mexico, there had been similar organizations. His mother had found it distasteful not because she believed any supernatural creature deserved to live but because she believed hunting to be more a righteous duty than a career option. Emilio’s own distaste for it came from a similar place. You believed what you were taught to believe, regardless of who taught it to you or how. Some things were just hard to shake.

“I don’t care about a bounty,” he snapped. “You want the money, you take it. It means nothing to me. The reasons I’m here are personal. It isn’t going to kill me, because I have been doing this my entire fucking life. I don’t carry this as un accesorio.” He waved the stake adamantly, frustration very clear. “And I don’t play video games.”

If it were any other vampire, he might have been convinced to just walk away. Emilio was stubborn and possessive to a fault, but he wasn’t going to waste his time arguing with someone he assumed was another slayer over who got to kill a particular vampire. If the vampire was dead, it was dead. But this one was different. It had been there, in Etla. There was very little that would convince Emilio to leave that.

—

Fang raised an eyebrow. She found the guy incredibly rude, but then again, most of them in this line of work, and even those simply aware of the truth of the supernatural, were also incredibly rude. She’s been called incredibly rude herself, and she was, in a way, proud that those people kept their distance because of that perception, maybe even reality. She did find that last part funny for some reason, smirking from behind her facemask as she eased up on him, “Yeah, that much is obvious.”

Another thing that was obvious? Fang realized the other guy wasn’t going to just let this go. He seemed serious enough. About using that weapon in his hand to take out his vampire. Their vampire. Did it really matter if he’d die? He’d at least open some opportunity for her to swoop in while her quarry was busy with his corpse. Or he could be telling the truth and instead do her job for her. He didn’t care about the bounty, and the anguish in his voice, in his eyes, seemed to support that statement. Seemed like a win-win situation for her.

“All right then,” Fang shifted her attention to where their similar prey was supposed to be. “You just want the kill, right? Have at it. I’ll take the bounty when you’re done, so lead the way, Inigo Montoya. Let’s get this son of a bitch.” What better way to utilize the other slayer to his full potential than to use him as bait, or if he was really as good as he made himself sound to be, a weapon. She could at least sympathize with the need for revenge, as it was basically the same reason that brought her to these shores, trapped her in them as well.

—

For a moment, he thought she was going to argue with him. And he would have fought back, of course — Emilio was nothing if not damn stubborn, after all — but he was so goddamn tired. He wanted to get up there, wanted to dust that vampire, wanted to pretend it made him feel a little better, wanted to go home and drink himself into a stupor after and tell himself it was a celebration instead of a fucked up method of coping. He wanted to do all of that without arguing about it first, without having a stranger ask questions he didn’t want to answer.

But then she shrugged, and she didn’t argue after all, and there should have been relief in that but he felt just as empty, just as tired. Nothing ever fixed him. Nothing ever came close.

He nodded as she spoke. “I just want the kill,” he confirmed. His brow furrowed a little at the name, and he shook his head. “My name’s Emilio. Not Inigo.” Not that it mattered, but he didn’t want to do this whole thing with her calling him the wrong name. That’d be annoying. Head up, he brushed by her to the entrance to the building. No elevator, though he would have refused to take it anyway. His knee would ache for days, he knew, would be so bad that he might not be able to walk once the adrenaline of the fight wore off, but he’d rather be in pain than reveal weakness to a stranger. Given the choice, Emilio would always prefer hanging himself to asking someone he didn’t know to cut the rope.

The trip upstairs was a quiet one, since neither of them were particularly interested in talking. His heart was pounding in his chest, anticipation of the fight filling him with a pleasant buzz that never lasted long enough to amount to anything. “Just stay out of my way,” he warned the other slayer lowly. “You can have your bounty, but the vampire’s mine.”

—

“Fang,” she growled, back in her unnecessary Batman-esque voice. Back in Japan, it was the norm for the local slayers, deepening their voices so as not to reveal any hints regarding their true identities, their civilian identities. Fang already thought it was strange back then, even when she just started her training with her late mentor, considering they were already wearing the oni facemasks that was meant to scare the monsters, to remind them that they weren’t the only group stalking the night. She didn’t think the voice was, how the kids would say, extra until she got in this town, until it was just here cosplaying a character now played in the movies by the same actor who will never escape that time he played a sparkling vampire. “Have at it, Emilio.”

It didn’t matter, whoever got the kill. At least not with this job. It was just a simple elimination bounty, basically just take the vampire out and take a photo or a souvenir as proof that it was long gone. Come to think of it, one could just fake all that as easily as photoshopping a corpse or bringing back some other guy’s ashes. Didn’t even have to be the ashes of an actual corpse. Could just be ashes from something else, something burnt down. The people who put out these hits, surely most of them knew that. But then again, there was no price great enough for a good night’s rest. Fang would know.

Fang also, even if she would never admit it, harbored a liking for the extra work, the nitty gritty of the job. For most of her life, after her parents’ death and before her mentor’s passing, this had been all that she had, all that made her feel like her life had a purpose, why she was spared instead of her parents. If this was taken from her, the very concept of being out here and hunting down vampires and whatever else goes bump in the night, she wouldn’t know what to do. Maybe repair more VCRs. God, that thought almost made her vomit. “All right,” she let him go first, not even making any effort to watch his back. Worst case scenario? They eat him, which could still be a golden opportunity for her to kill them all while they’re chowing down on an Emilio taco. “No takebacks.”

Whatever this guy had on this particular vampire, Fang didn’t really care. All she cared about was the money, the bounty. Still, she followed his lead while keeping a safe distance between the two of them. In her mind, she wouldn’t even make the effort to help him fend them off, if there were even more than one or two. It was wishful thinking, though, because when it comes down to it, when the vampires attack? Fang’s instincts would never let her not slice and dice at least one of them. It’s just who she was.

—

No takebacks. He nodded curtly, pleased with the words. The last thing Emilio wanted was someone getting in his way, slayer or no. His vengeance was his, and his alone. The thought of letting someone else do it for him, of allowing a stranger to kill what should have been his… It felt like a betrayal. His family, his daughter deserved more than that. He’d already failed to save her. What kind of father would he be if he failed to make the people who had killed her pay for it, too? What kind of man?

They stood outside the door to the vampire’s apartment now, and Emilio let the feeling of the undead inside wash over him. That all-too familiar shiver up his spine, the way his stomach clenched in anticipation. He liked the fight but, if he was being honest, he liked this part, too. The part where the adrenaline was just starting to build, where his body’s knowledge of what was coming kick-started its response to it.

He let himself revel in it for a moment before lining up with the door and delivering a solid kick to the wood with his good leg, the vibrations reverberating through the limb as the lock gave way. Thanks to his superior strength, it only took one kick; no time for the vampire inside to prepare.

Or vampires, rather. Three of them, all staring at the now-open door. Emilio zeroed in on his target single-mindedly, gripping his stake as he surged forward. “Looks like you get to have some fun, too,” he commented to Fang, ducking as one of the vampires recovered from the shock and came at him. He shoved them in Fang’s direction; they weren’t what he was here for, and he wasn’t doing anything else until he’d taken care of his business.

—

“Fun?” Fang psh’d. She wasn’t here to have fun. More importantly, she wasn’t here to help this suicidal Emilio guy. “Oh, no, this is all you, amigo.” If he wanted so badly to kill the vampire, he’ll have to do this on his own. He’ll have to kill the other vampires, too. Fang was NOT going to lift a finger until they were all dead, him and/or the vampires. Fang was only here for the bounty. Fang was going to do the smart thing and bide her time, swooping in at the last second after everyone else was spent. Fang was—getting a vampire shoved in her face! What the actual fuck?!

In retrospect, Fang should’ve known this was going to happen. A part of her did. When one of the vampires ran toward them, mostly at Emilio, she already had her hand on the hilt of her katana, tightly wrapped around the handle, ready to slash at something that came her way, something undead. It was her instincts. It was her entire being. So, when the vampire was shoved toward her, she had little hesitation to draw her late mentor’s sword, greeting the oncoming idiot with the steel across its chest. “How much are YOU worth, baka?”

The stupid vampire was confused, but not confused enough to realize it was biting off more than it could chew, so it leapt back, away from the half-masked slayer’s range. Another vampire lunged at Fang, the other one that wasn’t Emilio’s target apparently, but she managed to avoid its attack by simply stepping back. Realizing they had the numbers advantage, the first vampire joined in the frenzy, with Fang forced to be on the defensive. Lucky for her, she was still faster than these guys and they were very predictable. Newly spawned? Inexperienced with their new state? Under some sort of distracting influence? Whatever the case, they were going to die if they didn’t stop tempting her blade. “Only here for one of you, but I can do this town a solid by taking you two out as well.”

—

She was stiff, but that was hardly surprising. She reminded Emilio of his sister, just a little. Rosa had been similarly serious, dedicating herself to the cause above all else. It was the reason why their mother had made no secret of preferring her to the rest of them, the reason why she was set up as the heir to the ‘top’ position in the family in a way that was never in question. Rosa had been a far better slayer than Emilio, and Fang probably was, too. But better didn’t always mean as much as people assumed it would. Rosa still died. Emilio still lived. The world still spun on, despite making very little sense.

He had no doubt that Fang would leave him to die in a heartbeat if it meant furthering her own cause. In a way, there was some relief in that. Knowing where you stood with people was always better than not knowing, even if you didn’t stand anywhere good. He watched as the other two vampires combined their forces to go up against her, but there was little concern in the way he glanced back at her. She seemed like she could handle herself. If she couldn’t, he’d take the sword after she was dead. It was a nice sword.

Turning his full attention to the guy he’d actually come here to kill, he threw up an arm and shoved it against the vampire’s throat, pushing back with all his strength until the creature’s back met the wall hard. “¿Sabes quién soy?” The words were a quiet growl, meant only for this vampire and not for the other two or the slayer refusing to fight them. The vampire’s eyes widened, and he nodded, eyes flickering back to his companions. “I am going to kill them next,” Emilio told him, taking some joy from the way the vampire’s eyes shot back to meet his again. He cared about the other two. Emilio wondered what they were to him. Friends, lovers, family? It didn’t matter. He’d taken all of those from Emilio, back in Etla.

Deciding he was no longer content with just killing the vampires, Emilio grabbed the one he was holding by the hair and tossed him across the room, sending him sprawling. It caught the attention of the other two, who turned away from Fang. “I changed my mind,” he announced. “I am going to kill them all. He dies last. I still don’t care about the money, but you can help me with these two if you want. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

—

The pair of vampires threw themselves at Fang again, in a desperate bid to take out the woman with the sword. The half-masked slayer managed to dodge the first idiot by simply taking a few steps back, a look of disappointment behind that oni mask. It seemed the two lackeys didn’t appreciate her earlier comment. No matter. Fang didn’t appreciate them either. When the second guy tried to have a go at her, she didn’t pull back this time, slicing off his hand by his wrist in one clean slash. If only she could do the same to non-undead perverts. With a kick, she pushed the newly christened Captain Hook back.

That was when Emilio made his bold announcement. Or stupid, if you’re on the vampires’ side. Fang simply shrugged. “I already gave you a hand,” she delivered that quip dryly, even though she intended it as a snide remark, as if it was just a meaningless fact. To emphasize her point, however, she pointed at the vampire’s floppy hand on the ground. Gross. “You want some head, too?” As if on cue, the first vampire from before tried to attack her from behind, only to get his throat pierced by her katana’s blade.

Fang didn’t even turn to look at the other vampire guy, already knowing he would try the same. All of them did. It wasn’t a bad strategy, really. Sometimes, you have to take all the advantages you can. Shame Fang heard him a mile away with that shuffling and growling. With her eyes glued to Emilio’s, she forced her blade through her victim’s neck, cutting its way to freedom to the side. The vampire’s body plopped to the ground, though half of the neck was still attached to its shoulder. “There,” she heaved a sigh, calmly walking away from the lackeys and toward the couch in the other side of the room. “Have at it.”

—

As she fought, any of that earlier stiffness melted away. Her movements were fluid, easy. She was good. Definitely better than Emilio, something he could confirm now as he really saw her in action, saw her actually trying to fight instead of just sidestepping to avoid one. He had plenty of training, knew all kinds of moves and tricks, but most of his fighting was based on brute force instead of fluid movements like Fang’s. He was a tank — designed to take damage as he dished it out in hopes that he’d give more than he got. It had gotten him this far, but it was certainly less fun to watch than what she had going on.

She busied herself with her two vampires, and Emilio focused on incapacitating his. He wanted the vampire dead, but he wanted him to suffer first. The foot of his good leg came down hard on the vampire’s knee, the resulting crack and scream bringing a feral grin to the slayer’s face. It felt karmatic, in a way, even if this vampire wouldn’t live long enough to develop a limp or suffer in chronic pain from the injury the way Emilio had. This wasn’t the specific vampire who’d caused the slayer’s injury, but that didn’t matter. Specifics rarely did, with Emilio. Not when it came to this.

By the time he turned back to Fang, she’d already ‘disarmed’ one vampire and piercing the neck of them both. Not enough to kill them, but enough to put them to the floor. The vampire whose leg he’d just broken scrambled into a sitting position, attempting to crawl towards the other two. “Please,” he begged, “please just let them go. They weren’t there. I met them after, they’ve never even been to Mexico.” Another day, the pleas might have had some effect on him. He might have softened, might have at least let the vampire’s companions live. But today? Today, he was running on such little sleep after a night of memories playing out like horror films on the backs of his eyelids, and the vampire on the ground behind him had been one of the directors. Emilio had no kindness left to offer today. Maybe he never had.

He stepped towards the two vampires Fang had incapacitated, kneeling down next to the closest. Already one hand short and sputtering from the wound in its neck that wouldn’t kill it, sliding the stake between the vampire’s ribs almost felt like mercy. There was no fanfare to this kill, no words uttered to the vampire before it dissolved into dust. This was not who Emilio was here for. This was collateral damage. The wails of the vampire he’d come to confront were nice all the same. That’s what it feels like, he thought viciously. Now you know. Lifting himself back up, he walked over to the second vampire and repeated the move, making more dust in the floor. It felt as empty as it always did, but there was still that moment of thrill. There was still that split second reprieve. It was all he ever really got these days.

—

Fang had been too busy with her own problems to fully study Emilio’s fighting, though she didn’t really do that, even if she wasn’t busy. The stolen glimpses did tell her that he wasn’t messing around. Dude was a slayer, all right, and he wasn’t a newbie. Might not even be one of those annoying locals she’d encounter once or twice. Those guys are the worst, especially since one of them stole her kill, her attempt to avenge her late mentor, the only reason she risked everything to come to this part of the world. What an asshole.

“Mexico, huh?” Fang raised an eyebrow, still using that gruff fake voice of hers. She took out a small digital camera, previously abandoned at Sara’s repair shop, now fixed (as fixed as she could make do) and working, to take some photographic evidence of the vampires they’ve just slain. Well, Emilio, mostly. But her client wouldn’t know that. Nor would they care. Most clients she had that wanted these damned things dead (again) tended to focus on that part, the part where the damned things were dead (again). Or finally. For the last time? “Glad I’m fast.”

Or at least she thought she was. Fang managed to take a quick shot of the one of the hench-vamps she’d neutralized but she only got the other hench-vamp’s leg, with the rest of that other guy’s body already dissolving into dust. It looked like a half-finished Photoshop attempt at removing the dead undead from the rest of the photo, but blurry as fuck. Oh, well. She had that guy’s other shoe from before anyway. Should work fine for the client. “Eh, should be fine,” she heaved a sigh and shrugged before stowing the camera away again. “So, that seems personal. Should I leave the room? So you guys can fuck?” It didn’t dawn on Fang that she forgot the rest of the phrase: “each other up”. Not that the other guy can do much with that broken leg anyway. Yikes.

—

He’d almost forgotten Fang was in the room at all. So focused on his empty vengeance, he’d let everything but himself and the vampires fade into the background. It was a stupid move, he knew; the kind of thing that got slayers killed. But Emilio didn’t much care about dying anymore, if he ever had at all. Not that it mattered much here. Fang didn’t want him dead. If she did, she would have left the room when they realized they were dealing with three vampires instead of one, would have just let him fend for himself. He still would have come out on top, but she wouldn’t have known it by looking at him.

Glancing back to her now as she seemed to take what one of the vampires said and roll it over in her mind, he shrugged. “Mexico,” he repeated with a nod, offering no further explanation. It wasn’t as if he could hide his country of origin; his accent was heavy enough to give him away. Anyone who knew dialect well enough could probably even pin it to a specific region. But the details of his story, the reason why he did what he did, why Mexico mattered… That was just for him. Him and the bastard whimpering in the floor a few feet away.

Emilio turned back to it, rolling his eyes as Fang spoke. “Stay or leave,” he replied. “I won’t be long.” He didn’t think the vampire knew anything. If it had, it would have said something, would have used it as a bargaining chip to save its friends. “Do you need anything else from this one?” He didn’t care about her bounty, but she had given him a helping hand in that fight. He wouldn’t dust the last vampire until she was ready for it. That’d be enough to repay whatever debt he owed her for her help here.

—

“Nah, I’m good,” Fang simply shrugged after taking a quick photo of the last vamp. She had spent days on this job, though mostly on the tracking part. Fortunately, he slaying was made easier by this guy from Mexico apparently. Real class act. At least according to what Fang had seen with her own eyes after this first encounter. No sexist remarks about her thicc thighs or whatever. Not that anyone has ever had the balls to make those remarks, considering she ran around with half her face masked by a demonic visage and with an actual katana. Ball busting would not have been just a phrase. “I’m good…”

Fang took a look around the apartment as she tried to buy time for her mind to once again become uncluttered. Whatever this Emilio guy had with these vamps, it seemed personal. More importantly, that meant he wouldn’t try to fight her for the bounty, right? He’d said as much, and acted like he wouldn’t, but Fang never did trust these gaijin slayers like she did her old band, even though she was a gaijin herself and most of the time the only gaijin at play. There were a few things that seemed valuable, but her pride prevented her from taking anything of the sort. It wouldn’t have looked cool. Definitely not as cool as this Emilio guy and his personal revenge thing was. “I got the photos. Thanks for those, by the way.”

As she started to walk toward the door, having turned her back on him without any hesitation, Fang kept her wits about her. Just in case he tried to do something funny. Like take her out for the bounty that he wouldn’t even know how to cash in probably. She’d been betrayed by slayers in this town before. It wouldn’t have been surprising if Emilio followed in those assholes’ footsteps. With one foot already out the door, she called out to him one final time, fuck that last vamp if it heard him. It’d be dead anyway soon. “You ever hear of a similar bounty, keep me in mind, all right?” Fang took a business card from her pocket, with nothing on it but three different phone numbers, clearly of burner phones. “A girl’s gotta pay her rent.”

—

She was good, and that was all he needed to know. Ignoring the final desperate pleas of the vampire, Emilio drove the stake home and watched as the monster dissolved into dust beneath his hands. And the world was still dark, even without that vampire in it. He still felt empty, but he’d known he would. He always did. Today, at least, he chose not to let it show. The other slayer had already seen a little more than he would have liked for her to see, already heard more than would have been ideal. He wasn’t going to give her any more than she’d gotten already.

Nodding at her thanks, he straightened up and kicked at the dust gathering in the floor, sending it scattering. “No problem. Glad you got what you needed.” He didn’t care anything about bounties, but it was clear she did. So long as she never got in his way — and so long as none of the bounties she was after were people he gave a shit about — there’d be no problems between them.

Looking towards the door as she called back to him, he nodded to the now-empty apartment. “Sure thing,” he replied. “I hear of any bounties, you’re my first call.” It probably wasn’t true. If Emilio heard of any bounties, he was more likely to immediately forget it. But it would be a good idea to keep her number on file anyway. If he was going to stay in this town, he’d need to keep track of the slayers in it. For better or worse.

#‧⋇⊶⊰ para ⊱⊷⋇‧#emilio ✦ cortez #‧⋇⊶⊰ season ✦ one ⊱⊷⋇‧#‧⋇⊶⊰ s1 ✦ canaries ⊱⊷⋇‧#slayin' alive ✦ slayin' alive #wickedswriting #quick banner in photoshop made me cringe #i'm so sorry for committing an art crime against you bex

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zofiawithaz · 1 year

Text

Nowhere Left To Aim || Emilio & Sofie

PARTIES: Emilio @mortemoppetere& Sofie @sofiedupont

LOCATION: Nightfall Grove

TIMING: Very Early Morning

SUMMARY: Emilio got some intel that Sofie was in Oaxaca a few years back, and decides they need to have a conversation. It doesn’t go very well.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: mentions of violence, mentions of death, mentions of blood

She was on her way home for the night, the clicking of her heels against the sidewalk the only sound in the wee hours of the morning. She still had an hour or so until the sun crept it’s way over the horizon to force her back indoors, so she was enjoying a leisurely stroll in the cool pre-dawn air after an evening of revels at Dance Macabre. Sofie hummed to herself, a smile tugging at her lips.

Then that cool spring breeze carried with it the scent of someone. It wasn’t entirely surprising- some people did go out this early. She didn’t think much of it until she caught the same scent on the air a few minutes later. She tensed slightly, taking her pace a little quicker. Sofie probably should have let Metzli continue on to the stabbing portion of the lesson. Then she wouldn’t be trying not to look like she was running up the block in an eight hundred dollar pair of heels.

And that was when her shoe decided to fall off.

A veritable Cinderella on the run from some unknown thing that probably wasn’t a prince. A string of curses that began in French and twisted to Polish left her mouth as she hastily turned around to snatch up her shoe. No Louboutin left behind.

______________________________________________________________

Chasing ghosts was no unfamiliar thing for Emilio. He’d been looking for everyone and anyone who might have information on the massacre in Mexico since the day the massacre happened, as if turning everyone responsible to dust might make it easier to breathe. As if anything could. The methods got a little nasty sometimes, sure — pouring holy water down a vampire’s throat was hardly the kind of thing that could be considered polite — but it wasn’t as if the things he was killing hadn’t earned it. Maybe he took a little longer with them than he needed to, sometimes, but the way he saw it? They got off easy. Some people might consider it overkill, but those people had probably never seen their child murdered in the house they were supposed to be safe in. That was the kind of thing that changed a person’s perception a little.

And it got them talking, sometimes. A lot of what they said was bullshit, of course — he’d had plenty of them swear that they’d never even been the Mexico when he’d seen them participating in the massacre himself, smiles on their faces — but he liked to check it out just to make sure. Part of being a detective meant leaving no stone unturned, and while Emilio might sometimes half-ass it when it came to the petty jobs his clients brought in, he was pretty thorough when it came to taking out the people responsible for his daughter’s death. Call him selfish.

The last one he’d taken out had given him a name. A vampire who’d been in Mexico at the time, someone they said might have been involved with the ‘planning’ phase of the massacre. Sofie Du Pont. Emilio wasn’t sure how accurate the information might be, but he was bound and determined to find out. No one who shouldered any of the blame for what happened that day ought to be allowed to walk around, to live a life.

But… So far, Sofie Du Pont wasn’t setting off any alarm bells. She went dancing. She walked home. She didn’t even seem particularly physically imposing. Of course, if she was involved in the planning part of the massacre rather than the actual action of it, that didn’t mean much. The only way to figure out if that was true, he thought, was to talk to her.

And here was his opening. She lost her shoe, stopped to pick it up, and Emilio chose that moment to slink out from the shadows. He held a stake in hand, brandishing it as both a warning and a threat. “Sofie Du Pont,” he greeted hollowly. “I just want to talk. Don’t try to run. Not gonna get far in those shoes, I think.”

______________________________________________________________

Sofie’s heart plummeted somewhere six feet below her when she saw a man emerge from the shadows. A man with a stake. She was no fool- she couldn’t deal with a hunter on her own. Not when her only method of self defense was the stiletto heel in her hand. She was, to put it quite eloquently, fucked.

Her hand closed around the shoe as she took a slow step backward, slipping her foot out of the other shoe. If she was going to go down, it wouldn’t be stumbling along like a doe on ice. Sofie’s eyes didn’t lift from the pointed piece of wood in the hunters hand. “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of in heels.” It would usually be an attempt at humor, but the teasing tone she usually used dried up in her throat. Instead, her voice held a grim acceptance. She’d had a good three hundred years… if this was how it ended, at least she’d finish on a relatively good note.

“And you’ll find I talk much better when I’m not being stalked down by someone brandishing something like that.” The last word was spat out of her mouth like poison. She pointed to the stake. “Put it away, and you’ll find I’m much friendlier.” If he really did just want to chat, Sofie had to hope he’d be willing to make her at least a little more comfortable.

______________________________________________________________

“I’m sure,” he replied, still flat. She looked nervous. Did she recognize him, he wondered? If she had been involved in the planning of the massacre, it was safe to assume she’d figured the same thing everyone else had — that the attempt had been a one hundred percent effective one, that the Cortez family were efficiently wiped off the map. No one knew Emilio had survived but, if Sofie Du Pont really had played a part in it, she’d have to know who he was. Even if she didn’t know his face specifically, he carried enough Cortez in his features to make it simple enough to pick out. Couple that with the accent, and it had to be obvious.

Was that why she looked afraid now? Because something she’d done two years ago was coming back to bite her now? Or was it the natural fear of being met in a dark alley with something that could kill you? Emilio wondered, sometimes, why the undead were so afraid to die. Wasn’t it easier after you’d done it once? Didn’t it get to be something you wanted, after a while? He’d only been around for thirty-four years, and already he craved it more than he ought to. How could someone live for hundreds and still flinch at the thought?

He let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “I put this away, there’s not much stopping you from taking me out, is there? This puts us on even footing. Probably not what you’d prefer, but I can’t pretend I give a shit. But I won’t use it unless I have to. If that was what I was here for, I wouldn’t have started with a conversation. It’s like I said — I just want to talk.”

______________________________________________________________

It felt as though he were analyzing her. Any move she made could be misconstrued and that fact terrified her. She didn’t know what she did to warrant being stalked down on the street, and it wasn’t as though she had enough time to wait him out. Sunrise was only an hour off. Sofie slowly picked up the second shoe, prepared to bolt if she thought she’d have even half a chance.

Sofie gritted her teeth. In another lifetime, where she wasn’t so spectacularly cushy, he may have had a point. She probably would have been able to take him on in a fight, or not felt so damned squeamish about taking a bite. But in this world, the most she could hope for was that what Metzli had taught her would mean the difference between turning into a pile of ash and seeing dusk that evening if things went sideways.

“Well I wouldn’t want to get blood on my dress,” she sighed, hoping it came off as nonchalant. It didn’t. “It’s so difficult to get stains out of silk.” Sofie took another step back, providing herself some much needed distance. What would the few people she had befriended since arriving in town think, if she just vanished? What would Cassius think? Would they think she’d just left? Would anyone mourn her at all? “Who are you and what do you want? It’s not polite to stalk young women late at night.”

Was this the same way her family had felt before they’d been slayed? Sofie wondered. She shook the thought from her head and tried to focus on surviving this conversation.

______________________________________________________________

There was a certain art to being a lone slayer. Unless you were good at it, you wouldn’t survive the experience for very long. There was a lot of balance to it, a lot of intimidation, and a healthy dose of bending the truth. It started with small things. Emilio made sure she hadn’t seen him approach so that she couldn’t clock his limp. He held himself carefully so as not to make it obvious that he carried most of his weight on his right leg while the left was essentially decorative. He maintained a defensive stance, as if he was ready to leap into action at any moment.

Most slayers could keep up with a vampire who ran from them but, for Emilio, that wasn’t always true. That was okay. He didn’t need to be able to outpace her. He only needed her to think he could. If she didn’t think she stood a chance at getting away, she’d be much less likely to try. It was an art, a balance. And it was one of the only things left that Emilio was actually good at.

“So I’ve heard,” he replied, still in that same flat, absent tone. He clicked his tongue as she took a step back, twirling the stake deliberately as if in warning. “Wouldn’t call it stalking. And wouldn’t call you young. It’s like I said, I’m here to talk. Specifically, about San Agustín Etla, Oaxaca. You were there in 2021, no? Spent some time there.”

______________________________________________________________

Her shoulders tensed, watching as he twirled the stake in his hands. Was it all just a game to him? She supposed it probably was. Slayers probably kept tallies of how many beasts they took down, swapping grizzly stories with all their slayer buddies. Telling glorious tales of how they saved humanity from the things that go bump in the night. But Sofie wasn’t a monster… or at least that’s what she told herself. She was cultured. She enjoyed things of beauty, works of literature, artistic masterpieces- she would rather sink her teeth into a good story than another person’s throat. Not when there were easier, more dignified ways to obtain what she needed to survive.

“And how would you know how old I am, Monsieur?” She sneered. To all the world she looked young. Barely out of her mid twenties. Just how much did this man know of her life? “You seem to know my name, and haven’t been kind enough to tell me your own. You will find I’m much more cooperative when I’m shown a bit of respect.”

The ‘No’ had began to form on her tongue in response when she realized she had been in Oaxaca at that time. She had been low on money, and needed to sell something big. And the only thing that she had found that gained the interest of buyers with impossibly deep pockets were things that no one else in the world had. Missing works of art were one of those things, and Sofie was in possession of quite a few. Time forgot what happened to some pieces, especially when they were gifted to people who never died.

She’d been selling off a Bracquemond piece for a rather large sum of money, and had been more than happy to travel if it meant a few extra zeros at the end of the paycheck. “I was,” she said slowly. “I had business. What of it?”

______________________________________________________________

“Call it a hunch.” The same vampire who’d given him her name had made it abundantly clear that she was, at the very least, older than Emilio. He wasn’t sure by how much, but he knew her age didn’t quite match up with her appearance. That was another thing that had always bothered him, just a little, about the undead. There was an undeniable manipulative aspect in their inability to age, a quiet way of tricking people into seeing them as something they weren’t. A girl in her twenties instead of a woman with fangs and claws, someone in danger instead of someone dangerous. Despite the stake in his hand, Emilio knew he didn’t have as much of an upper hand here as he might like to think. He never did. There was a reason so few slayers made it to old age, a reason Emilio making it to his thirties had felt like a miracle by itself. Maybe some supernatural creatures feared hunters, but at the end of the day? They were born to be cannon fodder. They were all dead from the beginning.

He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes at her. Did she really not know his name, or was this part of the act? Normally, he’d be more capable of deciphering it. He was good at reading people, most of the time. But… When it came to the massacre, most of Emilio’s skills went out the window. The grief that existed around it was like an ocean, so vast and endless that nothing within it could survive treading water forever. “I don’t owe you my name,” he decided. If she didn’t know it already, she didn’t need to.

And there it was. Confirmation. She was in Mexico at the time of the massacre. Now, the question remained as to why. What was the ‘business’ she’d had there? Plotting the systematic murder of civilians, of children? His jaw clenched, and he clenched his free hand into a fist, digging fingernails into his palm to keep himself grounded in the present. Too much thinking, and he’d be back there. Transported to that house, to those bodies, to his daughter’s blood on the soles of his shoes.

“What business?” His voice was raw now, sounding less angry than he would have liked for it to. Instead, there was a hint of something a little too real to it, something a little too close to the grief that clawed its way into his chest years ago and never left. It took up residence behind his ribs and claimed squatters rights, and he’d found nothing that could evict it yet. Would killing her do it, if she were really one of the ones responsible for what had happened? Emilio knew the answer. He pretended not to, anyway. “Don’t — Don’t try to lie to me. I’ll know if you lie to me, so what business?”

______________________________________________________________

In the moments between words spoken, Sofie’s mind whirred with potential ways out. She could scream for help, and hope that someone was nearby to see a young woman in danger. Of course, it was possible he had a friend nearby for backup that would come help him instead. Or worse, some normal person would try to come to her aid, and by the time they got to her she’d be a pile of dust with a stake on top. She refocused when he started speaking again. “You’re right, you don’t owe me a name. But it’s how conversations work. And that’s what you said we were having.” Conversations were civil. Conversation implied she wouldn’t be dead before dawn. Or so she hoped

There was a palpable shift. One that had fear sinking deep into Sofie’s bones. The set of his jaw, the raw, lost sound in his voice. This was a man with nothing left to lose. The recognition sent her skittering back another inch. Realizing her mistake, she stepped forward the inch, her eyes still locked on the stake.

“I sell antiques.” She cursed herself silently for the tremor in her voice. Sofie cleared her throat, and rolled her shoulders back. She would make it out of this. “I had traveled there to sell an expensive piece that I’d had in my collection for a long time. I didn’t have anywhere to stay, and I knew of a clan nearby. They let me stay with them while I conducted my deal, and when it was finished, I returned to the States.” She forced her eyes to move up to his face so he could see the truth in them. “I was only there for three days.”

______________________________________________________________

“Plenty of conversations happen without it. This one can, too.” If there was one thing Emilio could be called, it was stubborn. He was a difficult man to convince to do something he didn’t want to do, particularly in a situation like this one where he felt that bending to another person’s will would lose him what little upper hand he had.

Antiques. His eyes burned as they studied her face, looking for any sign that she might be lying. There was a tremor in her voice, small but present. She steeled herself against it like it was a physical thing, rolling her shoulders and holding her head up high, and Emilio wanted to scream. He wanted to rip the fucking world in two. She sold antiques. She was in Mexico, staying with a clan she happened to know and selling her fucking antiques, and his daughter was dying in the living room floor with her blood coating someone else’s fingernails.

“That was nice of them,” he bit out, like every word was made of gravel, like it hurt to have them forced between his teeth. “Letting you stay. How kind. How —” He broke off with a trembling breath, and he didn’t know if it was rage or grief that ended the thought prematurely. He wasn’t entirely sure there was a difference. “June 27th. Were you there? Were you staying with that nice clan then? Enjoying your vacation, selling your antiques? Shooting the shit, making friends? Did they — Did they tell you their big plans for that week? How they were going to go out on the town, have a few laughs, and kill every goddamn person they came across? People going to the market, people visiting their families, people putting their kids to bed?” It was his voice that was trembling now, breaking on the last word in a way he tried to cover up by snapping his mouth shut as quickly as he could. His hands were shaking a little more than they usually did, heart beating faster than it was meant to. She was only there for three days. He still felt as though he’d never left. There was something almost funny about it.

He gripped the stake a little tighter, though it felt more like a security blanket than a weapon at this point. He wasn’t going to kill her with it; he didn’t think he ever really was. It was there because it was something to hold on to. “You said you knew them,” he said, the words tumbling out with a desperation that hadn’t been there before. “How? How well? Where are they now? Tell me — Tell me anything I can fucking use, for fuck’s sake.”

______________________________________________________________

No matter how much she tried to steel herself, nothing could prepare her for the torrent of anger that spewed forth from the hunter. Sofie shrunk back against the wave of words, wincing as they crashed over her. Every syllable struck home to remind her that he thought she was a monster. That she was a monster. That any crumb of humanity within her had, in his opinion, faded into oblivion the moment blood passed through her lips. And if he was right, if she was a beast, did that mean she had to die? After all, lions roamed the savanna, stalking their prey. Bears and wildcats lived in forests- wolves too. All of them ate their prey to survive. Those beasts nature had seen fit to create all killed to survive. And nature, in its twisted fashion, had seen it fit to create vampires too. If that was the case, she was only doing what she had to to survive. She could not be blamed for her nature. Even if she loathed the feeling of being an apex predator and drank from crystal glasses and cardboard cups, she still did what she had to to survive.

“I didn’t know.” Her voice held a quiet horror. “I didn’t know, I swear I did not.” Sofie shook her head, trying to shake the thought of a family slain from her head. The more she tried, the more it reminded her of her own, her sire, her little found family that she had held so dear, all nothing but dust. All returned to the earth because of men like him. Men who ended what they did not understand, even if it did no real harm. Anger all her own began to boil inside her. She held on tight to that anger. It would serve her far better than cowering on the street in the face of death like a frightened rabbit. He wanted a monster to looks at? She would give him one. She felt her teeth sharpen into the long fangs of a vampire, knew her eyes turned blood red instead of chocolate brown.

“I knew of them.” She hissed. “A friend of my brother’s from a century before had traveled with them. I needed somewhere to stay so I wouldn’t be burned.” Her eyes flicker to the sky as it had slowly started to turn into the deep purple-pink of dawn. “I concluded my business on the twenty-fifth. I was halfway to San Diego by dawn on the twenty seventh.” Sofie, allowing herself to be brave, took back the first step she’d given up. She would stay there and hold the line she’d drawn in the sand for herself. “I’m sorry but you have the wrong monster, Monsieur. I do not know anything of their plans, any names, or where they might be. I enjoy comfort, not needless slaughter. Perhaps do some more research before accusing an innocent.” She spat the words out. She knew the moment the last of her anger fizzled up, she’d regret the words and be a mess, but for that moment, she was bolder than she had a right to be.

______________________________________________________________

The idea that she hadn’t known was somehow worse than the belief that she had. It was horrifying, the implication of it. That the murder of his family, the death of his daughter, the end of his world as a whole had been such a tiny blip on the clan’s radar that, mere days before it happened, they hadn’t even bothered discussing the plan. How could an event that tore his life to shreds be so insignificant to the world? How was it fair that his entire goddamn universe had bled out on the floor while the rest of the world spun on none the wiser?

“You were with them for three days. How could you not know?” Did it matter so little to her who she stayed with? Was a roof over her head a good enough thing that she didn’t care who was offering it? At a certain point, the ignorance had to be willful, didn’t it? It had to be intentional. You closed your eyes to something because you wanted to, because it didn’t affect you. It was someone else’s daughter dying in her father’s arms, someone else’s nephew choking on his own blood in the streets, so why bother thinking about it? Why bother processing it at all?

He saw the anger replace the fear in her eyes, and it was better that way. It was what he wanted. Anger was always so much easier to swallow, so much easier to understand. You could turn anger into a tangible thing, could use it to hit something and tell yourself it made things better. “Comfort,” he repeated flatly, the word like ash on his tongue. “Of course. Mala mía. I hope you enjoyed your comfort, then, in the company of men planning their slaughter. I hope they put you up in a nice room, gave you soft sheets while they discussed the best way to rip a child’s breath from her lungs. You can enjoy your comfort. But the least you could do, I think, is acknowledge who gave it to you. You’re angry with me for accusing you? You want to talk about innocents? Your comfort those three days you spent selling your antiques, it was given to you by hands soaked in the blood of children. Maybe you don’t enjoy needless slaughter, but it’s safe to say you’ve benefited from it. In those days. In others, too, if this sort of self-righteous ignorancia is one you carry with you all the time. How many clans have you stayed with for your comfort that you knew little about? Probably more than one, no? You think they were all kind and innocent? I promise you they weren’t. La ignorancia no es inocencia. Closing your eyes to things does not make you innocent. It only makes you complacent.”

Jaw clenched so tightly it hurt now, he tossed the stake on the ground between them. The thump of the wood hitting the concrete seemed to echo through the empty street, though Emilio could hardly hear it over the pounding of his own heart. He took a step back, clearing an easy path for her to slip by him. “You’d better go, then. I would hate for your comfort to be sacrificed. Maybe you can find someone to stay with. I’m sure there’s a nice vampire nearby just finishing off whatever toddler they’ve decided to snack on tonight. If you squint, I’m sure you can just miss the blood on their teeth.”

______________________________________________________________

Sofie was going to be sick. The more he went on, the more fear and anger waged war inside her. Anger had won out for a moment, but fear and a wave of guilt still swirled in her chest like a hurricane. Her Spanish was elementary at best. She’d barely spoken with her hosts those three days, and when they had it had been in French, and only about what had happened to her clan. No one there had told her what their plans were. She wasn’t one of theirs, so why would she need to know? It didn’t excuse the fact that the man’s family was dead. She hoped it was some grand mistake. That it wasn’t the same clan, that someone had got it wrong. Because if she’d been there when they’d been planning that…

“In case you couldn’t tell,” She said, her anger starting to fizzle out “I speak French. And Polish. We didn’t talk much.” The last of her anger surging to win the battle inside her, she continued. “I was not one of theirs. They didn’t discuss their deeds with the likes of me, so I didn’t have a fucking clue. I wasn’t one of their clan. Mine were killed by jebane dranie like you. Potwór.” It was somewhere between a hiss and a sob, but she forced herself to steel her emotions once more. Just a little longer Zofia, Sofie told herself. Just a little longer. “Not that you give a damn. We’re all the same to you. Just another head to mount on your wall like a fucking trophy. Is it so easy to forget we were once human too? If it brings you comfort, Monsieur, I would not have stayed with them if I’d known they were planning that. My clan didn’t operate like that. But they’re all gone because of potwór- monsters- like you. So you’re not the only one who’s lost someone to the things that go bump in the night.”

She watched the stake roll in a circle on the ground, mere inches away from her. She looked up at him, her eyes still simmering. She didn’t trust him to pull out another stake and strike her down as she passed. She took one step backward, then another, keeping her face to him. Then, Sofie turned to run.

______________________________________________________________

“And you were blind, too, is that it? There were clues. You don’t need to speak a language to see.” She was there. That was all that mattered to him. Not that she hadn’t understood any of it, not that she didn’t know what they were planning, but that she was there. When she spoke of his own clan, he let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “And how old were they when they died, your clan? What did they have for breakfast that morning? They’d already gotten more years than they should have, already kept it going by drinking blood. Maybe they didn’t deserve to die, I don’t know. But you won’t see me call it a tragedy. My daughter was four. She got four years of a life. She ate oatmeal for breakfast. She never hurt anyone. You want me to feel bad for something someone I never met did years before I was born? People you stayed with three days before ripped my child’s throat out in her living room. I won’t grieve for what you’ve lost. I won’t pity you for your ignorance.”

It was the first time he’d said as much in two years, the first time he’d even mentioned Flora aloud since her death. Funny, what rage could do when mixed with grief. Funny in the worst kind of way. “If you were all the same to me, I would have killed you before you knew I was there. I asked you. I asked. You don’t get to accuse me of being a monster for making you realize you broke bread with them. And you don’t get to pretend to understand what I’ve lost. You want to tell yourself you faced a big, bad monster in the night, you do that. You go, you tell everyone how brave you are. And you do it knowing that you found your comfort under their roof, and you benefited from it. I never said I wasn’t a monster. I never said I was innocent. You’re the one going around and saying that.”

He was breathing heavy by the time she finally turned to run, heart pounding like he’d just run a marathon. It felt like he had, like he was still trying to claw his way to the finish line. He watched her disappear down the street, and he felt empty. He wasn’t sure why he’d let himself believe, even for a second, that he was capable of feeling anything else.

#mortemoppetere #c; emilio cortez #thread: nowhere left to aim

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iceflwers · 5 months

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𝓿𝓪𝓵𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓪 “𝓻𝓲𝓪” 𝓬𝓸𝓻𝓽𝓮𝔃 !

˚✧ ₊˚ʚ THE BASICS !

— ❥ FULL NAME: Valeria Amelia Cortez.

— ❥ NICKNAMES: Ria (most commonly used, professional name), Songbird, Birdie, mija, corazón, America’s Sweetheart, love (by Nico only), baby (by Nico only), schatz (by Nico only).

— ❥ DATE OF BIRTH: July 10th, 1999 (Cancer).

— ❥ BIRTHPLACE: Lexington, Kentucky, USA.

— ❥ CURRENT RESIDENCE: Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

— ❥ SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English, Spanish.

— ❥ ORIENTATION: Biromantic, bisexual.

— ❥ GENDER IDENTITY: Cisgender female (she/her pronouns).

— ❥ OCCUPATION: Country singer-songwriter.

— ❥ FACECLAIM: Rachel Zegler.

˚✧ ₊˚ʚ PERSONALITY !

— ❥ HOGWARTS HOUSE: Ravenclaw (intelligent, creative, wise).

— ❥ MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE: ESFP - The Entertainer (bold, enthusiastic, sensitive).

— ❥ ENNEAGRAM TYPE: Type Seven - The Enthusiast (spontaneous, high-spirited, practical).

— ❥ MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good.

— ❥ LOVE LANGUAGES: Quality time for receiving, physical touch for giving.

— ❥ SKILLS: Singing, playing acoustic guitar, playing electric guitar, playing piano and keyboard, dancing, songwriting, cooking, has a quick wit, speed writing, outfit coordination, hair styling.

— ❥ LIKES: Playing her guitar and singing, captivating an audience, cuddling with her cat, playing music and dancing around her living room, going to hockey games, spending time with her family and friends, making people laugh, cooking for the people she loves.

— ❥ DISLIKES: Any kind of bigots or discrimination, black coffee, having things thrown to her with little or no warning, horror movies, having to use a pencil that’s been chewed on, bad hair days, impatient people, people who dislike cats.

— ❥ FEARS/PHOBIAS: Snakes, heights, needles, accidentally eating something she’s allergic to without realizing, bears.

˚✧ ₊˚ʚ RELATIONSHIPS !

— ❥ FAMILY: Susan Cortez (mother), Emilio Cortez (father), Ellen Hughes (maternal aunt), Jim Hughes (maternal uncle by marriage), Quinn Hughes (maternal first cousin), Jack Hughes (maternal first cousin), Luke Hughes (maternal first cousin).

— ❥ FRIENDS: Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, Dawson Mercer, Elias Petterson, Lainey Wilson, Megan Moroney, Curtis Lazar.

— ❥ ACQUAINTANCES: Jamie Drysdale, Maddie Font, Tae Kerr, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Thatcher Demko, Dan Smyers, Shay Mooney, Brock Boeser, John Marino, Kelly Clarkson.

— ❥ ROMANTIC INTERESTS: Mary Jane Fromme (first crush), Charlie Hodgins (first boyfriend), Reese Carney (ex-boyfriend), Emily Jackson (ex-girlfriend), David Kelly (brief fling), Brian Waller (brief fling), Luna Marlowe (brief fling), John Marino (brief crush), Nico Hischier (current romantic interest).

˚✧ ₊˚ʚ FUN FACTS !

— ❥ Ria’s first album after getting signed to a label at just nineteen, which was self-titled and consisted of songs about her upbringing in Kentucky, spent two weeks at the top of the country charts and even made it onto the Billboard chart very shortly after being released.

— ❥ After Luke was drafted, making all three of her cousins officially NHL players, Ria wrote and released a single titled “The Sound of Skates,” as a tribute to her three best friends and the sport of hockey itself.

— ❥ Ever since she received a platform after the success of her first album, Ria has been an outspoken advocate for things like gender equality, police brutality, and more inclusion of queer people and people of color in the country genre. She hasn’t always been popular with record execs and bigger names in the genre because of it, but she hasn’t been fired and it’s never stopped her yet.

— ❥ Having grown up watching movie musicals with her mother, who loves them, Ria has dreams of putting another notch in her musical belt by performing on a Broadway stage one day. In interviews and on Instagram Live, she has expressed her desire to play either Roxie Hart in Chicago or a gender-swapped Orpheus in Hadestown.

— ❥ Since moving to Nashville for her music career, Ria has actually become a big fan of the Predators, and goes to as many of their home games as she can. She has even worn a Preds jersey to a few Canucks or Devils games she’s gone to for her cousins, just to have some fun with them - in fact, she was wearing one when she went to the Devils game where she first met Nico, and later she jokes that it’s a miracle he ever wanted to date her at all if that was the first thing he ever saw her wearing.

tagging @lovings4turn, @hiya-itsamber, & @theopenlocker !

#౨ৎ ─┈ oc profiles !#‧₊˚✩ ─┈ ria !#valeria cortez #oc profile #rpf oc #nhl oc #nhl x oc #nico hischier x oc

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mortemoppetere · 5 months

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EMILIO CORTEZ + PERSONALITY

He choked on another laugh. It sounded strangled, unnatural, like a sound an animal might make instead of something that came from a person. There was something funny about that thought, too. He was a blade, or a dog, or a beast, or anything but a man. Something sharp, something with deadly teeth. He didn’t know how to be anything else, didn’t know how to be anything better.

#( king of a kingdom of dirt // face )#( a river of stones // inspiration )#wickedscontent

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faustianbroker · 1 month

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TIMING: Recent LOCATION: The Jones residence PARTIES: Leviathan (@faustianbroker) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Levi finally emerges from the basement, and runs into Emilio in the house. They have some things to discuss. CONTENT WARNINGS: none.

—

If it was the type to be dramatic, Leviathan would complain that it'd been down in that basement for what felt like an eternity… and actually, it was, so it had. Eventually though, the demon did conjure the strength to return itself to its human form, and not finding any remaining wounds that would threaten its life, it finally walked up those stairs on two legs instead of four.

Opening the door, Levi squinted against the light. It was early evening and a warm golden glow filtered in through the large living room windows that faced the sea, and the sight brought a smile to its face. Unsure about who might be around in the home, Levi made its way toward its old bedroom to get some clothes, slowly climbing the steps to the second story of the home, pausing halfway to rest.

As it crested the top of the staircase, it heard a sound. A lazy glance was thrown down the hall, away from the double doors to the master bedroom in front of which it now stood, hand sitting still on the handle. That blank stare turned into something more like a smirk as it saw a familiar silhouette moving out of Teddy’s room and into the hall, stopping when it was noticed. “Emilio,” it said in a friendly tone, pushing down on the handles and letting the doors swing wide as it stepped inside.

The room was just as it had been left nearly a year ago, and Levi moved to the dresser, pleased to find that its clothing still filled the drawers. Grabbing a few items to help make it a bit more decent, it was pulling the shirt on over its head when it heard that uneven gait come to a stop in front of the open doorway. It looked Emilio’s way again, wondering how much Teddy had talked to him about… everything. Would he still be as mad as he was when Leviathan had left? There was only one way to find out.

“Enjoying the fruits and comforts of my labor?” it asked him with another knowing smile, something dark flashing across its expression. It certainly wasn't ever going to be above giving someone a hard time, least of all the hunter that had threatened it several times.

—

Since Teddy’s announcement that Levi was back, Emilio had felt a little like he existed upon the backdrop of a ticking clock. It wasn’t that he thought Teddy’s father was going to kill him — they might have had their disagreements when Levi had left, but at the end of the day, Emilio liked to think they both understood that those disagreements had come from a place of wanting what was best for Teddy — but he doubted that his life would remain as it had been for the last few months.

Moving in with Teddy hadn’t been a plan so much as a quiet manipulation, with Teddy insisting upon its necessity while Emilio’s apartment was trapped beneath goo and both of them pretending not to understand that it was no longer necessary when the goo dispersed. From where he stood, it felt a natural thing. But from Levi’s point of view? It was probably a little jarring to come back to your kid living in your house with a guy they’d at least pretended to hate the last time you saw them.

So, he figured it was only a matter of time before Levi sent him packing. It was lucky he’d kept the apartment in Worm Row; he wouldn’t mind going back there, even if it was saddled with memories of things he’d probably be better off forgetting. He hoped Teddy wouldn’t feel the need to move with him; they’d be better off staying with their father in the nice, big house. He really hoped they wouldn’t try to convince him to move onto their boat with them. Emilio loved Teddy, but living on that damn boat certainly sounded like a level of Hell he wasn’t ready for just yet.

In any case, it was probably easier to rip off the bandage quickly rather than dragging it out. When he heard Levi moving around out of the basement (which he’d largely been avoiding under the illusion of giving the demon space), he made his way dutifully towards the noise. Levi called his name and he hesitated, hanging in the doorway as it made its way into its room. He watched it pull a shirt over its head, made note of its movements. It was clearly in some amount of pain. He wasn’t entirely sure on the details of its return, but the fact that it had spent the time since in the basement instead of bothering everyone in the main house probably spoke of some physical damage there.

In spite of everything, he raised a brow as it addressed him. “What labor? I don’t think much work went into all this.” His tone was flat, though there was the slightest hint of amusement to it. He was trying, in any case. Even if Levi evicting him was unavoidable, he’d like to keep things as civil as they could be for Teddy’s sake.

—

It really wanted nothing more than to go out the back of the house and down to the edge of the sea. While changing its form again was going to be off the table for a while until it had fully recovered, it could still enjoy the waves and salty breeze that came off of them. But in due time, because there were more pressing matters standing in its doorway right now. Turning to face Emilio fully, Leviathan held a hand over its chest in feigned offense.

“Excuse me, I’ll have you know it’s very tiring work talking people out of all their worldly possessions,” the demon answered with a grin, allowing the humor to shine through whatever antagonistic reflex had been there before. “But it’s a burden I’m happy to bear. Only the best for my darling Teddy,” it added with a hint of challenge in its tone, its dark gaze raking over Emilio like it was sizing him up and determining if he was best for the spellcaster. It stepped toward him, still very obviously casting some unknown, silent judgment in its head.

“I asked you to take care of them for me… I see you took your duty very seriously.” It narrowed its eyes at the hunter, but there wasn’t any malice in that gaze. Quiet curiosity, maybe… trying to figure out what had changed their relationship from barely tolerating one another to… whatever it was they liked to call themselves these days. To the hunter moving in with Teddy. To Teddy confessing their intent to marry him. While Leviathan was loath to deny Teddy anything that they wanted, it did want to make sure that Emilio was earnest and honest about this relationship. After all, the hunter had been a bit more loose the last time they’d crossed paths… and even though it’d been over a year ago, Levi hadn’t forgotten that night at the bar, or how the two of them had ended up here that night, in this very bed. As much as it might want to, now that Emilio was sharing a bed with its child.

—

Levi seemed to take to the humor well enough, and Emilio wondered if he ought to be relieved. He didn’t particularly want to make an enemy out of a demon — the still-healing scars on his arms and legs left by Aesil itched at the thought — but he certainly didn’t want to make an enemy out of Teddy’s father. It was clear, in every word Teddy spoke about their father, that they both loved and respected Levi. What would they say if it disapproved of Emilio’s presence in their life? They loved him, he knew that. But their father’s displeasure would weigh on them, and Emilio couldn’t imagine that he was capable of outweighing a thing like that.

Levi’s mention of Teddy now sewed more tension between Emilio’s shoulderblades, uncertainty clinging to him in a way that felt utterly unfamiliar. He’d never been in a situation where he needed to impress a significant other’s parents. The only real committed relationship he’d had before Teddy was Juliana, and her father had been mostly indifferent. Emilio had had a last name that carried enough of a reputation to satisfy him. But if anything, that same name worked against him where Levi was concerned. He had no idea if his family’s reputation was a thing the demon was aware of at all but if it was, it probably wasn’t something it viewed positively. Only the best probably wasn’t the kind of thing that Emilio fell into. He knew that.

He shifted his weight, defensiveness crawling up his back as he tried to force it down. Snapping at Levi probably wasn’t his best bet here. “Wouldn’t have let anything happen to them either way,” he said carefully, and he meant it. Even if Teddy had never returned his feelings, even if they decided to end what was between them now, Emilio would do everything he could do to keep them safe. That wasn’t because of any promise he’d made to Levi, though he thought it might be better not to reveal that part. “I know this probably isn’t what you wanted for them.” Flora had never gotten old enough for Emilio to even consider worrying about who she might one day decide to date, but he imagined he’d have wanted the best for her, anyway. Someone better than him, in any case. But… “I think they’re happy. With me. For… whatever that’s worth.”

—

Levi only hummed at Emilio’s insistence that he’d still have protected Teddy either way, not fully believing him, but deciding it wasn’t worth bringing into question. Hypothetical situations served no purpose here, and Emilio had taken care of Teddy, which was all Leviathan had asked of him.

It moved around Emilio, very much like a shark circling its prey in the water, brows rising when the hunter admitted that he knew he might not be what Leviathan had envisioned for its ward. The demon clicked its tongue, coming to a stop in front of Emilio again. “That remains to be seen,” it offered, cocking its head to one side and listening as the other tried to explain that it felt like Teddy was happy.

“It could be worth a lot,” Levi responded, turning its back on Emilio to move to the dresser again, snatching up an elastic from the top of it and pulling back its long hair. “Are you happy with them? Do you feel content to be the keeper of their heart? Only their heart?” It sighed. “I know it’s a long-standing human cliche for the parent that still needs convincing to threaten violence, and while I don’t like being predictable, I think we’re both already well aware of… situations that could arise.” It looked at him hard, expression stoic for only a few seconds before it smiled again. “But I don’t want to get caught up in hypotheticals. Just tell me how you feel.”

–

It was hard not to tense as Levi circled him. Emilio turned his head, following it with his eyes as best he could to avoid having his back turned on it. He wasn’t sure whether or not he genuinely thought Levi was an active threat. Paranoia played up every look the demon gave him, reminded him how easily it could get rid of him if it wanted to… but logic dictated that it probably didn’t want to. He had done what it asked, after all, and it wasn’t as if Teddy didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. They loved him; no part of him doubted that.

The question, of course, was about what Levi felt. It seemed willing to at least give Emilio a chance, which felt like some relief. There was still the matter of the living situation — the slayer found it doubtful that Levi wouldn’t kick him out of the house, even if just for fun — but that was less important than the rest of it.

The fact that it turned its back on him offered some relief, too, some quiet idea that it must at least not distrust him enough to assume he’d make a physical attack against it. Emilio relaxed a little, though it was impossible for him to relax entirely. He considered Levi’s question, weighing it in his mind. Happy was a big word. Over all, he wasn’t sure it was one he could apply to himself. But where Teddy was concerned… “There’s nobody else for me.” Teddy was it, as far as Emilio was concerned. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, nodding. “I won’t bullshit you,” he offered. “Never been one for that. Can’t say I’ll never do anything to upset them. We both know who I am. What I am. We both know I’ll be the one going out before they do, and we both know it’s better that way. But… I’d never break their heart on purpose. That’s a promise I can make. When it’s something I can control, I want to give them what they need.”

—

It was a good answer, as far as these things went. Clearly honest, as it didn’t paint Emilio as a glowing beacon of light when they both knew there were shadows that enshrined him (and his ilk) that would never be shaken off. But Leviathan was nothing if not used to the shadows, and by extension, Teddy was too. It was one thing to have to impress a guardian that was lawful and good, but a greater demon? Honestly, Emilio had a better shot with Levi than he might have with anyone else. It was just that the stakes were higher, if he were to fuck up. Instead of angry phone calls, it would be annihilation. You win some, you lose some.

The demon nodded. “I believe you,” it said in a low, even tone. “And I want you to remember that I am what they need. They said it themself, down in that basement.” It lowered its chin. “I am the paterfamilias. I had to leave to protect them, and now I have come back to protect them.” From what, it would not — could not — say. But the sentiment was what mattered: Leviathan would not be separated from Teddy again, come hell or high water. And Emilio, though the demon had no reason to believe he would attempt to separate them, would suffer the same fate as anyone else inserting themselves where they did not belong. That was the message, and it hoped that it was conveyed clearly.

With that out of the way, Levi slipped into a familiar role, one that was easier for all those around it to engage with. It cleared its throat and clapped Emilio roughly on the shoulder, letting out a short, barking laugh. “Well then, Cortez—welcome to the family. You know, I half expected to have to kick the both of you out of my room,” it added, gesturing at the bedroom they were standing in. “But I see Teddy was far too sentimental for that. That’s good. It could have been awkward.” It raised a brow, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man still expected to be removed from the household. And it would let him continue to think that for as long as the charade amused it.

—

He watched the demon’s face, trying to determine if his statement had been well received. It was difficult to tell, with Levi. It had had centuries upon centuries to perfect its poker face, after all, and while Teddy might have known it well enough to see through the smooth, careful expression it wore, Emilio didn’t. All he could do was guess at the thoughts that might be going through the demon’s mind, and he’d never enjoyed guessing. Emilio liked to have clear, concise answers. Anything less made his palms itch.

So it was a relief, the way Levi stated its belief in his claim as a simple matter of fact. He wasn’t sure he liked the follow up — Levi being something Teddy needed around wasn’t a thing he could argue with, but he didn’t like the idea of needing to trust the demon to stick around when Teddy needed it. He kept that uncertainty to himself, though. If Levi was telling the truth, if both leaving and returning had been designed to keep Teddy safe, then it had proven it would do what was best for Teddy. Emilio was reckless, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with the demon and risk his death in this hallway, even if only because he knew Teddy would feel guilty for it.

Then, Levi seemed to relax. It cleared its throat, it clapped his shoulder, it laughed, and Emilio surmised that the ‘threat’ part of the conversation was over. He still didn’t relax entirely, but then, he rarely did. He raised a brow at Levi’s statement, eyes darting to glance to the room behind it. “Yeah,” he said flatly, “I wasn’t really looking to move in there.” He had no desire to share a bed with Teddy in their father’s room, for… many reasons, really. Looking back to Levi, he sighed. It was probably time to bite the bullet, in any case. “Look, you give me to the end of the day, I can be back in Worm Row. Not like I’ve got much shit to pack.”

—

He was jumping right to it then. Not leaving much room for vague interpretation, confusion, or worry. How dull. How practical. Still… maybe the demon’s fun could be salvaged. “Kept the old place, did we? Hm… lots of ways to interpret the fact that you’re living here, but still paying rent there… fear of commitment? Difficulty letting go of that bachelor lifestyle? A backup plan, in case things go wrong? In case I ever came back?” Leviathan smiled knowingly — these were all shots in the dark, all things that it was more or less certain were untrue, given what Emilio had said and done thus far. All but the last one. That could still very well be true. It let the accusations hang in the air for a moment before speaking again, interrupting Emilio as he no doubt went to defend himself. “Never you mind, never you mind! You can stay…” It raised a brow, clearly enjoying itself in this new dynamic they shared. “For now.”

Moving back into the room to pluck a pair of sunglasses off of the dresser, the demon gestured broadly with its hands after situating them on its face. “Well! Now that’s settled, I am going to go park my ass on the beach out back. Please tell Teddy where to find me if you see them first, hm? There’s much pondering to be done and work to consider…” It ought to check in with Ichabod and see how things were operating in its absence. Like a well-oiled machine, it suspected, but nevertheless… confirmation would go a long way in helping it relax.

It moved toward Emilio again, that satisfied grin never leaving its face as it stepped past him and called down the stairs. “Oh Gabagool!” It looked over its shoulder toward the slayer as it walked over to the top of the staircase. “Have you seen the little gremlin? I missed him something fierce.”

—

Of course Levi would question the reason behind Emilio keeping his old apartment. The detective scowled, crossing his arms over his chest as the demon cycled through different excuses, focusing only on the ones that made Emilio look bad. Well… except the last one. Maybe, subconsciously, some part of Emilio had considered Levi’s return a possibility but mostly? He’d held onto the apartment for Teddy’s sake. So that if Teddy ever wanted him gone, they wouldn’t have to grapple with the idea of kicking him out on the streets, wouldn’t let him stay out of guilt or obligation. There was a little more to it, of course; with an apartment in his name, anyone who was looking for him would likely go there before they showed up at Teddy’s, giving an added layer of safety to the house. But before Emilio could say any of this, Levi was barrelling forward, clearly not concerned with the possibility of interrupting Emilio’s explanations. And, surprisingly… not kicking him out. Emilio’s mouth, which had been open in preparation of defending himself, snapped shut in surprise. The for now was a clear threat, but it was still a step above being kicked out entirely, he supposed. “All right,” he said cautiously, eyeing Levi carefully. There would be a catch. He was sure of it. He wasn’t looking forward to learning what it might be.

He watched Levi saunter back into its room, grabbing a pair of what he’d often described to Teddy as asshole sunglasses and rambling on about the beach. If that was where it planned to spend most of its time, Emilio thought, it at least lowered the risk of the two of them running into one another often. The slayer wasn’t much of a fan of the sand or the sea. “Sure,” he replied good naturedly. “I’ll let them know.”

Relaxing a little, he moved back towards the bedroom he shared with Teddy, only to falter when Levi asked after Gabagool. Shit. There was no way that little asshole wouldn’t do everything in his power to sully Emilio’s good name here. “Ah, haven’t seen him,” he lied smoothly. The little shit had been napping in the living room with Perro when Emilio walked by. He’d have to get to him first, find a way to bribe or threaten him into keeping himself from spreading shit with Levi. “Probably off doing whatever he does.”

—

“No? Hm, right… must be out gathering gossip for me. Such an eager little beaver, always looking to please papá.” Leviathan smirked, having little reason to not believe Emilio, though it did recall that he and Gabs were perhaps not the best of friends. Ah well. Maybe Levi could convince the badalisc to be nicer, now that it was home. Perhaps he was just feeling sad in the absence of his father figure, and was lashing out. It served Emilio right, anyway. He hadn’t given the poor thing any of the lamb he’d been promised while being babysat.

With a nonchalant wave of its hand, Levi drifted down the stairs to the main level of the house, moving past the large, open living room and toward the wide glass doors that led out to the patio, and beyond, to the beach. It spotted Gabagool quite quickly, but the fuzzy ne'er do well was napping happily with that scruffy mutt that’d been clicking around Emilio’s shitty apartment when it last visited, so the greater demon went on quietly so as not to disturb them. It unlocked the door slowly, pulling it open and slipping outside, sucking in a deep lungful of salty sea air. Its gaze was drawn to the horizon, settling on a distant point where storm clouds seemed to perpetually hang over the ocean. Those dark eyes narrowed for a moment, the whisper of an eldritch curse on its tongue before it pushed away the negative thoughts and forced itself to smile again. No. Not right now. Focus on the warmth of the sun, the coarse sand underfoot, the feeling of home. Focus. Just for today.

#. thread ;#. with ; emilio cortez #. hello again ;

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loftylockjaw · 3 months

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TIMING: Current LOCATION: World's End Isle PARTIES: Wyatt (@loftylockjaw), Winter (@longislandcharm), & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Wyatt is mad about Winter blasting him on social media after his arrest. He decides to put the fear in her, but Emilio intervenes. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

—

Her car was still outside of Mack’s house as Winter made her way down the street, her eyes glued to the spirit that had been trying to get her to follow the moment she’d arrived. Ignoring it hadn’t worked, especially when the woman realized she could be seen, so the medium started walking behind her with Henry hot on their tail in the hopes that she could get the ghost to leave her alone. Trees were thickening around her the farther she went, dark eyes pulled up and around as Winter followed onto an overgrown trail into the woods. There was an eerie air to this whole situation. She should be used to this by now but something about today had been setting her on edge even before she’d arrived at her best friends. The feeling of being watched came to mind but she shrugged it off the moment the spirit had appeared in front of her, thinking that that could have been the reason.

It was still there, though, even as she pushed the branches of trees aside to keep up with the woman leading her astray. This wasn’t smart, was it? Letting a ghost lead her into what felt like a trap wasn’t her brightest moment and Winter felt her movements slow with the realization of it all. “Excuse me? Why are you leading me out here?” But the woman continued forward without even a glance back at Winter. Her eyes found Henry’s, the ghost reflecting her own confusion back at her. She considered turning around until the woman stopped and looked back at them expectantly. “Lady, I’m not following you anymore unless you tell me what’s going on.”

The ghost didn’t speak, only huffed and vanished away causing Winter to roll her eyes. “Must not have wanted to talk too much then.” She muttered the words before realizing the hairs on the back of her neck were still standing. Henry’s proximity didn’t do that much anymore and this time it felt…different. Did the ghost really lead her into a trap? Was there something else out there that not even the ghost was aware of? “Hello?” Her voice rang out through the trees as she squinted, trying to see through the slight fog that was rolling on the ground. Something large darted through her vision, disappearing not long after, and it made her blood run cold. What had she just gotten herself into?

—

Finding out who she was hadn’t been a difficult task. Finding out where she lived had been harder, but once that was determined, Wyatt had kept a close eye. He was pissed, and in the face of all the other bullshit going on in his life, he wanted to cling to one tiny scrap of control, he wanted to do one tiny little thing that would scare this girl into hopefully being less of a bitch to people she didn’t know, who’s stories she didn’t understand. She’d publicly dragged him for getting arrested, but she couldn’t have known why he was flipping out on that woman. No one could unless Wyatt told them, and he wasn’t about to go blabbing about his nightmares to anyone who would listen. Truth be told, he didn’t have a good reason to be here. He was being petty, reactionary, and downright stupid. But his world was falling apart anyway, so what the fuck did it matter?

Following the girl from her home was simple enough, and he was patient in his pursuit to see where she’d stop. Some mansion on World’s End Isle, turned out, because of course she’d know someone who lived in a place like that. He waited patiently outside the home at a respectable distance, and upon seeing the girl exit the house and wander into the woods he himself was already hiding in, he smiled at his good fortune. Or… well, he smiled as best an alligator could, having already disrobed and shifted in preparation for her eventual departure.

Laying in wait, the lamia watched the girl pass him by, unaware. She was… talking to herself. That was weird. He followed quietly, giving her a wide berth as she came to a stop again and getting in front of her. The underbrush provided ample cover as long as he stayed on all fours, but she seemed to suspect something, calling out into the darkness like the first to die in a horror film.

He nearly laughed.

Moving quickly from one tree to the next, the lamia rose up off the ground, standing at his full nine foot height as he lumbered toward her. A growl started in his belly, rolling up his throat and over his flat tongue, sounding very much like something you’d imagine would come from a dinosaur. Yellow eyes glinted in the dim light of the moon as the creature stepped forward and into sight. “Hello?” he mocked her, but there was no innocence in his tone. Those long jaws parted and the shifter let out a loud, angry bellow, snapping them shut again dangerously close to her fragile human body.

—

Following Wyatt around had started as a joke, mostly. As much as Emilio hated to admit it, the guy really had saved his ass in those underground tunnels. Without the gator dragging him away, he probably would have died trying to get that corpse out in one piece, desperately trying to save something that was lost long before he arrived. The idea of owing someone his life made him feel uncomfortable, like he was waiting and waiting and waiting for some other shoe to drop directly onto his head. When Wyatt implied that he found plenty of trouble on his own, an idea had formed in the hunter’s head. If he could catch Wyatt in need of help and provide an assist, they’d be even. And, as an added bonus, he might get to see Wyatt in a vulnerable position, which would make him feel a little better about the way the gator had seen him in those tunnels.

He figured it was a no brainer. After all, it wasn’t as if he was doing anything bad. He was trying to help the guy. If anything, Wyatt ought to be grateful when he figured it out. Emilio was a model goddamn citizen here. (Minus the ‘citizen’ part, technically. But he was a model something, for sure.)

Trailing people was… a little boring, when you got down to it, though. The movies Teddy made him watch always made it out to be some great and exciting thing, full of shootouts and danger, but the reality was always a little more dull. There was a lot of standing around and waiting and being quiet, and those were three things that Emilio wasn’t particularly great at. But he could manage it, when he put his mind to it. He could stand unseen behind the lamia in the underbrush, could watch carefully to see what he might do next.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, really. His introduction to the guy had seen him taking a bite out of someone, and most of their interaction that followed had involved Emilio filled with an overwhelming certainty that he, too, would wind up between the gator’s teeth. Still, there was something a little jarring about seeing the lamia accost a woman in the woods, mocking and snapping at her. Standing and waiting and being quiet fell off the table all at once, and Emilio found himself rushing forward without thinking, looking to get between the lamia and the woman before he could go in for a snack.

—

Why was it that when Winter was scared she could never get her feet to move? The fight or flight in her was broken, the medium decided, as every single time she just stood there waiting for what was to come instead of doing something about it. It might have stemmed from her not knowing how to fight but the least she could do was try to run from a gigantic growling monster standing before her. Sure, she would still die, but she wouldn’t have handed herself over on a silver platter. A shrill scream filled the silence of the woods as the thing that had been following her moved forward, the full picture of an alligator on its hind legs towering over her finally kicking that response mode into gear.

Only for her to fall back on her ass. Instead of the graceful departure she had been expecting she’d tripped her own feet while trying to take a step back from the beast. So much for ice skating and the grace she was supposed to gain from it. She would bet money that she would have been halfway home by then if the ground was covered in the sheets of frozen water but give her regular dirt and she was a goner.

Was this asshole reptile talking? Her eyes widened at its mocking tone, something familiar about the voice grating in the back of her mind but she was too busy trying not to let those sharp teeth pierce her skin to really think about it. She jerked her head back as those jaws snapped in front of her, vaguely aware of Henry shouting for her to get up and run but all she could focus on were those sharp teeth ready to slice through her. Until she saw another figure running towards them, this one very much human, and her eyes started to dart between the two. She should try to keep the attention on her, right? To give this guy an opportunity to surprise it? Her specialty was always going to be pissing people and things off, wasn’t it? Her contribution to society was A plus. Fuck, she was doing this.

“Alright, you ugly bitch, who the hell taught you how to speak?” Because really, what crazy person was out there teaching gigantic alligators to talk? Much less mock girls alone in the woods? Must have been a man. “I’d choose a bear over you any day.” Despite the bravado of her words, she felt her hands digging into the earth, desperate to clutch something to keep her grounded.

—

Now Wyatt did laugh, lowering himself onto his hands and crouching there in front of her. “My mother,” he ground out between the laughs, though they still managed to sound threatening, in their way. He took a step toward the girl that’d fallen on her ass in fear, relishing the terror in her gaze that she couldn’t hide as she tried to act brave. He was so singularly focused on drinking in the image that he barely noticed the sound of irregular footfalls as someone came running at them, swiveling his head just in time to get smacked in the face with—fuck, what was that?! Wyatt snarled and reared back, bringing his hands to his maw to rub it soothingly.

“What in the shit,” he complained, blinking once or twice before his gaze focused on the man now standing between him and his fun—Emilio. The lamia let out an annoyed huff, dropping back onto all fours and pressing himself into the hunter’s personal space, the tip of his snout poking the man’s chest. “Get outta here, hunter,” he warned his acquaintance, “this don’t concern you.”

—

There was something a little admirable about the way she talked back to the lamia. Emilio had been raised to view his life as a disposable thing, trained to throw it away the moment it was more convenient to others for him to die than it was for him to live. For him, tossing insults at something large and dangerous that wanted to make a meal of him was nothing. It was expected behavior, it was a thing he was meant to do. But for her? For a woman who, from the looks of her, had no idea what it was she was even facing? It was impressive that she managed it, even if her hands trembled in the dirt.

It worked in his favor, too. It allowed him a moment to scoop up a fallen branch, brandishing it like a baseball bat as he surged forward. He wasn’t looking to kill the lamia — not if he didn’t have to, at least. He liked Wyatt, but he wasn’t about to let the guy eat a civilian. He didn’t put his full strength behind the blow; it was more of a warning than an attack. It was enough to draw Wyatt’s attention away, though, and Emilio didn’t drop the branch. He stood over the woman, facing the lamia, and held the branch like a warning even if he knew it wasn’t a suitable weapon now that the element of surprise was gone. He’d be better off going for a knife, but… if he could resolve this bloodlessly, he’d prefer it. That was a new feeling.

“I’m making it concern me,” he said flatly. “You seriously attacking women alone in the woods now?” He didn’t flinch back from the snout against his chest, demeanor remaining calm despite the clear threat. He was… about sixty percent sure Wyatt wasn’t going to kill him. Maybe fifty-five. “Fuck off. No reason for this.”

—

Fuck. She’d actually whimpered when the mutated gator answered her. A fucking whimper that she hated more than anything that had showed her fear so far. Winter hated that it would give this thing the satisfaction, give it whatever it wanted from her. He was playing with her, she knew that now, whether he wanted her as a meal or not. And she was giving him exactly what he wanted from her. It was infuriating.

But she must have bought enough time because soon the gator’s focus was on her savior after a satisfying wack to the face. She didn’t know what it said about her that she was relieved the monster had his sights set on someone else entirely but hell she didn’t care at the moment. Especially because he wasn’t attacking the man brandishing a stick. She had been expecting some all out brawl where the man would be torn apart as she ran away but the two were only squaring up to each other, having a conversation. “Um, not to interrupt your moment or whatever, but do you know this alligator?” The indignation in her tone was clear, the fear having subsided in lieu of confusion and annoyance. It was perfectly clear that they knew each other so the question was redundant but Winter wanted it known how utterly ridiculous she thought this was. Tilting her head back, she saw Henry in an upside down view and it was also clear that the ghost mirrored her thoughts.

By the looks of it, she wasn’t in much danger anymore, an assumption that would most likely get her killed if she were wrong. But Winter got to her feet anyway, brushing the dirt away from her backside while she glared at the two of them, that underlying fear only visible in the way her hands still shook. “Anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on? Are you the one who taught him how to talk? Might want to put a leash on your monster, he’s a bit volatile if you haven’t noticed.”

—

“I ain’t his pet,” Wyatt snarled, gaze darting from Emilio to Winter, then back again. “And there’s plenty of reason for it, couyon. Don’t expect you to keep up.” He looked at the girl again, eyes narrowed into slits, his muzzle dragging across Emilio’s chest as he nudged him slightly to the side. His movements were slow but deliberate—he didn’t want Emilio to think he was worth suddenly attacking worse than he already had, but he also didn’t like how comfortable Winter was getting. “This one needs to be taught a lesson, is all. I ain’t gonna kill her.” He pressed himself forward a little more, a growl rumbling in his throat as he tried to angle his head around the hunter that stood in his way. “Just chew her up a little. Give her a few nice scars to remember me by.”

That was when he lunged, bowling Emilio over as he scooped the girl up in his jaws, standing upright again to lift her very high off the ground. He held her by her midsection, gently enough that any damage he did wouldn’t be permanent (probably), but tight enough to make a fucking point to her that she had shit-talked the wrong shifter. Who cared if she didn’t realize the man she’d publicly shamed for getting arrested was this very alligator? Fear was fear, and that usually lent itself to a more humble attitude. Usually. The bridge of logic might not have been present, but Wyatt didn’t care. Wyatt was just pissed. He stepped away from Emilio, carrying the girl with him to the base of a large tree. With a twinkle in his eye, the shifter scaled the trunk and perched on the lowest branch, out of reach of his acquaintance.

—

“My pets are much better than this,” Emilio agreed flatly, shooting Wyatt an unimpressed look. “What’s the reason, then? Because way I see it, you’re going after someone who’s just out for a damn walk. Think we both know I’m not going to stand by for that, cabrón.” If he’d thought Wyatt had a decent reason, maybe he’d have let it happen. Emilio was fine with people getting vengeance where it was deserved. But… it was clear that this woman didn’t even know what a shifter was. However she’d slighted Wyatt, he doubted it was anything intense enough to earn her the scars he was threatening to give her for it. The fear ought to have been enough.

Before he could say anything further, though, the shifter surged forward. Years ago, before the injury to his leg and the shit that left his head so messy that he was only half present on his best days, Emilio’s reaction time might have been quick enough to get another swing in with the stick and stop Wyatt in his tracks. But now? He was on his ass by the time his mind caught up with the situation at all, watching the shifter scurry up the tree with the woman in his mouth. Gritting his teeth, Emilio traded the branch for a blade. “I got good aim with this,” he warned. “I’ll throw it into your fucking ass if you don’t cut the shit.”

—

Again, her great talent would be pissing things off. The thought ran through her mind when the gator snarled at her and continued to talk about her slighting it. She couldn’t think of what she had done to this thing but that was mostly due to her having so many different instances to look back on. Sifting through them all would only cause more confusion. Winter blanched when the gator mentioned scars, not really believing that it would come after her even with the threats. If it wanted to hurt her it would have already.

Or so she thought. Suddenly it was lunging at her, the girl’s shriek coated the silence of the forest around them, so loud that rustles started in the trees from animals that had been disturbed. There was no time for her to even attempt to run with the thing moving so quickly and soon she was up in a tree feeling all kinds of uncomfortable by the pressure those sharp teeth were causing. At least he hadn’t pierced her skin yet. “Holy fuck, let me down you crazy bastard!” Winter wiggled as much as she could in his clamped jaws but it wasn’t a good idea. His teeth started to scratch her skin, the faint smell of copper hitting her nose telling her that she was only causing damage to herself. She stopped but her body refused, shaking inside the giant gator’s mouth while she clamped her eyes shut.

“His ass?” That wasn’t good enough. No, this thing needed to be taken out. If it didn’t kill her today she was sure it was going to kill someone down the line. “Throw it into his fucking neck!” As she screeched out the words she was trying to pry it’s mouth open with her fingers. Winter didn’t care if she fell out of the tree, breaking an arm would be preferable to being inside this thing’s mouth. The fight mode came in too late but it was all too present now.

—

He could swallow her whole if he wanted. She was small enough, she’d go down easy, shoes and all. That wasn’t why he was here, he wasn’t even hungry, but the thought was a tempting one. She was trying to pry his jaws open (that was cute) and Emilio was threatening to throw a knife at him (also cute). The lamia was terribly amused, laying down on the tree branch like a cat stretching out for a nap, tail dangling well within Emilio’s reach. He kept the girl firmly in his strong grip, squeezing down a little harder just for the fun of it. The taste of blood on his tongue was a welcome one, the muscle moving beneath Winter’s body to push what might as well have been an aperitif to the back of his gullet.

Hm. Maybe he ought to put her down before things got out of hand. Meaning that the taste of her blood was inspiring a bit of an appetite after all. Wyatt turned his head to the side to deposit her onto her feet on the branch, giving a final warning bite before releasing his grip on her middle. He angled his head up and swung his jaws over her head, snapping them shut with immense force just an inch or so above her head.

“Well? Go on then, cher. Git,” he snarled happily. His gaze jumped to Emilio and he gave the hunter a curt nod. “You want ‘er so bad? Fuckin’ catch ‘er.” And with that, the lamia shoved Winter rather unceremoniously from the tree, watching with a toothy grin as she tumbled back toward the earth.

—

He didn’t think the woman was helping her case much, but… he also figured he was just about the last person who could comment on another person’s habit of yapping in the mouth of danger. Fuck knew Emilio did plenty of that himself, after all. Still, he shot the stranger a look of warning, still gripping the knife in his hand as he weighed his options. He didn’t want to kill Wyatt, in spite of the situation. The guy had saved his ass once before, and it felt a little impolite to off a guy after that, especially when he knew damn well that if the shifter had intended on killing this woman, he’d have done it by now. He remembered how quickly the gator had gobbled down the body he’d found him with upon their first meeting. Whatever Wyatt was doing here, his intention really didn’t seem to be to kill the woman.

That didn’t make it all right. The woman was clearly afraid, in spite of her running mouth, and Emilio couldn’t blame her. In her shoes, with her seemingly limited knowledge of the supernatural (she thought Wyatt was a pet, after all), he could only imagine how terrifying the situation must have been. He eyed the gator’s tail, shifting the knife in his hand. If he shoved it in, would it work in his favor?

He was about to test the theory when Wyatt seemed to decide enough was enough. He released his jaws from around the woman, and Emilio knew well enough to know that he wouldn’t let her climb down from the tree peacefully. He had just enough time to toss the knife on the ground before she was falling, and he struggled to get beneath her. This is probably going to fucking suck, he thought before the tangle of limbs knocked the wind out of him.

—

As much as she refused in her mind to show any more fear to this thing, the glare she was trying to send obvious proof, Winter’s body kept betraying that request. Tears pooled in her eyes as the gator squeezed down even harder, the uncomfortable feeling giving way to a dull pain. ‘I’m going to die.’ How many times had that thought run through her mind in the past year? Each time she had truly believed it as well. It was hard to think anything else was a possible ending to being clamped between the jaws of a psychotic talking alligator that could walk on its hind legs, right? She whimpered again as the thing started to move her, wondering if this was when she would finally perish for the crime of being human in a supernatural world.

But then she was placed upright on the branch, her legs wobbling beneath her while she did her best to stay standing. Once again, she had evaded death. Wide eyes looked the gator over when its voice reached her ears, all bravado finally lost to the overwhelming mix of fear and relief. If the point of this was ‘don’t piss off random mutants in the woods’ this thing had been successful in its endeavor.

The racing of her heart was just starting to calm when the gator rumbled their next words, Winter’s head shooting to the side for her to watch a limb shove her backward. She was tired of screaming yet a raw screech fell from her lips in the split second before she was hurtling towards the ground, silent prayers tearing through her thoughts for the hunter to reach her in time. The impact hurt, she knew it had to hurt him too, but it was softer than her crashing to the forest floor and for that she would always be grateful. She didn’t even know this man’s name but in that moment he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She made a mental note to thank him the best way she knew how; showering him with gifts.

The wind had been knocked out of her and her chest heaved while she tried to take in as much air as her lungs would allow. Despite this, she rolled onto her back off of the man she had crashed into and looked back up to the gator still sitting in the tree, not wanting to take her eyes off of it in case it decided to come after her again. She brought a hand up to her bad shoulder that was now aching from the impact, her fingers brushing the scar that had been left after being stabbed. “What the hell did I ever do to you?” She croaked the words out, Winter knowing deep down that she had done plenty to deserve this fate. That didn’t mean she was going to admit to it.

—

“Mind yer fuckin’ business!” he bellowed at them both, leaping down from the tree with a tremendous thud. His gaze was fixed on Winter, and while he didn’t love making a habit of outing himself to strangers, he figured this one wasn’t about to be any kind of threat. “You need to learn when to leave well enough alone, ya little shit. Makin’ a mockery of one of the worst days of my fuckin’ life—I should eat ya, ya know. I should, but I’m a nice guy, so I won’t. But that woman you wanted to buy a drink for? She’s the fuckin’ devil and you’d do well to stay the fuck away from her.” His emotions were getting away from him now, and he wheeled around on Emilio. “And you! Why the fuck are you followin’ me, couyon?! Lemme live my damn life without a mopey ol’ raincloud hoverin’ over me at every fuckin’ second.” He huffed out an irritated breath, then turned on his heel and bounded off into the trees and back toward the coast. This island sucked.

—

There was no fear in his chest as the gator leaped from the tree, though perhaps there would have been had he had even an ounce of self preservation lurking within him. Emilio shifted the woman’s weight off him as gently as he could manage, retrieving his knife and holding it idly at his side as Wyatt yelled about something that made little sense to him. His grip tightened on the hilt momentarily when the shifter claimed he should eat the woman, though it loosened when he added that he wouldn’t. Whatever point Wyatt had wanted to make, it was clear that he believed he’d made it. So long as he didn’t actually kill the woman, Emilio figured it was fine.

He tilted his head as the gator turned to him, anger burning dully in his chest. “Was trying to make sure you’d have someone watching your back when you ran into trouble,” he replied flatly. “Didn’t know the kind of ‘trouble’ you run into is the kind where you try to eat women for pissing you off.” He continued glaring at Wyatt as he turned to leave, not looking away until he’d disappeared into the treeline. Then, with a sigh, he looked to the woman. “You good?”

—

She knew that voice had sounded familiar. Winter gaped at the alligator, man, whatever he classified himself as (even though psycho should have been the only classification here) when she realized just who he was. Running her mouth about him online must have pissed him off more than she’d realized but she didn’t give any fucks about his hurt feelings, especially after this. “You’re only proving my point, you dumb bastard!” She called after his retreating form, the irony of her calling him dumb while she was screaming at someone who could, and most likely would, kill her not lost on her.

She sighed out the frustration filling her chest, looking down at the small cuts littering her arms while Henry slowly lowered himself next to her. “You really should shut your mouth.” Her glare turned to the ghost, just about to retort when she heard the other man ask her a question. Remembering herself, she only nodded her head at him. “I’ll be fine. It’s only a few cuts. He could have done worse.” She got the feeling that he wanted to. She made sure the other was okay as well, aware that even with her tiny stature that didn’t mean she couldn’t do damage after falling onto him from that height. He’d tried to slip away after but Winter insisted on getting his name at least before they parted ways.

As she walked back to her car she realized her fear had settled, morphing into agitation as so many things rolled through her mind. Winter had someone to talk to about their supposed friend and just because the man thought he could scare her away that didn’t mean he actually could. She was born to escalate, to ruin, and the gator would soon find that out.

#. thread ;#. with ; emilio cortez #. with ; winter cahya #. lessons not learned ;

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ironcladrhett · 1 year

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@mortemoppetere replied to your post “[pm] Hey. We need to I need to There's something I...”:

[pm] [del: I met your] [del: Did you know you have] [del: If I introduce you to your fucking kid, are you going to] [...] Met someone who knows you. She wants to meet up with you. But I [...] want to know you're not going to [...] try anything first.

[pm] Oh. [...] It She found you too, huh? Guess I shoulda figured she would. [...] Try anything? Sure I ain't got the foggiest idea what you mean, dear brother.

#. pm ;#. with ; emilio cortez #[ YES he's being petty and NO i'm not sorry ]

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howdy-cowpoke · 2 months

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@mortemoppetere replied to your post “[pm] Baby, I love you, but there's no way in hell...”:

[user realizes he sent this to the wrong person, but doesn't want monty to know he's embarrassed because then monty would Win.] [pm] You'd be lucky to land me.

[pm] Eugh. Do not kid yourself.

#. pm ;#. with ; emilio cortez #[ LMFAO SDTOP ]

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scorched-sunrise · 6 months

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TIMING: Last week LOCATION: Emilio’s apartment, Worm Row PARTIES: Ophelia (@scorched-sunrise) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Ophelia has some bad news and asks Emilio to meet her and talk. It goes about as well as you’d expect. CONTENT WARNINGS: Child death (mentions), parental death (mentions)

—

This wasn't really something that should have been explained over text, and so instead of using her phone to tell her uncle that something bad had happened to his brother, she instead only said that she needed to see him, needed to talk to him. He told her to meet him at the apartment in Worm Row, which is where she stood now, her hood pulled up and hands stuffed in her pockets.

She felt sick to her stomach, anxious of what his response might be. Would he care? She wanted him to fucking care. She wanted someone, anyone to care as much as she did that the warden had gone missing, and the thought that she might be the only one left well and truly broke her heart. He wasn't a good person, she knew that, but surely he'd made some kind of positive impact on someone in this damn town, right? His own brother should have been an easy answer, but even that was fraught with contention.

Heaving a sigh, Ophelia trudged up the front steps and into the unlocked building (how secure!), taking the stairs over that creepy, busted-ass elevator that would probably strand her, knowing her luck. She moved down the familiar hallway to the familiar door that was similarly never locked, giving a quick rap of her knuckles before pushing it open.

“Tío?” she called into the apartment, stepping inside and closing the door with her foot. “You here already?”

—

Something was wrong. Something was wrong, and there was so much dread pooled in the pit of his stomach that he couldn’t breathe around it. He should have seen it coming, really; he’d been starting to feel okay again with Lucio gone, starting to feel less like a monument of grief and more like something resembling himself, and how long could a thing like that last? How long could he expect to feel decent when he knew he didn’t deserve it?

Ophelia asked him to meet her, and she wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t something wrong. She’d told him where Rhett was in a text, was probably happy to have that be the last communication that existed between them given Emilio’s inability to react the way she needed him to react. She’d been frustrated with him, with hunters in general, and he understood that. So she wouldn’t have asked to meet him if there weren’t something wrong.

He got to the apartment early. That old paranoia that lived and breathed in his chest wouldn’t allow anything less. He scoped it out four times, as if he didn’t know it like the back of his hands. He circled the building twice on his motorcycle, walked the entire hall upon his arrival, looked in every room of the empty apartment. Something was wrong. He was just waiting to figure out what.

Her voice called out through the open door, and Emilio pulled himself from the bare, dirty mattress in the bedroom to trudge out into the living area. “Here,” he confirmed, eyes darting over her carefully. No obvious signs of injury, and that was good. But she seemed… different. Anxious. He didn’t know if he was imagining it. “You okay?”

—

For some reason, she'd expected this conversation to be easy to start. He's gone, she'd say, and then explain what happened. What did happen? Her mother—sun above, her mother. Ophelia’s dark eyes met Emilio's and she felt her throat constrict.

No. Don't.

He asked if she was okay and her lower lip trembled. She'd been holding it in all this time, since that morning… she hadn't allowed herself to properly grieve the parent that was actually dead, desperate as she was to cling to her hope that the other was still alive somewhere. She wasn't okay. She was so fucking far from okay and she hadn't even realized it.

Don't break down. Don't do it. She scolded herself into controlling the quiver in her voice and the way her hands shook despite being clenched into fists, staring at Emilio as a suspicious silence stretched out between them.

“I…” Speaking without bursting into tears felt like an insurmountable summit, forcing her to stop and take a sharp breath. “... I moved… into town.” What the fuck? What the fuck am I saying? That's not what I came here for. She breathed out, hating the way the sigh stuttered without her consent. “My… um. My m-mom, she's… She, um…” Her voice pitched higher as she lost the battle, and her hands unclenched and flew to her face, splaying over her cheeks and eyes. The first sob was silent, wracking her tall frame as her shoulders hunched and she tucked her head down, trying to hide from Emilio. “She's dead?” It sounded like a question more than a statement, like she still couldn't believe it herself.

—

The look on her face was a haunted thing. Her lip trembled, her eyes were big, and Emilio suddenly felt so far out of his depth that even the thought of attempting to tread water was exhausting. Fathers and uncles grew into things with the kids in their lives. He’d gone from understanding babies to understanding toddlers as Flora and Jaime aged, was starting to understand young children before the massacre took him from being a father and an uncle to nothing at all instead. He knew how to soothe meltdowns spun over problems that seemed small to adults and monumental to six-year-olds, knew how to be a passable uncle to a boy who hadn’t yet learned how to tie his shoes. But…

Whatever had Ophelia’s face twisted into this expression of uncertain grief was doubtlessly bigger than the things he’d helped Jaime overcome. He knew how to be the uncle to a six year old; he hadn’t yet figured out how to do the same for a kid in her twenties. He wasn’t particularly good at comforting Nora or Wynne, either. Still, he tried. He approached Ophelia carefully, cautious as one might approach a coiled snake.

She spoke, claiming she’d moved into town, and that pool of dread grew deeper. She’d seemed happy, when she’d talked about Rhett up on the mountain. Nervous, but happy. She’d had her family in one spot and, for her, it had been good. For her to be here now…

Emilio’s mouth felt dry. His heart was pounding, and he thought back to that factory, to the moment he’d walked in and been so sure that his brother was dead. The water was rising, filling his lungs, his nose, his ears. Ophelia spoke, and it was muffled. Her mother was dead, and wouldn’t it have been Rhett who’d killed her? Hadn’t that been what he’d always wanted? Ophelia spoke of a promise the first time Emilio went with her to meet her father, and Emilio was no warden, but he knew what that must have meant. Ophelia’s mother was dead, and Rhett had wanted it that way for as long as Emilio had known him. And he’d made a promise, and —

And Ophelia was standing in front of him looking broken, and he couldn’t ask. He couldn’t demand answers from a kid who’d clearly had her fucking world torn apart. Her mother was dead, and maybe his brother was, too. The thought made him nauseous, made him want to pull his hair out and kick at the ground until his bad knee gave out and slam his fist through the fucking wall, but there was a kid in his living room looking shattered and it wasn’t his place to fall apart now just like it hadn’t been his place to fall apart in the car driving Rhett home from the hospital. Emilio could break in private, the way he always had. For now, he needed to be the uncle he should have been for Jaime.

“Come here,” he said, taking her arm and gently guiding her over to the sofa. He sat her on the cushion before trailing into the kitchen, pulling one of the two glasses he owned down from the cabinet and filling it with water from the sink. He brought it over, pressing it carefully into her hands. “Do you… want to tell me what happened? It’s okay if you don’t. It’s okay. But I—” I need to know about Rhett. I need to know what happened to my brother. I need to know if I should go up and try to find his body. He buried my daughter, my wife. I need to know if I have to bury him. His eyes stung, and he looked away, silently berating himself. He had to keep it together here. No outbursts, no getting lost in the depths of his broken mind. He needed to be present, needed to be functional for once in his sorry fucking life.

—

Ophelia was so much like her father in that moment, even if she didn’t know it. Fighting with everything she had to keep the door barred shut, to not let the tidal wave overcome her. She would surely drown if she did. The look on her face was one of miserable fury, as stiff as an iron mask, plastered there with the hope that it would keep everything else from crumbling to pieces. She let herself be led to the couch, let herself be sat down and stared blankly ahead as she heard her uncle rummaging around in the kitchen with glassware and the faucet. Her gaze didn’t leave the floor when he pressed the water into her hands, her brows pinched in the center as she scowled so deeply that it made her face ache.

Emilio asked if she wanted to talk about it. She knew why, really. If he was anything like Rhett, it wasn't because he thought he could make her feel better—who could, anyway? But he wanted to know about his brother. He wanted to know if Ophelia had found him dead beside her mother. If he'd killed her mother. Seeing the way they'd been the night before, it felt impossible. She couldn't believe it, she wouldn't. And besides, he hadn't been there. And the note… and the missing fae… no. Her parents were both the victims in this scenario. Ruminating on it made her start to run hot, her hands gripping the glass of water tightly as her anger rose.

The water was lightly steaming before she answered, speaking through her teeth, her jaw clenched so tight it hurt. “He's gone. They took him.” She was shaking, letting the news settle over the room for a few seconds before abruptly standing up from the sofa and hurling the glass of water across the room. It shattered loudly against the wall, but the sound was nothing compared to the scream the girl let loose—it was equal parts devastated and incensed, shorter than the wail she'd released at her mother's side but just as jarring. “They took him, tío!” She whipped around to face Emilio, tears streaking her face. “They killed my mother and took my father away and—and left a fucking note! I'd burn that whole place to the ground if I could,” she snarled, rabid in her righteous hatred, not caring if there were fae there that had treated her like family—any who still remained after what had been done deserved death, that much she knew.

Her gaze snapped down from where it had been fixed on the wall, picturing bodies on fire. It fell upon Emilio, who until this point hadn't been given much of a chance to speak. “I'm still looking for him. I'll find him. I'll save him. And those motherfuckers are going to pay.”

—

There were things that got easier with practice. When he was a kid, his mother had him throw knives until his fingers bled, until blisters formed on his hands and his palms cracked open. He repeated the process every day until calluses grew, until those same fingers were reshaped through repetition of the same actions over and over and over again. The same thing had happened to his feet when she made him stand still for hours at a time, starting the clock over with each fidget. The first time she’d tossed him in the lake, he’d nearly drowned. The second time, he’d been able to swim to shore with less struggling. Life was hard, she told him. Everything in the goddamn world wanted to kill you. But there were things that got easier with practice.

And there were things that didn’t.

He didn’t even remember the first loss he’d suffered. His father was dead before Emilio was old enough to memorize the lines of his face, a ghost haunting the beginning of his story who’d be irrelevant by the end of it. Then he was twelve, and his uncle went into the woods with his brother and came back alone. Then at thirty-two, he had more tombstones in his heart than he did names of living people. But no calluses grew. No blisters burst and hardened with the repetition. He practiced and he practiced and he practiced, and it still felt just as raw. He was still floundering and fighting and gasping for breath like it was the first time he’d ever been tossed in the lake.

It didn’t feel fair. Hadn’t he just done this? Hadn’t he just found Rhett’s cane on the sidewalk and come to terms with the fact that he’d been taken by people who wanted him dead? Hadn’t he just tracked him down and pulled him out with one less limb to speak of, hadn’t he just gone from accepting that his brother was dead to finding him alive and angry? Was this supposed to give him more practice? Was this supposed to make him feel better? If this was the real thing, then what had that factory been? A trial run, a rehearsal dinner? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

But it was less fair to Ophelia.

There was steam coming from the glass, and then the glass was shattering against the wall, and Emilio was too numb to make a joke about how he only had two glasses. He stared at the broken glass gleaming on the dirty carpet with an expression of dull interest, as if the world wasn’t ending all over again. As if it had ever stopped.

He knew the odds here. Rhett had barely survived being taken by two people, and he was so much weaker now. Had he even had any weapons on him? Emilio doubted the fae in Ophelia’s community had been keen to allow a warden to keep his blades even if he had been allowed to remain temporarily among them. And he’d been out of it, Ophelia had said, slept for days after his trek up the mountain. What chance did he have against a whole group of fae, if they wanted him dead? What was he hoping for here? Was the best case scenario that his brother had been given a quick death, or that he was still alive and suffering torture? He knew which option Rhett would have preferred. Did it make him a terrible person that he thought he’d be happier with the alternative? At least that would give him something to save.

(Ophelia seemed certain that he was still alive. He could see it in her determined scowl, hear it in the tone of her voice. But Ophelia had less practice than him. When it came to this kind of thing, Emilio thought he might be the closest thing there was to a pro.)

“You shouldn’t do it alone.” His voice sounded hoarse, sounded uncertain, sounded like it was coming from someone else. “He was — He’s my brother. I want to help. Whatever there is to do, I want to help.” If Rhett was alive, wasn’t it Emilio’s job to bring him home? And if he wasn’t… Didn’t Emilio owe it to him to repay the favor he’d given him years ago, when he’d dug two graves in the aftermath of a massacre? “You want to make them pay, I can help with that. I’m good at that. You shouldn’t do it alone.”

—

There was no doubt in Ophelia’s mind that Emilio would be well equipped to deal with the fae once they were found—he was a hunter, after all. Dealing with supernatural threats was his bread and fucking butter, even if fae were more outside his wheelhouse. He’d grown up with Rhett, sure he’d learned a thing or two. Yes, he’d be a useful ally in taking them down, but it was the finding them part that concerned her…

“Home was in the mountains, Emilio. You can’t…” She glanced down at his knee, the one always giving him trouble. “... it won’t be easy to find them. The warm weather is erasing their tracks. I can fly, I can see more, look faster, but…” But I probably can't kill them all on my own. She sighed, wrapping her arms around herself and trying to talk herself down from this elevated emotional state. She was running hot, too hot, and she didn’t want to suddenly become a danger to the one person she had left. “When I figure out where they are, or get any solid leads, I’ll tell you. I know you can… help take care of them.” She wasn’t a stranger to fighting—her mother had taught her how to defend herself, and her mother had learned from Rhett. But that didn’t mean she could handle seven or eight or however many it was all at once, especially when they would be expecting this from her. They’d killed her mother, after all, how could they not expect an attempt at revenge?

Knowing that she had support did something to quell her fire, though, and she brought a hand to her face as that grief came rushing back, mixing with the anger and diluting it down into something less explosive. Her core temperature was dropping as she moved back to the couch, sitting beside Emilio again and wringing her hands in her lap. “Sorry about the glass,” she offered, leaning against his shoulder. “Sorry… for—” Her voice caught in her throat and she clamped her mouth shut, hating the way the tears said more than she ever could.

—

It was like a bucket of ice water poured over his head, the way she looked down at his bad leg. Emilio liked to pretend the limb was better off than it was, liked to act as though it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it did. He was still plenty capable, wasn’t he? He could still fight with the best of them, still hold his own against undead monsters and assholes in bar fights even if he couldn’t manage a flight of stairs. But there were things he couldn’t do. A trek in the mountains would be difficult. But it wasn’t impossible, was it?

“Rhett managed it,” he ground out, and he wasn’t sure if it was his brother’s name or the reminder of his own inadequacy that left that ache in his chest. Rhett had managed a mountain trek with one leg missing, and Emilio was uncertain if he could do it with both still attached. (Maybe it was because Rhett had had damn good motivation. Climbing a mountain in the interest of getting far away from Emilio was probably far easier than sticking around.) “I’m a detective, mija. I know you can find them on your own, but I can help. I can make it quicker.” Because it would need to be, wouldn’t it? If there was any chance at all that Rhett was still alive (and Emilio found himself believing it less and less the more he thought about it, though he wouldn’t say as much to Ophelia), they’d need to uncover his location quickly.

That ache in his chest only grew as her weight leaned against him. He thought of Rhett, the way he’d found him in the woods after that massacre, the way he’d vowed to help Emilio find his vengeance only for Emilio to abandon him the moment he realized Rhett was one more person he could lose. That was what they’d done, wasn’t it? Emilio and Rhett had abandoned one another over and over again, finding some new excuse to walk away after each disagreement. Sometimes, it was as simple as not wanting to see one another kill themselves for bodies long buried. Other times, it went deeper. Their ideologies shifted over the years, Rhett’s in one direction and Emilio’s in the other. If Rhett had stayed, how long would it have been before they were at each other’s throats again? Before there was another kid locked in Rhett’s van, before Emilio befriended someone Rhett thought he shouldn’t?

He wondered, absently, if it would be the same with Ophelia. After all, he was still a hunter, wasn’t he? Ophelia was angry, wanted the people who’d killed her mother dead, and Emilio could give her that. But what happened after? She’d expressed distaste for how he referred to himself in the past, for how hunters spoke and acted, and Emilio couldn’t change that. So how long would it be before Ophelia, like her father, took issue with some part of who Emilio was? He shook the thought away. It was better, he figured, to focus on the present issue. They would avenge his niece’s mother. They would avenge his brother, her father. And then, they’d worry about whatever came after.

“You don’t have to apologize, kid,” he mumbled, wrapping an arm around her. He wasn’t very good at offering comfort, but he liked to think he was learning. This was the kind of thing that was supposed to make people feel better, wasn’t it? “You don’t have to apologize to me. It was an ugly glass, anyway.”

—

“Yeah, well Rhett is an idiot,” she countered, evening her gaze with his, silently calling him an idiot, too, if he decided it was time to start hiking through the Peaks like his brother had. The repeated offer was met with silence this time, Ophelia just sighing and shaking her head, mulling it over as she sat down beside him.

She laughed in spite of herself, bringing a hand to her face. It was a strained, miserable thing, but it was still a laugh. “Yeah… it was,” she agreed. “I’ll get you another. Maybe even more than one, if I’m feeling generous.” The arm around her felt good—god, she hadn’t been hugged in weeks, not since before all of this happened, that night that… I shouldn’t have left.

“I wish… you could have seen them,” she muttered, pressing a thumbnail hard into her palm. “He seemed happier that day. Not like when I texted you, not… lost somewhere else. He was there, with mom and I, and he was… smiling. Laughing. So was she.” She gave up the painful dig of her fingernail to wipe the tears from her eyes with her sleeve, drawing a long, shaky breath. “I wish you could have seen him like that again.” It sounded like she was speaking as if he was dead, which she still didn’t believe (or wouldn’t let herself), but she knew that when they did find him… if he’d been that bad after the last time, how would he be pulled back from the edge after this one? She wasn’t sure she had the ability to do that for him, not like her mother had.

—

It was hard to argue with her on that, though it was hard to do much of anything when every inch of him ached this way. She met his gaze with a look Rhett had given him a thousand times over, and that hurt, too. Emilio remembered, without meaning to, the first time he met the warden. He remembered being fourteen and pissed at the world, remembered the way Victor’s death still felt fresh even when everyone told him it shouldn’t, remembered feeling as though he was the only one mourning while everyone else moved on as if his brother’s life ending at eighteen was something they’d all seen coming. It was Victor’s death that had made him latch on to Rhett so tightly, Victor’s death that made Rhett slot so easily into the then-vacant position of brother. Rosa and Edgar had loved Rhett, too, but not like Emilio had.

So what, then, would Rhett’s death do to him? He wasn’t a kid anymore, though he was still just as angry. He couldn’t imagine shoving someone else into the box Rhett had made a home of after Victor had left it empty, but the idea of leaving it bare ached, too. For years now, Emilio had lived a slippery slope of dealing with loss by replacing it. Victor died, and there was Rhett. Juliana died, and he found someone different to fill his bed night after night after night until Teddy came and offered up something real. Flora died, and he saw her reflected in every kid he came across, tried with everything he had to protect Nora and Wynne and strangers with wide eyes and young features as if it would make up for not protecting his daughter, his fucking kid. But what could he do with this? Nothing else could fit in this empty slot the way Rhett had. To try felt like a betrayal, and hadn’t he betrayed Rhett enough already? Hadn’t that been all he’d ever fucking done?

Ophelia was talking about the glass, and Emilio was at the bottom of a goddamn lake trying to make sense of distorted language that was only just barely reaching him. She didn’t think Rhett was dead. Emilio couldn’t let himself think anything else. Should he warn her, he wondered? Should he tell her that hope, in this family, was little more than a prelude to endless grief?

He was stiff, trying to imagine Rhett the way she described him. “I don’t think I ever saw him happy,” he admitted quietly, throat tight. The closest he’d seen to Rhett as Ophelia described him was in Mexico, with Flora on his shoulders and Emilio giving him shit and Juliana chastising them both. Maybe, if Rhett was dead, it wasn’t all bad. Maybe it was better that he’d ended on a high note, at least. Maybe that was all people like them could ever really hope for.

—

It made her sad to think that. Sad to think that Emilio never had… and it wasn’t fair, really, given how much longer he’d known the man. Had he really been that miserable for that long? She couldn’t help but wonder how their lives might’ve been if she and her mother hadn’t run. If they’d faced him, made him see how wrong he was, just like he had in Hemlock Ridge. That wasn’t just because of the handicap, was it?

No, it couldn’t be. He was changed. She knew it. Just like she knew that he was still alive somewhere.

“Then we’ll just have to work extra hard to pick him back up off the ground, won’t we? Then you can see him happy.” It was a stretch by anyone’s measure, but she was nothing if not stubborn and determined. Her resolve was strong, and she wasn’t going to let the matter lie until she found her father, or a corpse. “I’ll tell you what, tío Emilio… you can start asking around town, and I’ll keep looking in the mountains. Fair?”

Getting to her feet again, Ophelia glanced around the place as she went to pick up the shards of glass on the floor piece by piece. She remembered the afternoons she’d spent here, helping her father sew up the leg on his pants, making him presentable for the few outings he went on alone, and generally just spending time with him and her uncle, getting to know them both better.

“Are you… still staying here?” It didn’t look lived in—not that it really had before, either, but there was a light coating of dust on all the surfaces that seemed relatively undisturbed. She bent down, holding out a palm and setting each piece of glass gingerly into it. She hoped he wasn’t staying here. It was depressing here. He deserved better than that.

—

She was hopeful, and he ached with it. The way she seemed so sure that there would be something left to pick up off the ground in spite of all evidence pointing to the contrary, the way she held onto this impossible idea that the world would offer them some kind of kindness. It occurred to Emilio, with an nauseating twist in his stomach, that she wouldn’t have that kind of optimism had she been raised by her father. In some alternative version of events where Rhett had known her since she was a child, where he’d been a father instead of a monster under her bed for the first two decades of her life, she likely would have felt the way Emilio felt now — hopeless and desolate.

(His stomach twisted a little more at the realization that Flora, had she survived, would have been just as much a pessimist as he was. Hunters didn’t tend to find it particularly easy to look on the bright side, after all. His daughter had only been happy because she was young. The world would have taken that from her sooner rather than later.)

“Sure,” he agreed with a nod, trying not to let his voice betray the fact that he thought looking would be a hopeless task. What could he hope to gain by asking people around town if they’d seen a man he knew had left weeks ago with no intention of returning? Even if he’d had any hope that Rhett was alive, Emilio would have found the job Ophelia handed him to be a pointless one. He wondered idly if it was meant to placate him, to keep him docile while she did the real work that she figured his bad leg made him incapable of accomplishing.

He watched her rise, fiddling with the ring on his finger as she began picking up the glass. “Broom in the closet,” he said, nodding towards it. Like most things in the dusty apartment, it wasn’t something he’d bought for himself. The broom, like the bare mattress in the bedroom and the shelf in the bathroom, had been in the apartment when Emilio moved in a year ago. It was the kind of thing that might make someone question the fate of the apartment’s previous occupant… but only if they cared enough to do so.

Still twisting his ring absently, he shrugged. “Not really,” he admitted. “Started staying with someone when the place got covered with goo a few months back. Then the goo was gone, but… they wanted me to stay, so I stayed. Figure I’ll come back here when they don’t want me to stay anymore.” It was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it? Even Rhett had figured trekking through the mountains on one leg was a better idea than hanging around Emilio long term, and he’d known him twenty years.

Getting to his feet, Emilio limped into the kitchen to retrieve a garbage can, bringing it over to Ophelia. He set it down at her feet so she could toss the glass in, then hesitated momentarily. “We’re, uh… Together. Me and the person I’m staying with. We weren’t when I moved in, but… Happened a couple months back. Their name’s Teddy.” He paused a moment, uncertainty sitting on his shoulders like a tangible thing. “You could meet them, if you wanted.”

—

Fetching the broom, Ophelia used it to better collect the rest of the pieces of glass, listening as he told her about the place he was staying now. Good. It was good that he wasn't living here, and not just because it was a shitty apartment… It held a lot of memories, ones she figured might be painful for him to recall. She'd only spent a few months coming and going from the apartment and she had memories she didn't really want to visit, at least not until she found her father.

“Come on, tío… as much as you don't want to admit it, you're actually very likable. I'm sure whoever it is is happy to have you around, and I don't think that's gonna change unless you actively try to sabotage it. So don't fuckin’ do that, all right?” She gave him a nod of thanks as he approached with the trash can, her brows raising when he went on to elaborate on the situation without any kind of prompting from her. “Yeah?” Her face genuinely brightened and she dumped the glass into the container, setting the broom down against the wall and putting her hands on her hips. “Teddy… yeah, I'd like to meet Teddy.” She pushed the bin aside with her foot so she could close the space between them, wrapping her arms easily over his shoulders and pulling him into a soft hug. “That's great to hear. Seriously. You… you deserve to be happy. You deserve to have someone love you like that.” She tightened her grip, burying her face against his shoulder and letting out a ragged sigh.

She'd thought the same of Rhett. She'd desperately hoped that, even if it wasn't her mother, that someone would love the old thing. It was what he'd needed, she thought. In the end, though, all that love had gotten him was kidnapped. Again. Because of people like her. She'd never really hated hunters, she'd just been afraid. Wished they'd been raised to think for themselves rather than brainwashed to believe whatever they were told. But… there was truth there. And Emilio wasn't cruel like her father. He was lovable. He was redeemable. And Ophelia, she… she didn't know what her own future held. When she found those fae, when she killed them, she didn't know what that would make her. But she couldn't worry about that now. Now she just wanted to be with her uncle, to find comfort in his presence. “... can I show you where I'm living, now?” she asked, pulling away again. In case I ever need you to come help me with something quickly, she thought to herself. “Then maybe we can grab some food? All this crying has made me peckish.”

—

After the way the conversation had started, the sweeping and cleaning up of the glass felt so painfully mundane. It was domestic, in a way; the kind of thing that, if he were someone else, Emilio could pretend was normal. If his head weren’t what it was, all broken and mixed up, he could tell himself that this was how things were supposed to be, that sweeping glass off the floor of his shitty apartment with his niece and making conversation about his relationship were expected things. But because he was who he was, because he was him, he couldn’t help but feel like he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. He loved Ophelia, just as he’d loved Rhett. Just as he’d loved Flora and Jaime and Edgar and Rosa, just as he’d loved people who existed only as ghostly memories now. How long would it be, then, before Ophelia was gone, too? Emilio had a bad habit of outliving the people he loved. He wasn’t sure he’d ever learn how to break it.

“Ah, tell that to all the guys who want to kill me,” he joked, though he didn’t think it untrue. He had a lot more people who hated him than he had people who liked him and, if he was being honest, there was something intentional about it. It was easier, he thought, to be hated. Hate was a straightforward thing, something he knew what to do with. He understood how to react when someone wanted him dead. He was less certain when someone wanted to save him. He thought of Lucio, a bitter taste settling on his tongue. He’d rather be hated than saved. It was better for everyone that way.

But you couldn’t control what other people felt. Teddy loved him, despite his best efforts. He thought Ophelia might, too. And Xóchitl, and Wynne, and Nora, and Jade. It was a dangerous thing, having people to lose again. It wasn’t something he ever would have done intentionally. “Yeah,” he confirmed with a nod, glancing back to Ophelia. He huffed a fond half-laugh as Ophelia wrapped her arms around him.

(In another world, he thought, Rhett would be here making a joke about how Ophelia was as tall as he was. He’d call Emilio short, and Emilio would toss something at his head, and they’d laugh. In this world, there was little more than an empty crevice in his chest and an ache in this throat. These things got easier with time, he’d been told. He was still trying to get there. And, despite Ophelia’s hope that they’d find her father alive, he felt like he was back at the start line again, back at ground zero. How could he hope for time to heal when the world kept pushing him to start over, to take it from the top? The grief would never leave him if more kept being added to the pile.)

Carefully, he wrapped his arms around Ophelia. He still wasn’t entirely practiced in soft touches, but he was learning. The pat he delivered to her back was a little awkward, but better than the first time he’d attempted to return Nora’s hug or the first time he’d tried to comfort Wynne. Maybe he was learning something. “You’ll like them,” he said, and he was sure of that. Teddy was hard not to get along with, and Ophelia came with less… baggage than Rhett had. A less complicated history between them, less old wounds constantly being reopened.

Offering her his best attempt at a smile, Emilio nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah, I’d like that.” He needed it, really, though he knew better than to admit to that. His head — the paranoia, the unease that never left him, the thing that he didn’t have a name for — tended to demand that he knew where the people he cared about were at all times. “Show me your place, and I’ll buy you lunch after. Sound good?”

#. thread ;#. with ; emilio cortez #parental death tw #child death tw #. won't anyone see ;

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