#Deirdre Dent

[cerastes]

Forget if I already sent this so apologies if double ask, but I adore Deirdre's weapons so very much. Unconventional weapons are a favorite and particularly ones that can involve big ol sweeps, that and chains in combat, considering she at first used the trident how did she land upon her eventual weapon of choice?

You didn't double ask so no worries! Chains as weapons have always fascinated me as well, especially since you can attach whatever at the end and suddenly you have More Weapon with More Role, for example, in Deirdre's case, it's two large hooks, but you could swap a hook for a solid long nail, or a mace head, or just about anything that can serve as either a weapon, for more creative utility, or both. I like weaponry that can also be creatively used for other ends, personally.

I do plan on posting that story when I'm done writing it and I do address that in there, so I won't go guts deep into the details but, basically, the trident was passed onto her by her adoptive father, himself a tridentmaster, and she became sufficiently proficient with it, but it never really clicked with her. The idea that her father had was, since she can sharpen things, the trident, in her hands, becomes not just a powerful weapon that can stab from afar as well as a being able to defend with its prongs, catching weapons and limiting evasion around its lunges, it also becomes a slashing weapon that can be swung about. That works out on paper, but the trident is an unwieldy weapon to swing in the first place, it's not designed for that, plus having to pump magic into it while swinging such an awkward weapon was difficult. Deirdre could either swing properly or pump the magic into the weapon, but could not do both properly at the same time.

Still, the deadline for her first Gladiatorial fight is nigh, and there's not time to hammer out that particular dent, so our brave bnuuy, stars in her eyes, was ready to start her Gladiator life, the path to greatness and glory! Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her and the audience, but not to her adoptive father and other interested parties, her debut fight had a secret purpose: One of them was going to become state-sponsored Gladiators, specifically taking on the duty of doing the state's dirty work, taking out inconvenient faces and such. Her opponent was very much instructed to kill her, and her adoptive father was forbidden by the powers that be from telling Deirdre what was really up with this match-up, so she goes in there, and eventually starts getting ragdolled pretty hard, so she tries to give up, referees "don't notice" (as instructed, they got a good paycheck that day). His attacks eventually hit her on the head, and part of her helmet gets torn out, exposing her mouth and jaw, and while straddling the line between life or death and realizing, Oh Fiddlesticks, This Guy Actually Wants To KILL Me, in a desperate bid, she throws the trident like a harpoon and manages to disarm the guy. Before he can grab his weapon off the floor, she goes Daigo Umehara on his ass, successfully sharpening her hands with magic, a task far more easily achieved on her own body that on a foreign object. This would take explaining how magic works in the setting, but for now, just understand that magic is far, far more effective on its own user due to compatibility, as everything in this world, organic or otherwise, has a degree of magic resistance or permeability. So she starts clawing, punching, and swiping like a wild beast, ripping chunks of his armor away, and finds it far more easy to move around and, hey, what the hell, this feels natural, this clicks. Before she can get too happy about it, though, her enemy manages to pin her with a counter, and it seems like it's a stalemate for now, as he's got her wrists and is mounting her. In a move no one predicted, less of all her foe, though, fueled by pure instinct, Deidre leans forward with all she's got and, magically sharpening her teeth, chomps right through the armor on his neck and bites out his carotid artery, killing him. Basically eats the guy's neck in live television. That was a pretty rough day for TV networks, by the way. Damn eventful on social media, though.

Since his intent to kill was pretty apparent, the match was ruled a victory for Deirdre, who was not punished since it was clearly self-defense. Fighting for her life like that taught her quite a bit, first and foremost that, to put it in a way, "Yeah, ok, I may be able to use the trident in practice mode, but I'm getting my ass whooped in ranked with it. My HANDS, however..." so she immediately switched mains, basically. She just found it very, very natural to fight with the freedom afforded to not having to hold anything. So she thought "ok, but I'm going to get Absolutely Killed By Weapons if I go without weapons into the weapon fighting arena".

THAT is when A Certain Archbishop (the same that is mentioned in her post and who would eventually become close friends with Deirdre), a sponsor of Sun Eater (her father's Gladiator Club), comes to the office, congratulates her, and points out that she was in fact Much More Baller without the silly old pointed stick, and that she should, in fact, drop it. Deirdre shares her apprehensions to this Archbishop and, it turns out, this Archbishop is in fact a retired Gladiator herself, and a very successful one, so she helps Deirdre out pick out her weapon.

"You see, Gladiators of old used nets or chains to restrain their opponents, and it's why you're allowed a side-weapon in matches, maybe we can think of a side-weapon first?" the Archbishop suggested, and just like a gas leak levels a house during summer, inspiration overcame Deirdre's brain.

"Chains! I can wrap and attach them on my wrists and arms, and they'll naturally follow the motions of my swipes! If need be, I can hold them, sharpen them, and swing them to add momentum for a truly colossal slice! I bet I can cut through a whole dude! It's perfect!"

"There's NO way that'll work, sweetie. Also that's a bit scary so don't phrase it like that."

And it worked really damn well.

With more experience, Deirdre refined her fighting style, adding two large hooks to the chains. She'll usually hold the hooks by the base and use them as short blades, and then adjust the length of her grip according to what she thinks is the best way to deal with her current opponent. Plus, when she needs to REALLY go in, she can just let them go and use her Beloved Very Sharp Hands, and since the chains are wrapped around her arm, she's not disarming herself. It all worked very naturally to fit her naturally aggressive, wild, momentum-based style of fighting.

Her adoptive father was very ":(" for a while, though. The old goat thought he taught her well...! He got over it, though. She got him the OST of his favorite old movie on vinyl, original package, so he was like ok maybe this isn't so bad fine I forgive you hmph!

[lycianlynx]

As soon as her own dance concludes and there is time between rounds, Deirdre rushes off in the direction that Chad fled. It is not easy to find them and she wanders about the hedge maze calling their name, hoping they might here. "Chad! Chad, please, it is Deirdre! I know you are hurting and I would like to help but I do not know where you are!"

It's blessedly quiet on top of the flower they had vaulted onto, the boy now able to decide on whether or not to have a full breakdown at his relative leisure —

"..."

Until it's not. Well, it's not like they're fully able to avoid the elementals like this, either, bird's-eye view that they have, and the chance one would pluck them up and plop them back into the crowd isn't zero... Still, frustration, irritation dents their brow when they hear Professor Deirdre's voice — They know their escape wasn't the most... Subtle, much less elegant in their borderline panicked state, and while the instinct of flight still roars loud in their ears (more natural than fight, always more than fight), they're just —

Why does everyone have to worry for them so much?! Can't everyone just forget this happened, wouldn't that be best for everyone involved!? It's enough that they've humiliated themself in front of every other goddamn motherfucker at the Academy, the last thing they want is to worry someone on top of it all, but they keep making everyone worry themselves sick anyways when they're supposed to be competent and reliable and — And —!

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Fucking dipshit dumbass. The boy grits their teeth as they hear the sound of their name ring out in the night — Saints, woman, do you have to broadcast to the whole party that they're cringe as fuck —

But — Ugh, this isn't her fault, this is theirs. And... They really don't want her to draw any more attention to their absence, to the fact they need help (they don't, this is their problem), yeah? She doesn't need to help. She shouldn't have to feel the need to...

Flight loses to something not quite fight. Gloved hands test at their eyes, the bottom of their nose for heat, for wetness, before they let out an aggravated sigh and inch towards the side of the flower — The flower tilts, and the boy slides off and onto a hedge just behind the Professor, legs a-dangle from where they perch.

"I'm here, Professor," they say, voice shockingly steady, praying the light is low enough that any other unsteadiness is hidden from sight. "Don't need to yell."

A pause, a quiet breath as they try to straighten their shoulders. "I just needed a moment to cool down. I'm fine, so there's no need to worry, yeah?"

[nagaficat]

this is just like among us fr

Scavenging

- receive 1 random resource (plank of wood, metal can, or 1d10 tokens) per post

– 1d10 chance of finding odd gadget from same post, where 1&2 = success (ping Key)

There is certainly no shortage of things to see or find here in this dreamscape.  Debris from some sort of catastrophe lies everywhere to the point that Deirdre almost finds it overwhelming as she sets out scavenging for anything useful with her two knightly companions.  The difficult part is discerning what exactly the group could use.  So much of this world has been destroyed completely and what hasn't has already been picked over but she holds onto the hope that something viable will turn up!

Deirdre takes point, allowing the two men to follow her into one of the buildings near the apartments. A store long ago, she guesses. It is full of shelves that must have once been covered in goods. There are some things that remain but it is mostly layers of dust.

But she kneels at the base of one the shelves where there is a pile of things and starts to sort through it. It is mostly broken boxes and crates but she does find a few metal containers. They are empty now but the labels on them suggest they once contained some sort of fruit. And oh! Another of these containers except this one is sealed and only slightly dented. She examines it, trying to find a way to open it but it is sealed in a way that she cannot do just that.

Roll 1d3: 2, can got!

Roll 1d10: 4, no bonus treats

"There is not much here," she laments out loud before holding up her treasure. "But I did find this! There is clearly something inside but I cannot get it open. I think that we should bring it back with us."

@viridescent-lance @knighteclipsed

[whats-a-clever-username]

also would it be weird if i asked what ethnicities your versions of rogues are

I don't think so, no. I'm only putting a few for the sake of not having a huge ass list.

Ivy is Navajo Native and Latina

Harvey is African American with Haitian heritage

Jon is second generation Irish-American and of Cherokee Native descent (which isn't obvious looking at him, more so his dad and halfsiblings on that side)

Eddie, Echo, and Query (all are maternal cousins) are French-American

Selina is Asian-American with Chinese and Taiwanese heritage

Music Meister is African-American with Jamaican and Kenyan heritage

Roman is Greek, but he was born in Gotham

Copperhead is Arabic-American

Gentleman Ghost is Scottish, but grew up in London

Kirk is Australian

[lfthinkerwrites]

Jon & Ed 29?

“In una smorfia il singhiozzo E il dolor!”

Jonathan growled and pulled the pillow down over his head. “How long has Valentin been caterwaulin’ now?”

“Eight hours, twenty minutes, and thirty-four seconds,” his roommate seethed. Jonathan looked up to see Edward sitting on his cot, his eye twitching. “I have now been up for twenty hours straight, Jonathan. I can’t take much more of this. Why haven’t the useless doctors sedated him already!”

“They have sedated him,” Jonathan said. “Didn’t you see Arkham himself going into his cell with half the pharmacy an hour ago?”

“Well, why haven’t they lobotomized him already!?”

“Even Arkham has to follow some standards, Edward.” Valentin’s singing interrupted them again, as melodious as the sound of rusty nails being scraped down a chalkboard.

“Ah! Ridi Pagliaccio Sul tuo amore infranto!”

“That does it,” Edward said. He got off his bunk and reached under the cot. Jonathan raised an eyebrow when he saw that he was holding a makeshift taser. 

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Nina and Deirdre have been sending it to me, piece by piece.” Edward marched to the door of their cell and fired it at the electronic door lock. The door made a loud beeping noise and slid open. Edward looked over his shoulder and gave Jonathan a smug look. “Shall we?”

Jonathan smirked and reached under his own cot for a hidden syringe, with just enough toxin in it to make Valentin really squeal. “After you.” 

As the pair made their way down the cell block, they spotted Joker, Dent, Tetch, and Harley at their cell doors, looking as exhausted and angry as Jonathan and Edward were. Edward smiled. “Well? Should we let them out?”

Valentin’s singing started again, and Jonathan nodded. “By all means. Valentin needs to know just how...moved, we are by his singing.”

When Aaron Cash saw the small army of inmates marching towards Professor Pyg’s cell with a taser, a syringe, a baseball bat, brass knuckles, and a rubber chicken, he made no move to stop them. He wasn’t suicidal and Pyg had it coming.

[stones-x-bones]

Urgent || Morgan and Bex

TIMING: Current, right after this PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems and @inbextween SUMMARY: Morgan finds Bex in the alley behind the lawfirm. And more importantly, the file Bex risked everything for. CONENT: Domestic abuse references, physical abuse mentions

Bex didn’t remember uncoupling her soul from her body, but apparently that’s what had happened. She knew because when her eyes opened, there wasn’t any pain, and there was supposed to be pain. The condition her mother had left her in was painful and pathetic-- and she also knew because she was staring at her own body. It was slumped over next to the dumpster and she wished she knew enough about any of this astral projection stuff to hide her body a little more than it was. It looked so exposed, just sitting there. It would’ve been surreal had Bex been able to feel much more than a morsel of anger every now and then lately. The only time she’d felt things was when she was with Mina, and even then, she hadn’t felt enough. Mina had looked like she was thinking and feeling all too much and Bex hadn’t known how to help, except hold her closer under her blankets before she’d had to kick her out at 5am and send her shimmying down the drainpipe on the side of the house. 

But-- that wasn’t important right now. She needed to get to help. Last time, she hadn’t needed to walk. Her spirit had gone where it needed, but right now, it was still standing in that alley. She knew who she needed to get to, she just needed to figure out...how. Maybe it was like with the dreams, like what Nell had taught her. Just...think of a place and put all of her intention into that place and--

Bex popped into existence inside Morgan’s living room. For a moment, she allowed herself to fall into a sense of longing. She missed falling asleep on that couch, or watching a movie, and hearing Morgan moving about the kitchen, or the backyard, or to the hallway. She missed the smell of Morgan’s cooking wafting in. She missed laying across Mina’s lap. She missed all of this so much and that was why she needed to get those papers to Morgan and Nell.

And to save her unconscious, broken body. She needed someone to do that, too. “Morgan?” she called tentatively, turning towards the kitchen. She didn’t hear the rattling of cups, though. “Mina?” She didn’t know who was and wasn’t home. “Deirdre?” She just needed one of them. Any one would do. 

Morgan was almost done settling into her studio for the night. She just wanted to make a little brain snack in the real kitchen, where she wasn’t at risk of stepping on her own toes moving around. Maybe the quiet would make her feel better and bring her peace. Then she saw the not-spectre of Bex fidgeting by the stove. For a second Morgan thought her mind might have turned into scrambled egg. Her fear had conjured images of Bex like this before: bruised, bloodied, slumped and barely able to stand. But the look on her face, urgent and pleading, was more alarming than anything Morgan dared imagine. 

It took Morgan several seconds to find her voice again. “Bex...a-are you...really here right now?”

“Morgan!” Bex exclaimed, moving towards her as if she didn’t feel the ache in her bones that so clearly showed in bruises and blood on her face, her arms. It was because she didn’t feel it. Not like this. “Yes-- well, n-no, I’m not. I’m in an alley. My body, I mean,” she explained quickly. Last time she had only had a few seconds to explain what was going on, she didn’t know how long she’d have this time. “It’s-- I don’t know how much time I have. You have to come find me. My-- body.” A pause. “I’m not dead!” she suddenly exhaled, putting her hands up. “I’m not a ghost. This is-- I think I’m astral projecting again? That’s what-- it feels like. I’m not dead, but I also don’t think I’m okay.” The truth, not sugar coated. She hadn’t been able to do that lately, to care enough to do that. She needed to get better about it, be in her body. She was doing a really bad job at being in her body lately. This proved it. Morgan was standing in the kitchen looking at her slightly horrified and she didn’t know how to reassure her. “It’s-- I’m at the law firm. Well, in the alley next to it. Not my choice. Just kind of-- e-ended up there, I think.” Her spirit flickered. “Oh, I think I’m going back to my body no--” but she never finished.

Morgan reached out for the projection of the girl as if she could soothe her like this and will her body to teleport to safety. “O-okay. Okay. Okay,” she chocked. “I’m--” Then Bex vanished. “Shit. I’m coming, I’m coming okay? I---” She grabbed her keys. There was no one to hear her, and if Bex was left for dead looking like that, she was wasting her breath. 

Morgan’s insides clenched as she approached the law firm. If there was any CCTV outside the building, they would know she had come. She had even gone in the Subaru out of habit. On the other hand, any distance between Bex and the car was putting the girl’s life at risk. She’d take another hit from Odell if it meant saving Bex. So up she went, bypassing the parking lot and pulling up to the alley. She left the keys in the ignition and started running. “Bex! Bex are you--” There. But the body she saw barely counted as ‘there’. Morgan sank to her knees and touched the girl’s face. “Hey. Honey? Are you awake? I--I wanna move you, but it’s probably gonna hurt.”

Bex jolted awake and everything hurt again, which meant she was back in her body. That was probably a good thing, as much as she hated it. Someone was touching her face and she blinked through the haze, the pain in her head making it hard to see, vision blurry and blocked. “Morgan?” she asked. It had to be. She’d gone and found her, right? That hadn’t been a dream? That was real. It was real. Just like the feel of her cold hands on the bruised skin of her cheek. “You were right,” she managed to mumbled out, blood trickling from her mouth as she couched, “I shouldn’ve gone home…” Her words slurred together a little, still not all there yet. She’d blocked out the pain in the moment, as she’d thrown the papers into the dumpster as she ran from her mother. She remembered her head slamming into the side of it, angry nails grabbing her shirt and shaking her as she was slammed repeatedly into it. It must’ve been dented, her back aching felt as if it must be. “She caught me,” she said, sagging forward into Morgan, “I wasn’ careful enough.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Morgan said. “Hey, baby girl. Thanks for bringing me here. You did so good, you know that?” She stroked the girl’s hair and slid her arms under her carefully, lifted her slowly. They couldn’t stay here, and if she looked too long at Bex’s injuries she would stop the world to try and fix her this instant. Bex needed better care than that. If Odell was willing to destroy her daughter this much, there was no trusting her to wait for Bex to recover before starting again. 

“You can tell me in the car, okay? I’ll take you to urgent care, how does that sound? Or Nisa? Do you want to see Nisa instead?” As they approached the Subaru, she shifted Bex’s weight so she could balance the girl with one arm and open the door with ease. “Brace yourself, I’m gonna set you down in the seat, okay?”

“I knew you’d know what to d-do,” Bex said through wheezing breaths. Her stomach hurt so much. Something was broken in there. Ribs or muscles or something. “Sorry I keep...calling you like this.” She wasn’t, though. Sorry. The first time she’d shown up at Morgan’s like this, the woman had offered her the words, and she’d never gone back on them. She never would. She smiled at her, as best she could through painful, cracked lips, blood smeared across them like lipstick. Morgan had just lain with her in that hotel room, on that bed, and now she was carrying her like a limp corpse towards her car once again. Except she wasn’t a corpse. Time and time again Bex just narrowly escaped. Because she had people like Morgan. And Mina, and Nell. All there to pump blood back through her heart. 

“No! No,” she exhaled, “no u-urgent care. They’ll k-know. They always know. They just don’t say anything. No Nisa.” She’d just try and convince her to join the coven again. As she was laid down in the back seat, Bex pointed. “The-- the dumpster. A folder. There should be a-- f-folder. Papers in a...weird language. You have to-- f-find them.”

“Don’t be sorry, baby girl, you don’t have to be sorry,” Morgan said, eyes still steadfast on the car, the keys, anything except Bex’s injuries. She set the girl down and knelt to work on the seatbelt. “Hey, hey, shhh. I had to pass by the front to get over here, I don’t think secrecy should be a priority right now. What’s important is making sure you don’t have any internal bleeding or other bad shit I can’t fix with the first aid tub. So, we’ve gotta go somewhere. I’m not letting this get you if I can help it. Think about where you want me to take you and I’ll uh--” She cast a glance back at the dumpster. Stars, the key Bex had paid for with her blood would be in a container almost twice her size. “I’ll find that folder you hid.” She took a deep breath. Being parkour zombie hadn’t been part of her training with Mina, but there was a first time for everything. “I love you. Stay awake. Tell me where we’re going when I get back.” She pet her hair one more time, lightly, desperate not to cause any more pain, and ran off.

Bex liked it when she called her that. She smiled through the bleariness and laid back in the car. The ceiling light was going in and out of focus as she laid there, trying to pay attention to what Morgan was saying. She needed her to figure out where to go. Okay, okay, Bex could do that, she could do that. She watched Morgan go and almost forgot she’d told her to, to find the folder Bex had worked so hard to find. She reached for her as she left, but fell back, groaning in pain, holding her stomach. It burned, it hadn’t stopped burning since she’d exploded the other day. She wasn’t sure she’d eaten anything since then, either. Bex stared up at the ceiling again, trying to focus. She felt like she was fading fast. She hoped Morgan would come back soon. She needed her to find those folders, but if Bex didn’t make it through to do anything with the information, what was the point? She coughed again, more blood trickling from her mouth. Waited until she heard footsteps, but when she tried to sit up, the world went black. “D-did you find it? Please tell me you found it.” This couldn’t have been for nothing. 

Morgan had to put one foot on the dumpster and one on the wall and inch her way up to the top of the dumpster. She braced herself on the rim and didn’t climb or jump so much as fall into the filth and trashbags. Bex’s folder was mercifully easy to find. Morgan just had to swim over the bags to reach it. A few papers had fallen out. Morgan chased them over the trash bags and shoved them back in. In spite of the seconds passing, she couldn’t help but look: Something in a language she didn��t recognize with the signatures of Bex’s parents in brown spotty ink and a blank space for one more and a set of birth certificates. Not exactly a gold mine, but Nell would be able to make sense of the signed paper and maybe that would lead to something more. 

Morgan pressed the folder to her chest and pitched herself over the side of the dumpster. Her back slammed hard against the pavement but in a few seconds, when she got up, no bent bones hindered her movement and she knew she was free to run the rest of the way back to the car. 

She launched herself into the front seat and buckled up, tossing the folder onto the floor. “Hey! I’m here, I found it, it was just like you said. We’re good. Now, where are we going?”

Oh, right, Bex was supposed to think about where they were going. “Home?” she asked, looking up into the front seat at Morgan, even as stars marred her vision. Morgan wanted to take her to the urgent care, but fear still gripped her, clutching her stomach like a vice. “We can...the-the urgent care. But not-- you can’t tell them my n-name. My real name. They can’t know. They can’t know,” she kept repeating quietly, blinking heavily, trying to keep herself awake. Every time, though, she felt like she might pass out, the pain in her ribs reminded her to stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake. The car rattled over a bump and she cried out, holding her stomach. She remembered her mother’s foot connecting with her abdomen as she lay on the ground. Over and over and over again. “It-- hurts-- like a-a lot,” she mumbled. “Can this thing go any f-faster?”

“Yes!” Morgan cried, fist bumping the ceiling. “Urgent Care! We’ll give you a really boring name, a gentile name, and I’ll just say I found you, and you’ll say there’s no one to call, and you should be okay for a little bit. That’s--brilliant plan. Amazing plan.” She reached over for Bex’s hand, nodding along as they slowed to a stop at the next light. “Uh, I was kind of hoping not to get any attention by breaking traffic laws or making the queasy worse by getting all swerve-y, but you can’t always get what you want!” When the light turned, Morgan floored the gas and sped the rest of the way, hands clenched on the wheel.

She screeched into the urgent care parking lot and dove out, running around for Bex. “Hey, you still with me, baby girl? We made it. And it might be easier if you can tell the nice doctors inside what happened. We’ll uh...say you got mugged? That’s close enough, right?” She didn’t wait for the girl to answer, but pulled her into her arms and started walking.

“No, no they won’t let you come back with me...if you say that…” Bex mumbled, trying to talk through the pain. It was searing, every time her body was jostled. But if it meant getting there faster, then that was okay. She hadn’t been to a real hospital in so long, she wondered if she remembered them right. If Urgent care was anything like that. Would they even accept her? Would they point them to ER? It was a lot harder to be anonymous in the ER. “Can you tell them I’m with you?” she asked, as Morgan came around and pulled her back into her arms. “That I’m yours?” 

Morgan was grateful Bex couldn’t see her expression as she made her request. It felt dangerous, more than it had that first evening when she realized how much the girl meant to her. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being offered a trick riddle. To take, or not to take, and every answer was right and wrong. Odell might find them by morning. And what if she knew someone at the desk, someone who knew she didn’t have any blood family left to her name? Maybe they could both hide. Maybe being someone else was how they caught a break in this miserable town.

“Hello!” She called. “We need some help. My daughter’s been hurt.”

[grokebaby]

[PREVIOUS WRITING]

"Deirdre! Why'd you call me here?! I've suddenly gotten alot busier.. " Grandefel hissed, hurriedly landing on the discolored purgatory grounds. She straightened her tail from the clumsier-than-usual fall, and made eye contact with the demon. The uncharacteristic anxiety in Deirdre's eyes set a cold weight in her chest, making her drop the Persecutor face instantly. "You said it was urgent..?"

"Yeah.. Sorry. I don't know if this can wait.." She said, going silent for a uncomfortable amount of time. It made the weight in Grandefel's chest heavier.

"Well?"

Deirdre leaned in, resting her forehead on Grandefel's. She seemed tired. The angel allowed the small moment of support to go on for as long as Deirdre wanted, despite both her responsibilities and curiosity burning in the back of her mind.

She flinched in surprise as a heavy aura engulfed the scene. They quickly retreated from each other's embrace to face the high angel landing right beside them

"FOUL DEMON. YOU WILL SERVE ME AS I; A HIGH JUDGEMENT REQUIRE YOUR FAVOR."

Ngah announced. Her landing left a golden dent in the grey dirt. She turned her face to Grandefel, gaining an expression of disgust. It made the persecutor's fur stand on edge, feeling the divine gaze prong her insides. "Wait, why are you here? If you had business with demons you could've-"

"WHAT; DESCENDED THERE MYSELF? I AM INSULTED AT YOUR SUGGESTION, SEEING HOW ONE OF OUR OWN; ZZZ WAS TREATED THERE. YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO ASK QUESTIONS NOW. I CAME HERE FOLLOWING YOUR TRAIL. DESPITE YOUR CLAIMS YOU SEEM TO FREQUENT THIS PLACE, YOU UNCHASTE LITTLE; - "

"Yeah yeah shut up, what did you want from me?" Deirdre interrupted, really not in the mood for this today. Grandefel winced at her language, but didn't feel like nagging after the word vomit she was just given.

Ngah's eye shifted back to the demon, radiating hatred. "YOU WILL ESCORT ME TO YOUR HIGH JUDGEMENT; I MUST TALK TO THEM. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST."

Deirdre sighed, rolling both sets of eyes. "Yup, sure, right this way.." deciding to try and save face at the court later. She lifted her head, tail gracing Grandefel's cheek as a signal to follow. Ngah's ginormous hand grappled her lower half harshly, the heat of her skin making Deirdre sweat. Triggering a fight or flight response, the demon lept away, leaving rugburn all over her long hips, splitting the ends of her long hair.

"wHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Deirdre screeched, feeling violated. Grandefel was about to echo the statement but was silenced by an electrifying stare from Ngah, telling her it was not okay for her to be in this situation. Her large reflective wings shined threateningly, forcing Grandefel to an extremely begrudging bow. She took her paws off the ground, signaling she was leaving. Furious as she was, the situation shouldn't be escalated any more than this.

After a quick crawl, and an eye catching march through hells Hall, Deirdre and Ngah were both at the court room. Deirdre, sizzling from frustration, signaled to somewhere higher up behind her throne. An extra room came into view. The court was swiftly emptied and extra walls appeared, as if a curtain was drawn between it and the rest of hell. Three monolithic thrones placed right next to each other came into view, holding three nearly as monolithic demons in them. Delilah, Xerxes and Hart. Delilah, seated in the middle, brought her heavy horned head out from the shadows, setting all eyes on the people present. "Deirdre. Ngah." she addressed them, allowing them to start with whatever was the reason they were here.

Deirdre visibly leaned away from the high angel, letting them hear it from her first.

"HIGH JUDGEMENT OF HELL. I AM DISSAPOINTED IN YOU."

The blunt statement sent a ripple through the court, making the two other high demons pay closer attention to their guest now. As if being awoken from some work induced numbness, Xerxes directed his large eye onto Ngah, seeming offended. Hart unraveled their grip of the throne, readying themself to hear the angel. "Strong starter", Delilah muttered under her breath. Ngah explained:

"APPROXIMATELY A DAY AGO THE ANGEL; ZZZ DESCENDED TO HELL WITH NEUTRAL INTENTIONS. EXACTLY 12 HOURS AND 30 MINUTES LATER; THEY RESORTED TO AN EMERGENCY CALL DUE TO THE VIOLENT INJURIES INFLICTED UPON THEM BY; WHO I PRESUME WOULD BE YOUR CURRENT PUNISHERS."

"But you're not here to talk to our punishers I assume." Delilah retorted. Ngah continued

"EXACTLY. I DEMAND; AN EXPLANATION, A FORMAL APOLOGY, AND RETRIBUTION"

Ngah laid an evil eye on Deirdre, making her shudder. Partially because she didn't expect to be called out like this, and partially because if looks could kill...

Hart spun their head on the right way, all eyes also landing on Deirdre. "Let us start with the explanation. I take it that this is about responsibility, which would land on Deirdre in this case. Go on." They said, passing the turn to speak to the persecutor

Delilah nodded. Her lowest pair of eyes lingered on Deirdre's hips and the painfully glowing burns on them, but she decided not to comment on it right now.

Deirdre exhaled heavily, trying not to glare at Ngah too bad. "Thank you. To recap; ZZZ indeed landed in hell. First offence, they blatantly disregarded the authority of both gatekeepers - One of which is an Angel, as you're probably aware." she paused, looking over everyone. "Since they're not a high angel, especially not part of the High Judgement - as far as I'm aware, they should've had a very good reason for being here. Second offence; they didn't." she was pleased to sense an air of agreement among the high demons. Contrary to Ngah, glowing with frustration.

"They entered the judgement hall, and while I didn't have a trial going on at the time, it was very unprecedented nonetheless. Now, you know that I'm patient, so I indulged them in case it was something important. Third offence; it wasn't. They proceeded to make very undignified remarks about me, angering my court, and.. Well.. " she trailed off, sensing that the last part of the story was going to be the hardest to paint in a neutral light.

Ngah gritted her teeth. "AND YOU SAT AND WATCHED YOUR COURT ATTEMPT TO SLAUGHTER THEM? BEFORE YOUR EYES?"

Deirdre shifted uncomfortably, taking a deep breath. "I.. Would've stepped in, had it become too much." she forced out, not entirely confident in her statement.

"UNTRUE; ZZZ HAD TO RESORT TO A DISTRESS CALL" Ngah spat out with growing rage

"And the situation was resolved! Or is ZZZ Dead?!"

Xerxes intervened, clearly having very little patience for Ngah to begin with. He stood up higher, hoof scratching the floor.

"IF THEY WERE; YOU WOULD PAY FOR THEIR LIFE" The angel bellowed, her words sending a heatwave through the court.

Delilah firmly stood up from her throne, letting her staff slam the floor like a gavel. "Silence! Ngah. We understand your distress, but you cannot put out fire with fire. Threats towards our safety will not be tolerated. You will receive a formal apology from our Persecutor if you so wish, but it was fully within her right to let her court act in place of her." she lectured, eyes shining threateningly.

The two ladies exchanged fierce eye contact for what felt like painfully long. Wrath was boiling behind Ngah's plastic smile.

"I AM CALLING A HIGH COURT MEETING BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL. IT WILL HAPPEN; IMMINENTLY. I WILL NOT LET; MYSELF BE CAST ASIDE LIKE THIS."

Hart twirled themself in a twist out of both anxiety for the coming case, and excitement to see the upstairs once again. Xerxes puffed out a huge smoke cloud, mentally preparing to argue. Delilah simply nodded.

"Give us an hour."

[mor-beck-more-problems]

From the Darkest Night || Morgan, Blanche, Jasmine, Constance, & Agnes

TIMING: Current/the night of the solstice. After Morgan’s and Constance’s choices.

PARTIES: @harlowhaunted @halequeenjas @constancecunningham Agnes Bachman (written by @chloeinbetween )

SUMMARY: Death has been and left its mark with winter’s bleakness, cold and stark. The tides of darkness turn.

Constance must be stopped. Morgan faces the truth.

CONTAINS: violence, death, exorcism

The steering wheel cracked on the Subaru as Morgan swerved around the slick, snow-covered streets. She sped past the red-green stream of traffic lights, muttering, “Fucking, fucking, fucking fuck...what are we gonna do about this, how do we fix this, what is my fucking plan, stars a--” Morgan slammed on the brake and turned the wheel violently again. The Subaru jumped the curb and wailed to a stop. In front of her was a stream of anxious cars, all trying to squeeze down the narrow way out of town, toward the highway. From the crest of the road, Morgan could see some of the mess they were escaping: dented street lamps and snapped power lines, dizzy shadows of wounded, disoriented people and gory splashes of siren lights. Whatever Morgan had let Constance get away with, it was big. Morgan revved back and hopped through any street she could to get to the rendezvous point in the outskirts, dodging stunned, frightened holiday-goers. Whatever they warned her about, she didn’t hear. She just needed to get to Jasmine, Blanche, and Agnes. Constance was bound to try her luck on the East End when she was done pitching a fit on this side of the river. And then what? She’d find out that Morgan’s house was still warded up tight and she wasn’t even home and Deirdre had enough salt in the house to prevent any warm-up carnage. And then what? If there was anything good left in the universe, no one would have to find out.

Morgan slowed when she found the group, already working on something. She stepped out of the car. “I’m--I--” This wasn’t the time to be pathetic. This may not even be the time to be sorry. “I’m here now,” she said. “Do we know where Constance is? Or what the plan is? Or--” She couldn’t tell if it was her guilt talking or not, but Morgan had the distinct feeling that no one was impressed by her questions. “Tell me how I can help. I would like to help, please.”

Something akin to anger had been boiling up inside Jasmine as she drove to the abandoned lot in the Outskirts Blanche had directed her to. There should have never been a chance for Constance to wreak havoc on the Common. This should have been done months ago when she had initially tried to make Constance pass on. If her concentration hadn’t been broken, it’d be both Constance and Nancy gone. But no, Constance was still here and a full on poltergeist which was going to make things more difficult now. She had to drive by the damage on the way to the Outskirts and her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. A hint of smoke was still in the air and everything was blown out of place. The number of ambulances on the scene only served to make her more angry. Constance wouldn’t have the chance to do this again. She quickly jumped out of the car when she got to the lot and looked over Blanche a handful of times before she was entirely convinced the girl was in fact okay. Well, relatively speaking at least. She’d directed Blanche to help her set everything up as Morgan arrived. They had to act quickly and Morgan being here meant Constance would be sooner rather than later. Under less rushed circumstances, she would have let her anger towards Morgan out. As it stood, she simply gave her an annoyed look and said, “She had left the Common and will likely be seeking you out seeing as you’re the one she has the whole revenge vendetta crap with… which is at least convenient since you’re here and cooperating now.” There was a bit of a bite to her tone that she couldn’t be bothered to hide. “Well, you’re pretty much bait at the moment, but since you have the benefit being able to see her and be on the more durable side, I’m going to ask that you keep myself or Blanche from getting impaled by something.”

Agnes felt hollow, like the blood spilled on the street had been drained right out of her. She hadn’t expected that, to have her bitterness and fury thrown back in her face with the weight of an anvil. Nothing Constance had thrown at her had done any kind of damage, but when a street light had buckled under the force of Constance’s rage, Agnes moved by instinct, lowering it to the ground so gently it couldn’t crush anyone. It was only when it was set down so carefully that the glass in the bulb hadn’t broken that Agnes cracked, once Constance was gone and she could let herself grieve just another one of her failures. But this one had been Constance’s too. That was what she’d seen, in the second before. Constance had made a choice, as she had when she’d cast her curse, when she had as she’d tried to kill Morgan over and over. Constance was no longer the girl Agnes had loved. She hadn’t been, even before she’d become a poltergeist. So Agnes had let her grief break the light in the downed street post, and had pulled herself together to look for a plan, following her heart back to Morgan, and this terrible, empty space, clinging to the walls as she tried to tuck her grief back inside her perfectly acceptable clothes.

Time wasn’t passing correctly for Blanche as she sped away from the carnage on the common. Moments in time had been plucked from her memory, dissolving into static and cold numbness. She only really came into focus once Morgan showed up, jolted back into reality at the heated anger boiling under her skin. She said nothing, keeping her face blank as she stared at Morgan, hearing the bite in Jasmine’s words. Blanche was pleased that Jasmine seemed to be feeling similarly to her. She looked away from Morgan, busying herself with finally trying to settle her appearance. She looked like -- well, like she had just been thrown into a giant Christmas tree. She pulled her hair back and started picking off pine needles from her newly ruined winter jacket. “We need to get her here,” Blanche said tonelessly. Focus. The voice in her head was now her own, reminding her that the pain in her side or anywhere else didn’t matter. Cracked ribs, exhaustion, and bruises were something she could live with for now. “Constance is on a rampage, and she no longer cares about who she takes out in her quest to kill Morgan,” Blanche said to Jasmine. It was easiest to talk to Jasmine, rather than to the group as a whole. Between Agnes setting off her already overstimulated senses and the building anger when she looked at Morgan, her head was starting to hurt pretty badly. “I don’t know how we want to do this, but we need to get her here before she devastates another highly populated area.” The image of the gazebo going up into flames came to her mind and any color left in her face drained. “Constance needs to know Morgan is here. Or think she’s here.”

Morgan hadn’t expected a warm welcome from anyone, but somehow the sharp, pragmatic snaps were worse than any volley of yelling she’d braced herself for on the way over. “I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “I’m...yes, I’m cooperating. I know I screwed up, and you guys were right, okay? I…” I can’t let anymore people die tonight because of me. Morgan swallowed that particular wish down. She was in enough trouble without explaining Miriam to anyone. “I can try to bait her. Find her. She’s probably headed to my house, right? Maybe I can draw her out here...but, uh…” She would need someone to help run interference if she really wanted to make it home in the morning. But looking between Jasmine and Blanche, that didn’t seem like something she could ask for. They couldn’t take the fall for this.

Morgan’s eyes slid over to Agnes, who had remained silent since her arrival. “Would you help me? Come with me, run interference so we can get her back here for sure?” Her eyes pleaded with her. “I know I screwed everything up, but we can still do something. Not as much as we should’ve, but something.” It wouldn’t be enough, because pain wasn’t something you could measure down to the last milligram and weigh even with carbon and silicon. You couldn’t throw it at someone like an axe and find yourself lighter or trade it like money for happiness in exchange. However you got rid of pain, it wasn’t like that.

“The two of us together will quickly draw her ire,” Agnes agreed listlessly, staring at a point past all of them and right into her past. Into the lie neither of them had truly ever been permitted to heal from, and the crushing weight of her mother’s suspicions for the rest of her life. Constance was gone. Whatever she had hoped to achieve here had failed most spectacularly, hope scorched from the earth like that damned tent. “I will do what I must.”

While they were finally on a united front, Jasmine had never been good at hiding any sort of disdain she felt. She’d never found much point in it either, even in a business setting, her customers seemed to appreciate her never relenting honesty. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe avoid taking the more populated route here,” she said, the edge still more than evident in her tone. Her glance was cast at Morgan though she was still unsure about this Agnes ghost hanging around. Her attention focused back to Blanche who seemed to be in a somewhat catatonic state that left her concerned. As Morgan and Agnes left, she spent a few moments explaining the steps in preparation to Blanche. She wasn’t sure the younger woman would ever like to learn exorcisms, but it still seemed beneficial for her to pick some things up along the way. She closed off the circle of salt and let out a sigh. She broke the quiet and asked, “Do you want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?” It was clear she was taking this badly and Jasmine needed to help her find her strength for these next steps.

Blanche listened to Jasmine, unsure if she was truly absorbing everything Jasmine was telling her. She supposed they would find out if they were ever put into this position again. When Jasmine broke the quiet, she glanced up from one of the symbols she was examining in the ground, staring back at her. “I -” Blanche started, her throat thick with emotion she hadn’t realized appeared upon Morgan and Agnes’ departure. “I did everything right -- She’s the one that chose this.” Blanche wasn’t certain if she was talking about Morgan or Constance anymore. She realized then her anger wasn’t directed completely at Morgan’s choices. It was at both of them. Both of them were wrong, and Blanche had practically broken herself trying to make them see right. What was the point? Was there even a point in trying? There was a broken feeling in her that she couldn’t explain, but it hurt worse than any of the injuries she had put together. Blanche numbly wondered if it was disappointment. “I don’t want to talk about this now,” Blanche said as the pain in her ribs jerked her back to reality again. She wiped her eyes before tears could spill. “I’ll do what we have to, Jas… Everything else…” Her voice cracked. “Everything else can come later, can’t it?”

Jasmine nodded as Blanche spoke and noted how raw the emotion in her voice was. How she seemed so much smaller than her already small size. Broken down in a way that seemed far too dire for someone so young. She placed a reassuring hand on Blanche’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You know, you can do everything right sometimes and people can still let you down. I hate to say it, but more often than not that’s the case.” It was evident to Jasmine that somehow Blanche’s sense of self worth was tied into this which she just couldn’t wrap her head around. Morgan had previously been unreasonable and Constance had been a ghost fueled by vengeance for over a century. “None of that says anything about you,” she assured as a chilled gust of wind came through the lot. Thankfully nothing was displaced, but somehow it made the moment feel morose. They had to press forward though. There was no other option. “And we’re not done here yet,” she said to remind Blanche.

“I'll have to get used to disappointment,” Blanche replied, and the pain and anger that swelled in her chest was overtaken by an overwhelming sense of numbness. All her senses dulled, and she relaxed herself into a state of nothing. Her gaze rested on the circle, a sense of finality in the air. “No,” she agreed, glancing at her watch. “But we will be soon.”

Morgan stopped counting how many traffic violations she racked up well before she scraped past the bridge by riding the shoulder and swerving through lanes to get to her street. Constance left a trail of debris big and small in her wake. It was almost funny: when Morgan laid eyes on her up the road, standing in the road outside of Morgan’s house with Christmas lights strobing manically around her, she still looked as small and grubby as she’d ever been. No demonic glow in her pale eyes or costume upgrade like a comic book villain. Just a girl, frail and dangerous.

“I’d really like to be able to survive this so I can un-fuck my life afterwards,” Morgan whispered, fear turning her voice shrill. “I don’t know how much you know about zombies, but if she busts my head, I’m finished. So if you could run interference with her projectile playtime, that’d be great. And uh, you have full permission to hitch a ride or take over if you happen to come up with a plan, because I kind of don’t have one besides ‘make her mad and get out of here fast.’”

As she spoke, Constance drifted closer to the house, phasing through the stacks of cars crammed onto the driveway. Deirdre’s plan to get the families into the one house that was warded must have worked, but stars above, that didn’t make the scene look any less terrifying. Morgan shut her eyes and braced herself. Deirdre’s got her side and you’ve got yours. You don’t need to do this together, you just need to do it.

Sparks flew up from a reindeer next door. Rudolph’s lights went out just as his antlers turned into a halo of fire. He slowly came apart into his sharp-edged assembly required pieces and rose, trembling, into the air.

“Hey, Connie!” Morgan shouted, leaning halfway out the car window. “The real party’s right here! Are you gonna throw a tantrum all night or are you gonna kill me?”

Rudolph crashed against Morgan’s kitchen windows and bounced to the floor. Banshee proofing the glass was good for something after all. But that was where the good news ended. Morgan had wanted to get Constance’s attention, and now she had it.

Agnes felt more hollow than she had in decades in Morgan’s vehicle, her hands clasped in her lap. Her gaze distantly ahead of them as they made the same pilgrimage she had weeks ago. She was so still she almost missed Morgan’s fleeting admission. She did not say that Beck women were as prone to ruining their lives as they were prone to falling in love with other women. There was no fix, no un-fuck. There was only a tornado in the breeze of the woman she had loved. “I can do that.”

“I was never one for plans nor bravery,” Agnes replied quietly, still as empty in tone as the air that she inhabited. “Should I see the opportunity, I will take it, although I hope I will not have to.” Agnes was not sure that if she had a body again even for a moment that she would find it easy to let go. She also had little idea what a plan might even look like, other than to channel all of Constance’s rage into one place. There was little time for further hesitation as Morgan stretched out of the window and called for Constance. At the same time, Agnes floated through the roof of the car, letting Constance see her again in invitation. Her eyes met Constance’s for a long moment, perhaps hoping to see anything that she had before here, but there was nothing, more rage than woman. The letterbox was ripped out of the ground, and hurtled at their car with deadly force. Agnes extended her hand, but only pushed it enough sideways to only scrape the paint off the vehicle. There was an implicit challenge in her gaze as she looked back to Constance. Do your worst.

Constance had never imagined what Morgan and Agnes side by side would look like, it was too cruel, too wrong, to consider. Like a mirror cracked and doubled, they turned their heads toward her, eye wide and stupid as deer. She knew what they wanted, and she had half a mind not to give it to them. Perhaps she couldn’t get past the wards around the house, but she could rip everything else to pieces, could she not? But that was another trick in itself. As much as Constance burned to see the defiance stomped out of Morgan Beck’s face, she wanted to see her perish even more. Right before Agnes’ eyes, if she could have it so. Let Agnes see the curse finish before her eyes. Let her break the way Constance broke, let her whither and confront her own cruelty and her crimes.

Constance turned away and charged toward the car.

“Maybe cowardice is genetic,” Morgan shrugged. “But we do what we gotta for the people who--shit!” She had just enough time to pop back in and rev the car in reverse, shooting into someone’s minivan before Constance barreled through the windshield shattering it inward. “Probably should've seen that coming,” she said. Morgan met her eyes and her stomach lurched. She thought she had seen murder in her face before, but this was different. This was beyond desire or rage, this was as close to will and magic as a ghost could get. Morgan looked down the street and at the flicker of passing sirens and traffic lights. She was going to get shredded up and down the interstate if she tried to race Constance, and everyone just trying to drive home for the holidays, going to the grocery store, or trying to get the hell out of here for good.

“We gotta go!” Morgan dove out of the car as Constance vanished into the console, taking control of the wheel. She took off into the nearest yard, crashing through a fence before she coordinated herself enough to vault over another. She landed all wrong, bending the bones in her leg sideways but kept going. Running to the outskirts wasn’t going to be any fun, but maybe it would save a few lives. “Fuck, I hate this! You wouldn’t know how to climb things, would you?”

Agnes froze, understanding the implications of Morgan’s question. There had been games played in trees when she’d been a child, stretching for the highest, ripest apples in the trees. Then there had been the times she had to leverage herself into small nooks and crannies to find herself a moment’s peace from her husband’s incessant demands, and teaching her children how to hide and run from the events of the curse. She wouldn’t have ever described herself as a good climber, but she could do better than this, surely?

It wasn’t really even a question of whether she could. If Morgan could not clear the route back to Jasmine and Blanche, then Agnes might have found even fresher ways to fail her family. Agnes reached out, through Morgan’s hand, her arm, and then right to her heart. It did not beat, but it still hummed with energy. There was a small nook under her aorta. Agnes envisioned herself pouring into that nook like treacle out of a jug, except that there were no space limits at all. Once there, she expanded out, out, out, until she filled Morgan like she had once filled herself. It took her a moment to reorient herself where gravity had an effect, but then she was off, hurling through the outskirts faster than her human body could ever have sustained. Agnes had not felt physical pain in decades, and was less careful because of it, but she was also faster.

There was a moment of biting cold, the first Morgan had felt since she’d died, then a wave of grief, like there were too many sobs stuck in her chest, drowning her from the bottom of her lungs and up to her mouth. “Agnes,” she gasped—then there was quiet and a darkness almost like sleep.

Constance saw the Bachman women collide and disappear into the trees, scrambling like a squirrel from a fox. She seethed and electricity cackled from the power lines above her, but only a flicker. No flames, no splitting wood. Something inside Constance was breaking further, something Iike strength. She held no more illusions of love and hope and wishing, but it burned worse than any flame to see Agnes choose Morgan, help Morgan, save Morgan. Always Morgan and her wretched happiness, her stolen life. “You’re mine!” Constance shrieked.

She followed them, tearing through the dark as the pair, now bound into one body, raced over the bridge and up to the outskirts. The wind roared with each of her screams, topping them over and knocking them into the trees. Windows trembled and bowed in the automobiles she passed. On they went. Constance surged behind her once, too furious to concentrate enough to pull on their hair or throw them into the river. She tried to reach inside, to worm her way in. If she had been more clever, she would have done this from the start and forced Morgan to her doom. But she only phased through and watched helpless as the Morgan-Agnes creature vanished into the woods. She pulled on every thread of energy she hand and sped through. She would snap her neck, she would pick her up and run her through every branch in the forest. Constance reached for the pair again and sneered with satisfaction when they went flying and tumbled into the street. “You did this! You did all of this! You killed me!” She tossed them with the force of her will again. Morgan-Agnes rattled to their feet, like a puppet pulled on all the wrong strings and fell again. “You need to pay for what you did! All of you!” She was so fixated on spending herself making the pair suffer at once, she didn’t see Blanche or the circle set in the ground. Her world had burned down to a single thread of pain and Constance would unravel it down to the last fiber.

If the howling of the wind and the thudding of Morgan’s body being thrown about wasn’t enough indication that Constance was there, the bone chilling sensation that ran under her skin would have. There was no time for Jasmine to ponder the situation. Think the moment over. It was something her aunt had taught her early on; develop an instinct so sharp that you could act swiftly. “This is it,” she told Blanche before clasping the young woman’s hand in her right hand and the gem of her aunt’s necklace in her left. While Blanche couldn’t chant the words with her, her energy could give Jasmine the edge she needed to get them all out of here alive. Constance barreled through like a storm, sights only set on Morgan who judging by the extra nerves firing off inside her was possessed by Agnes. The thunderous rage in her eyes could not make Jasmine back down. This had always been inevitable and she would go about this in the kindest way for the girl Constance once was. The familiar Latin chants poured from her mouth with her voice even and strong. Her focus would not be deterred no matter how much chaos Constance brought in her wake. She kept repeating the part of the ritual that would draw Constance into the salt circle. Once. Twice. Three times. As many times as it took.

Agnes felt the ice filling her - Morgan’s - brain, as Constance tried to squeeze inside too, to rip them both from the inside out. Unsure of what else to do, Agnes just ran through her, wincing as the place their hearts might have been touched in ways they hadn’t been permitted in life. Far too late now. She could hardly remember the route that Morgan had driven, unfamiliar with this terrain, but she could feel the medium Constance had been with before like Blanche was a flame and she was but a moth. Perhaps it was that Blanche had already summoned her once, perhaps it was the second light that was the exorcist beside her. She found her way to them, only to lose sight of Constance. Agnes barely responded as Morgan’s skin was scraped by their landing, the burning bending of her bones. She could barely get the body upright before Constance threw them again. The words stung more than the jerking of this body, but Agnes was careful to protect the head. “You did this, Constance.” She replied eventually, in a voice as much her own as Morgan’s. “You made your choices too.” Agnes hardly believed her words, but she needed to keep Constance’s attention on them, not on Jasmine or Blanche.

Blanche’s grip on Jasmine’s hand was so tight, she was sure Jasmine was going to yell at her for it, but as the icy feeling spread through her body as Constance and Agnes (via Morgan) approached had her holding on for dear life. This was the one moment she wished she could help, that she knew the right words and the right power to end this now. She didn't want to watch Constance become nothing while the memory of her twirling under the Christmas lights still hung close to her mind. It was a happy memory tainted with anger and murder, and Blanche trembled as she focused on pushing every last ounce of energy she had into Jasmine. She wanted to close her eyes to spare herself of watching Constance unravel, but things were bound to fly and it wouldn't be safe for anyone, especially Jasmine, if she shut her eyes tight. Words sounded like static, and Blanche let in a deep breath as she tried her best to focus on Jasmine’s voice rather than the ghost fight in front of her. She understood their intent even if she didn't know the translation itself, and as Constance’s shrieking echoed in her ears, Blanche reminded  herself there was no other way. All options had been exhausted. She was exhausted and this was it.

It passed in an instant, like the jolt you got from snapping awake after a nightmare: Morgan was sliding helplessly over the yards in the East End, and then she was on the ground, struggling to get her bent bones to hold her up. The air burned her cheeks, her skin torn to shreds from scraping along the asphalt. Staggering to her feet, she saw a sideways view of Blanche, trembling with the fierceness of her reserve. “I’m---I---” Her words crackled in her throat. Right, she needed to breathe with her ribs bowing through them in five places. She winced as the ground vanished and crashed to the grass again. You’d think after all this time, she’d be used to it.

“No!” Constance screamed. Her voice twisted in the air, wailing with pain that went beyond nerves and feeling. It was as though she had become it and burst, splattering her anguish like blood. But the circle surged with light and all the wind in the air wasn’t enough to keep Constance from falling into it. She reached out with both hands, her airy fingers trembling with strain. She looked to Blanche. She should have known. From the first moment Blanche had come up to her at the funeral, she should have guessed. Blanche hadn’t been a spy or a cheat, but she had not been her friend or anything else Constance had deluded herself into wishing for. “I should’ve ended you!” She sobbed. “How could you make me this!”

Morgan finally got to her feet, cradling herself as she staggered to the edge of the circle. The circle seemed to be pulling on Constance’s clothes with a hundred fingers. But Morgan knew there was nothing to tear or pull on but her. Tears, thin and wispy as frost fell from the corners of her eyes and vanished into the circle of light. Maybe it was the magic, or just how little all their pain amounted to, but Morgan couldn’t see the ghost from her nightmares or her paranoias anymore. Only a raw, anguished nerve wrapped in a hurt girl. Morgan couldn’t think of anything sadder or more familiar than that. “I’m...sorry,” she breathed. “I get it, I do. You had to do something to stop feeling this way. It’s the worst kind of hurt to see everything you love fall away and find yourself in the last place you wanted. I know, Constance. And I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not. None of you are. Not once!”

Morgan stared into her trembling, translucent eyes, which seemed to grow as the rest of her came apart. “I know that feeling too. And I’m sorry, honey. I’m even sorry it has to be over. I am, okay? But whether you believe it or not, you’re not alone anymore. And it’s not enough, but it’s what we’ve got. Let go now, okay? Let it stop hurting. Please.”

Jasmine had been well practiced at tuning out chaos. Hell, she’d spent a good chunk of her life ignoring the ghosts around her once she realized others couldn’t see them. This was no different. This needed to end here and now and that meant her full concentration was mandatory. Blanche’s hand was grasped tightly in her own, almost to a painful extent, but there was no pausing her chants now. The thought of how tight her grip was for such a small person flashed through her mind for a moment, but the intent remained. Constance’s soul would be destroyed tonight. It wasn’t the preferred route, but Constance’s own choices had led her here. She ignored the chill that surged through her body and kept pushing through the words. Constance was being pulled into the circle now and would soon be trapped there until this was all through. That wouldn’t stop her from throwing a ghostly temper tantrum in the meantime, but it was a start.

Once Constance was trapped in the salt circle, Jasmine continued on to the next part of the ritual. Branches and rubble flew all around them. She found strength and power both in Blanche’s grip. Getting them out of here and ending this now would push her through. Her voice shouted over the howling of the wind and she gave Constance a harsh gaze to let her know she wasn’t backing down. Jasmine never stood down. A few lone sticks and stones had hit her, but they felt lighter than they should have and only left minor bruises and scratches in their wake. She was sure she had Agnes to thank for that. It made it apparent she could tune out her surroundings a bit more safely. She hardly picked up on any of the chatter around her though she was almost sure it was namely from Constance.

Constance’s wind was weakening now and continued to do so the more she chanted. Jasmine could see her form fading now. Only a few more repetitions and they would be poltergeist free and she could turn her attention back to Blanche who was clearly distressed. She was holding up though which was a true testament to the potential she held. The shrieks coming from Constance were nearly muted now and the wind was dying down as she fought to stay on this plane or at least take Morgan with her. It was sad to see someone so young so utterly taken over by rage that they hardly resembled a person anymore, but choices always had consequences. One final shrill sound escaped Constance before she faded away completely. The thrashing wind calmed and rubble fell to the ground.

The calm after a tough exorcism was always strange. The calm after the storm is what she could say if she wanted to be cliche. Jasmine could barely feel her legs like jelly underneath her so she took a moment to steady herself before she softly said, “It’s over now. She’s gone.” With her energy levels being severely lowered, she hardly even had it in her to shoot Morgan an annoyed glance. It came across as more of a grimace, but she guessed when it came down to it, Morgan made the right choice.

Beyond anything, Blanche wished there was some comfort to the wailing woman in the middle of the circle, caught as Jasmine’s ritual unraveled her soul for the last time. She said nothing because she didn’t want to distract Jasmine and, more distinctly, there was nothing to say. The poltergeist’s essence had cast a cold layer of ice under her skin, and she wasn’t able to feel anything at all except the energy leaving her body and her soul being destroyed. Slowly, her body began to warm, the ice thawing as Constance was no more. She knew immediately when it was over, but found herself unwilling to let go of Jasmine’s hand, clutching it hard until the sudden wave of dizziness passed. Blanche refused to pass out. She refused to go down now. 

After a moment, Blanche allowed herself to let go of Jasmine’s hand and sink down to the icy ground. She was exhausted, but she couldn’t rip her eyes from the spot Constance had been. “... I tried,” Blanche whispered. “I’m sorry. I tried.” Hot anger swelled in her again, burning through whatever ice was left in her body. With fire came pain. The pain in her ribs raged to the point where tears pricked her eyes, and the small cuts and bruises from the evening was an overwhelming ache that almost set her outwardly sobbing. Worse yet was the pressure of guilt and grief sticking in her chest. Blanche sank backward into the snow, letting the cold numb herself back up because now that it was over, there were no more choices to make.

It was Constance’s blow that pushed Agnes out of Morgan’s body, which forced Agnes to face the reality of the circle. Somehow, without ears made of flesh and bone, she felt Constance’s scream all the more keenly, rippling through every part of her. It was easier to turn her back on her, once again, and steel her heart as she formed a buffer around Morgan, Blanche and Jasmine, beating back as much debris as she could. When the screams ended and the debris calmed down, Agnes looked faint even beyond her normal pallor. Agnes collapsed to her knees, staring at the circle and wondering if being in there might have been better. Now there was nothing but to return to the painful monotony of eternity. 

Morgan stared at the empty spot where the girl had been. The whole time, she hadn’t broken Constance’s gaze once, even as her face dulled in its ghostly sheen and unraveled like an old patchwork quilt. It was too terrifying to watch the threads of her dissolve into the light, nothing and nowhere, not even ash or goo. Her eyes, the last recognizable part of her humanity, streamed with hurt. At the end, her screams were so quiet they sounded more like a child’s cry. When the last sound died and Constance Cunningham was no more, Morgan’s ears rang with their echo. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the nothing, hanging her head. Her fingers twitched, aching to take Constance’s hurt and feel something of her and understand just a little better. But there was nothing. 

She pressed her hand to her chest, righting the bones that hadn’t sprung back the right way. Her two lifetimes of hurt still throbbed in her dead heart. Nothing won. Nothing changed. Just a dull, unending ache. But there was no beat to pace it evenly; only more nothing. Where did the pain go? Constance’s pain should have drained the earth or razed the forest. She had taken down bodies and destroyed neighborhoods, but those would get fixed or spawn new wounds to fester and twist until they spawned more of their own. But where was the rest of it? Where was the mound that buried it for good? Was becoming nothing the only answer? No. There had to be something better. Even if she couldn’t trade pain for peace and happiness, even if it was completely worthless (and stars above, it sure as fuck was starting to feel that way) it had to be able to go somewhere else. This couldn’t be the only way. Morgan’s fingers reached out, cradled the nothing left behind it in her palm, and as the tears she’d held in came free and blurred her vision with a moonlit sheen, it almost looked like a piece of magic had landed on her fingertip. “I’m sorry,” Morgan whispered again. She sagged on her feet and crushed the illusion in her hand.

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

We Both Go Down Together || Regan and Kaden

TIMING: Immediately after Tooth and Claw and Light and Shadow LOCATION: The curb outside of Deirdre’s house PARTIES: @kadavernagh and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Kaden doesn’t know where else to go so he waits for Regan outside on the curb CONTENT WARNINGS: Vomit tw, Self-harm mentions

Walking away from the vet clinic without a dog in hand was the single worst feeling. No, Kaden knew that was a lie. The thoughts plaguing him about how familiar that wolf looked was the worst feeling. He shouldn’t care. That werewolf nearly killed Abel. It was dangerous. It didn’t deserve to live. He did his job. He kept people safe. There was nothing wrong with what he did.

But what if it was his friend's sister?

The bile that had been threatening its way out the whole night forced its way out by the side of his car. Putain. Kaden’s hand shook as he held it by the handle of his car. Where was he even going to go? His apartment was going to be empty. Completely empty and hollowed out in its own way. Sure, alright, Rumpleskuffs would be there. It wasn’t the same. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with mushrooms in his bed or answer questions of where Abel was. His fist pulled back and slammed into the side of the car.

Shit. He’d have to get Alain to fix the dent in his car. That’s right. He could go there, see Alain. No, didn’t feel right. Bea; Kaden didn’t even know where she was. Probably Felix’s. She had enough. Oscar was still hunting. He couldn’t interrupt. Couldn’t explain why he was upset. Not really. There was only one person he wanted to see. Just one. But he couldn’t. He shouldn’t.

Fuck it. Kaden got in the car and drove to East End until he got to Deirdre’s house, parking on the road across the way. He got out of the car, sat himself on the curb and sent a text. Then waited, fingernails digging into his palms. Maybe if he gripped his fists tighter he could hold it all in a little longer. For now, he waited. He might be sitting there until the sun came up and then some. But he wasn’t leaving. He didn’t know where else he wanted to go, anyway.

Al probably would have paid good money to his sister meditating. He never stopped talking about meditation and mindfulness and that it could even be beneficial to doctors, but Regan was never able to successfully quiet her thoughts enough to enjoy it. No, meditation was a waste of time. That was time better spent working. Or studying. Or-- she winked open one eye, then the other. No matter how much she tried to imagine that she was elsewhere, or living another life, she was always brought back here: to the inside of Deirdre’s shed, waiting for that soft spot on the roof to collapse on her. It would probably be a mercy at this point. Regan sighed through her teeth. Deirdre had instructed several hours of meditation; she was to practice her breathing and try to embrace the death, whatever that meant. Possibly the pulsing of the taxidermy in the corner of the room that she’d thrown a blanket over.

She heard her phone beep. Probably Cece again, with more nonsensical chatter about television shows. Why she even wanted to talk, Regan couldn’t fathom it. Still, she’d take any excuse to cut the meditation short. With another sigh, she lifted herself from the bed, stretching her legs.

Kaden.

"Abel was hurt. I'm outside on the curb."

A cold fist gripped her throat. She wasn’t even sure which order she should be panicking about this sequence of events in. Kaden was here, not in the shed, but close to it, and he wanted to see her. Needed to see her. And Abel had been hurt. How? Who would ever hurt-- Regan’s mind flashed to the turkey, her hands on the warm feathers, as the scream ripped through layers of flesh and organ and tissue.

She stared at the phone like it could bite her.

Regan wasn’t sure she would ever be able to forgive herself for what she had done to Grace, Cece, and Janus. Or that she’d put herself in a position where that was a likely outcome at all. Her blame and fault and guilt propelled her faster and harder and into the necessary work she and Deirdre were doing, but she didn’t want to pile any more on herself. And if she were to ignore this text, or say she couldn’t-- it would just be another thing she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for. Abel was Kaden’s best friend. He loved that dog. Regan felt great affection for him, too, though she wasn’t sure what qualified as love when it was directed toward a non-human animal.

She grabbed the necklace, made sure the bandages on her hand were secured, and tore out of the shed.

And there Kaden was, just like he’d said. Sitting on the curb, every muscle tense, as he looked like he was about to cave in on himself. He was perfectly still, like stone, which Regan took to be shock. What had happened? She froze about thirty feet away from him, and met his teary eyes. “Kaden?” She asked, voice scratchier than she thought it’d be. That shouldn’t have been surprising given all of the screaming. “Kaden, I’m here.” Just… nowhere close to him. She reached out, wishing she could hold him or at least put his hand in hers, but that wasn’t a risk she was going to take. She closed her eyes, trying to stop her own tears. Crying is unbecoming. No, she needed to get closer. She inched up to him, stopping again at about ten feet away, before sitting on the curb herself. “Do… do you want to tell me what happened?”

She wasn’t going to come. He was going to sit here like an idiot and she wasn’t going to leave the fucking shed. Kaden knew it. He knew it. This was just like before. He’d sit there outside her door waiting and she’d stay on the other side, leaving them both lost and alone. No. That wouldn’t happen this time. This time he’d wait. Until she--

His breath waited, held in his chest as he saw movement. There’s no way. It was probably just a rabbit or a squirrel or-- Regan. It was Regan. How long had it been now since he’d seen her? It felt like forever. Which was stupid, it wasn’t that long. Still, it felt like the whole world had shifted since he’d last seen her. But she was still her. She had to be. He should stand up. Run to her. He wanted to. Thought about it. But Kaden couldn’t move. Part of him was convinced it was a mirage, just an illusion off in the distance. But it stayed in the distance. It was her alright, not an illusion. He bit the inside of his mouth, dug his fingernails in farther. Why did he think this would be an exception? He was the one who made those, not her. All he wanted was to get up off the damn curb and wrap his arms around her.

Kaden didn’t move. Just met her eyes, waiting to see what she would do. His heart sank. Of course she wasn’t going to get closer. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. He couldn’t handle having her at just an arm’s length. Somehow that was worse than just not seeing her at all. But she kept walking, small cautious steps towards him, and his brows knit closer together with every foot fall, wondering if that would be where she’d stop. Until she sat next to him, sitting on the curb. He could hear her pulse, slow, steady. And he was still there frozen. Because if he moved, spoke, turned to face her, he was afraid he might collapse or explode, he wasn’t sure. “Abel. He went-- I was---” The lump in his throat didn’t want to let him push words past it. “I was hunting. He was with me. And a were--” Was this the time to tell her? To bring up that part of it all? He wasn’t sure either of them could handle that full weight of that conversation. Not yet. Maybe tonight. But not yet. “A monster. Tore him a--” He clenched down on the inside of his mouth to the point he tasted blood, trying to keep the image out of his mind a little while longer. “Vet. He’s at the vet. I think-- But I don’t--” He stopped talking. Stopped moving. He still couldn’t turn to look at her. What good was falling apart if he couldn’t count on any comfort? This was probably a mistake. He told her she should focus on herself and yet here he was. He should have gone to Bea or Alain or even Morgan who was just a few meters away. If he could hold himself together long enough, maybe it would be okay. Even though he felt like nothing at all was going to be okay.

He had been hunting with Abel. Regan’s assumption was no longer that he was sitting in the bushes with a shotgun waiting for a deer to move into his scope. No, he was out there looking for animals that no museum had specimens of and that no textbook described. And something dangerous had-- one of his monsters. It was no wonder Kaden looked like he was ready to collapse. He blamed himself. Understandably. But she still suspected she didn’t have the whole picture yet. If Abel was at the vet, he was still alive. Unless it was for a necrop-- no, he was still alive. Kaden would have specified. That thought still made her chest tighten. Whatever had happened, whatever had nearly torn Abel apart, it had been serious. Kaden was clearly trying to stifle his tears, but it wasn’t working. He looked damn near broken, worse than some of the literal fractures Regan had seen. And she could barely do anything to help, as much as she wanted to, as tempting as it was to throw caution to the wind and hold him and dry his eyes and tell him that everything was going to be okay, she couldn’t do it.

Nothing really felt okay right now. And even thinking of saying that brought the burn of a lie to her tongue.

Regan folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself, wishing she could do that to Kaden. She slumped forward, elbows on her knees. Kaden’s pain was visceral. She met his eyes -- swollen with tears and worry. This felt fresh. Like it had just happened. It likely had. That was why he was here -- he hadn’t thought about it, he just moved, seeking comfort from the person he trusted to be able to provide it. Only, Regan wasn’t sure that she could. “Kaden, I’m so… it’s not your fault. It isn’t your fault, okay? No one can predict these things, and it’s-- he’ll be okay, right? He’ll be okay. He’s at the vet. They’ll take care of him, and--” And he would be alone until Abel was recovered. Her heart dropped. “Can you tell me which vet has him? I’ll-- I know I’m not an animal doctor, but I’ll check their credentials and-- and I want to make sure he’s-- what happened, Kaden? How bad is it? Are you hurt? Are-- what can I--” She’d never felt so powerless to do anything. But at the same time, she knew Kaden wouldn’t see it that way. He wanted physical contact, comfort; both of them had grown accustomed to that. But he didn’t know what her touch had done. Regan looked down at her fingers; they felt heavy, like they were coated in poison. The healing incised wounds on her palm sent a spike of pain up her arm. She had curled her fingers at the blade, reacted when she should have been still. Holding back a scream was immeasurably more difficult. She looked back up at Kaden, her eyes watery. “Tell me how to help.”

Her words rang hollow. Kaden wanted them to give him some comfort but there was nothing. It didn’t help that she was saying it from about three meters away from him. It was almost enough to make him laugh. She was sitting out of reach because she blamed herself for something she had no control over while telling him a scenario he created wasn’t his fault. “It is. It is my fault. It’s more my fault than your--” How hard could he bite the inside of his mouth before he tore through it? Would it be just as easy as how that wolf tore through Abel? “I shouldn’t have brought him. I shouldn’t have--” His chest was too tight to let words escape for longer than short bursts. And even then he still didn’t know what he was trying to say. He shouldn’t have brought Abel, that much was clear. But should he have just stayed home for the night? Is that what he wanted to say? Shit. Shit, it was. He shouldn’t have been out at all tonight. He could have prevented all of it by inaction. It was a choice. A choice he’d passed up. Blood from his palms slipped against the leather of his jacket as he let go of his fists just long enough to cross his arms in front of his chest and clasp his hands around his own arms. He had to hold back the tightness in his chest, keep it from bursting out.

“Dr. Rhee. Zinnia. She-- She knows what she’s doing but it’s not-- That’s not the point. I--” Kaden shook his head. He knew Abel was okay as he could be. He was in the best possible hands. Hands that could heal with magic. Putain, he still hadn’t even begun to process it. He couldn’t. There was too much. It was all too much. If he just held his arms a little tighter, let his knuckles get whiter, he could hold back the flood threatening to burst through his makeshift dam. “Hunting. A monster. It attacked. Abel, he-- He almost died. He-- I almost killed him. I did kill--” He wasn’t sure if it was tears or bile that was the real threat of breaking through first. Fuck. “I killed the monster. Uh, leg. It got my-- but Zinnia, she closed it up. It’s fine. It’ll be-- It doesn’t matter.” The air wasn’t even that cold and still he was damn near shivering. Maybe if he held tighter he could keep still, keep it all in.

Kaden dared to meet her eyes. How could she help. She asked him. And he didn’t have an answer. If he had an answer he probably wouldn’t have come. Because he would have been keenly aware of how little she could do right now. And it wasn’t much. “I don’t know,” he said, voice tight and croaked. “You tell me. I mean hearing your voice, it’s-- But it’s not--” He pinched his eyes shut and held them there, hoping it would push away the tears. He came because she made things better. When things were bad that’s just, that’s how it worked. Being with her made things better. And right now he wasn��t sure he felt any damn better. He sniffed back some of the tears and looked at her once more. “I can’t go back to that empty apartment.” Not yet. Not tonight.

It’s more my fault than your-- Regan bit down on her tongue, anticipating Kaden’s comment, but it seemed he did the same thing, cutting it short. She knew what he had been about to say, though. After all of this, even after she’d put their friends in the hospital, he still didn’t blame her, wasn’t willing to see the situation for what it was. That simultaneously hurt -- a sharp and slow and painful wound like glass being grinded against her skin -- and made her chest flutter like a bird was trapped inside of her ribcage. He so badly wanted to believe in her. It was misplaced. He owed himself that kindness, not her.

She’d follow up with this Dr. Rhee later, but it didn’t seem like Kaden was especially concerned about the quality of medical care she was giving Abel -- he was confident it was the best. And his leg, it -- he’d hurt his leg. Regan’s shoulders dropped and her eyes scanned Kaden’s legs for any signs of injury. His pants were too dark to be able to see any blood present, and there was no way to assess his gait while he was sitting down. At least he’d received medical care. Regan trusted that a veterinarian would be more than capable of stitching up an injury, but she still wanted to survey her handiwork. Just-- she couldn’t-- she wasn’t about to touch Kaden, not right now. But it was so hard to be decisive when Kaden seemed to want nothing more, was practically begging for a hug without saying it, and Regan wasn’t sure how long her resolve would be able to last at this rate.

“Kaden, you weren’t-- you didn’t mean for him to get hurt. I know you. If you had the choice, you would have thrown yourself on the sword instead.” He’d probably die for that dog if he could. Regan tried to hold his gaze, but it was hard… he kept slipping away. She wasn’t giving him enough. She knew she wasn’t giving him enough. “He’ll be okay. And he’ll forgive you, because you’re his human and he loves you. And whatever happened with that- that anim- monster that attacked you both, you’ll be able to prevent it from happening again in the future, right?”

It still wasn’t enough. As Kaden mentioned not wanting to go back home, Regan’s heart felt like it leaped into her throat. An anatomical impossibility, but somehow, it still felt that way. She sat, gaping, unsure what to say. She couldn’t-- he may not have been able to go back to his empty apartment alone, but she couldn’t go there with him, either. For a moment, she humored the idea. Going back to Kaden’s apartment. Lying in bed with him, holding him close, until one mistake was made, or one uncontrollable thing happened, and-- and would she feel it? The vibrations along his skin, the pressure blowing up his lungs, the force of the sound making his eyes shoot out of his head and his heart burst?

Regan blanched, bile spilling into her throat. She looked down, expecting to see blood and viscera coating her trembling hands, but there was nothing. Not yet. A sob escaped her throat and, shaking, she looked back over to Kaden. He was still there. Still intact. He had all of his limbs and his eyes and his lungs and his heart, which was probably pounding away in a rhythm that she wished she could feel right now. “I can’t-- I can’t do that.” She said, an answer to a question he hadn’t technically asked. “Kaden, I can’t. And you can’t stay in the shed.” The shed was even closer quarters. And she couldn’t see Deirdre agreeing to this arrangement, anyways, even if Regan didn’t feel like she was a breath away from accidentally slaughtering Kaden like a turkey. “You have my key. You-- my apartment. You can stay there.” Without her. She knew this wasn’t going to be well-received, but maybe after considering it, he would find the offer helpful. “But we can… we can stay here for a while. Like this.”

You’ll be able to prevent it from happening in the future. The words crushed him. Everything that he’d been holding at bay, it came falling down and the weight of it all pinned him to the ground. Kaden breathed in the scent of blood still coming from the small crescent shaped cuts in his hand as he pressed the heel of his palms up to his eyes while tears spilled out around them. His chest heaved as the sob broke through. He’d prevented it from happening in the future, alright. He prevented a lot of possible futures. If it was Ariana’s, if it was-- He couldn’t even process it, couldn’t let it seep in past the feeling of practically drowning in his own guilt. He couldn’t prevent shit. He couldn’t protect his dog. Or himself. Or his friends. Or Regan. Bea. Morgan. Jane. Roland. Celeste. His parents. He couldn’t prevent shit. Death came and creeped into every corner of his life whether he wanted it to or not. Maybe that’s why they were so drawn to each other. It wasn’t fae binding or anything Walker was worried about. It was fate pulling death’s bringer towards its harbinger. Putain. Regan was so worried about hurting him but there was nothing she could do that hurt more than this. Not one damn thing. “You’re right,” he finally spat out. “I’ll-- You’re right.” For once, could she not be fucking right?

Kaden could barely hear what she said next. Could barely pull breath into his lungs. The back of his palm pushed across his lids but the tears he wiped away were quickly replaced. There was a reason he hadn’t asked anything from her. Not once all night. He knew she’d say it. He knew. The word “can’t.” He knew she’d refuse and it sure as shit didn’t help. He tried to pull the dam closed, force it back in place, get himself under control, find that hollowed corner of emptiness again. It wouldn’t go back. Hell, he felt like it was gone, washed away with his sobs that were still practically choking him. “R-right. Can’t,” he said, hands shaking as he pushed his hair out of his face. “Can’t or--” He stopped himself with a sniffle, That wasn’t fair. One look at her and he knew that wasn’t fair. She would if she thought she could. He had to believe it and hold onto it. Even though it felt stupid to right then.

Holding her gaze hurt. Kaden’s eyes felt dry and worn, the bags under them practically weighing him down even more, but that wasn’t why. She was so close. And had never felt farther away. This was stupid. This whole thing. Almost as stupid as what she said next. Her apartment. She suggested-- “Are you fucking kidding me, Regan?” The thought of being there alone, just the mere thought of it, left him feeling hollowed out. And he didn’t think he could feel any fucking worse. Sure proved him wrong. The apartment. With no lightbulbs, no her, and no fucking point in that. Just a nice reminder of how fucking alone he was.

Kaden inhaled, tried to hold steady the sobs that wanted to rip through and put his hands on the curb, felt the sting burn through them as he pushed himself off the concrete to stand. He stood there, looked down at her. What would she even do if he took one single step towards her? Was he even fucking allowed? He couldn’t know about what she was going through, couldn’t be told anything, couldn’t be near her, couldn’t-- just fucking couldn’t. Fuck couldn’t. He turned away, bent down to grab some rocks and gravel, whatever he could gather in his hand, and started pitching it across the way. Half wanted to keep walking, keep moving. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have left his place at all tonight.

Kaden was unraveling before her, and Regan didn’t know what she could do to comfort him. Everything she said seemed to only make things worse; it brought more tears to his eyes or a snarl to his lips. He said she always made things better, but that wasn’t true right now, was it? He was hurting, practically splitting open, and all she could do was sit there feeling like a useless but loaded weapon. He couldn’t even turn away from her, go home, and seek comfort from Abel. Even on his worst days, he had that option. Or he’d flee to the woods to camp, Abel in tow. What options did he have now? No Abel. No Regan. No Celeste. He wouldn’t go to Blanche for this, surely. But what about Morgan? Or Beatrice? Was she really going to turn him away and point him toward someone else?

Regan wasn’t sure, and she felt herself starting to unravel with him, unable to stop the tears despite Deirdre’s reminders echoing through her skull. Kaden looked down at her, and she wondered for a moment if he was about to come closer. The thought made her pulse beat in her temple. She couldn’t let that happen. Even Deirdre agreed that it was only a matter of time before she accidentally killed someone, at this rate, and the turkey-- she couldn’t think it. She wouldn’t touch him. Fortunately, he turned away, and down. His deep sunken eyes were red-rimmed and angry as he picked up a fistful of gravel. Regan thought it was directed more inward than at her, but she knew he wouldn’t be receptive to going to her apartment, at least initially. “Would you just think about it?” She asked, anticipating another flare of hurt. “It might be easier than being at your apartment without--” She shook her head. “It might be easier. The offer stands.” Darkness was falling quickly and heavily over them. And he’d need to sleep somewhere. It couldn’t be in her arms.

“Kaden,” Regan said his name softly, knowing that he’d hear it despite the distance between them. “What do you want to do? I-- I’ll stay here with you. All night, if I have to. We can stay here and talk. You can listen to me call up Dr. Rhee and ask for her credentials, and we can report anyone who drives by over the speed limit. But I don’t--” He looked so angry, so hurt, and so in need of something she wasn’t sure she could provide. Every time she looked at him, more tears came to her eyes. “Or you could go home. Go to my apartment. Go stay with a friend.” She extended her bandaged hand again, normally such a natural gesture between the two of them, but remembering that it could kill him, she dropped back to her side. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. But I also don’t want to hurt you in the process of not wanting to hurt you, and I think that’s what I’m doing, and I don’t-- I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, Kaden. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, alright let me think about it.” Kaden couldn’t control the volume of his voice. His words kept creeping louder with every sentence. At some point he was sure Deirdre or Morgan might hear. Maybe the neighbors. Fuck it. Let them listen. “I’ll go to your apartment. Alone. Surrounded by your things. While you’re here. In a shed. And won’t get near me or touch me like I’m some fucking leper. Or a monster. Or--” He knew it wasn’t like that. He also knew right now he didn’t fucking care. He threw more rocks, thought about aiming them at the cars parked not too far off, a window, something, anything. Anything that might make him feel better. It might, right? Destruction? It would make him feel… He shook his head, deflated. He destroyed enough tonight. It wouldn’t make him feel anything. It wouldn’t fill the hole burrowing open inside of him. He felt fresh tears falling down his face and he practically slammed the heel of his hand across his face to get them off. “Fuck!” he screamed as loud as his lungs would let him into the dead night air, still turned away from her, facing the street. The sound bounced a bit, but the sound was more of a thud than anything else. Did it make him feel better? Maybe.

Kaden stood, leaned over, hands on his knees, looking away as she whispered his name. He hated that he heard it. His stupid shitty abilities that marked him as hunter, made him what he was and placed him squarely in the position he was in now. She’d asked him in the basement if he could just stop. Right then he’d give anything to. To just stop. Stop being a hunter. Stop being a Langley. Just stop being him. Oscar kept poking fun at him for being domestic, having stability, maybe a sense of normality. Well where the fuck was any of that now? He inhaled deep, thought about just screaming again. Instead, he let the breath fall out and turned back to face her.

Kaden saw her reach her hand out and took a half step towards her, only to see her pull it away. Right. Maybe hope was worse than feeling empty. His eyes focused on the bandage, though, and his brow furrowed. “What happened to your hand?” It was easier to zero in on her, push aside what she’d asked him. He wanted something to worry about that wasn’t him, wasn’t this, wasn’t his fucking fault. But as soon as he asked the question, he got the feeling he should take it back. The answer was likely either related to the scream or the training. Things she wouldn't and couldn’t tell him about. Why was she bothering if there was nothing she could do? Why was he bothering? He could barely see her eyes from here. She was too far away for him to really see her, actually pick up on every tiny nuance of her features. But he could tell she was crying. That much he could see. He could see she still cared. Still hurt. So that was something. He guessed.

Right. He should listen to her options. They all sounded shitty, to be honest. Kaden bit the inside of his lip, staring at her for a while, playing them over in his mind. What would staying outside with her mean? Was that going to just tear away at him slowly like it had been all night? Or would it get better? His chest seized up as he realized that he might not get a chance to see her again for a while. The only reason she was even this close was because he was falling apart. Didn’t really look great for where they stood in the future, when he wasn’t a mess. Then again. he was falling apart and this was all she could give him. Did that make it better or worse? Right, other options, what were the other options? Go to her place? Fuck that. If he went there the best he was likely to do was tear it apart. No. Stay with a friend. “Who?” he asked aloud. “Who’s going to even--” He sniffled, wiped the tears that had trickled down off his nose. “Oscar’s still-- Morgan is-- I mean, she has enough to-- And Bea, I don’t know where Bea is. Alain is still-- Who? Where do I go? Whose problem am I supposed to b--”

His knees shook, threatened not to support him anymore. Kaden gave in, sank back down to the curb, holding his head in his hands. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He knew what he wanted. But it wasn’t going to happen. And he wasn’t sure what option was going to have any shot at plugging up the empty hole tearing him apart. No one seemed equipped to take on his burden. Or him. Same difference. They all had their own shit and he was the one saying he could fix it or help or whatever bullshit he was spouting on any given day. Who was left to catch him when he fell? What was the point in caring so fucking much when it left him feeling just as alone as before? It had been her. Maybe that was his mistake, relying on anyone to be there. Even though she always had. She’d always managed. Every time. And she was there. Sort of. Guess it was up to him to decide if it counted. If it was enough. He didn’t know. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel past the guilt that was the only thing left other than the emptiness. “I don’t know,” was all he could say through his hands. “I don’t--” Maybe if he sat there long enough the ground would swallow him whole. A pathetic laugh spilled out through the sobs. If it could happen anywhere, it was certainly this town. A long stretch passed as he sat in silence, trying to find the space to speak again, a way to break past the feelings eating at him. “What do you mean by talk?” he asked quietly. “Because if it’s just all ‘can’ts’ then I-- Just, what do you mean by talk?”

Kaden’s anguished voice cut Regan’s heart. It stung, more than fucking stung, all of it. “I’m aware you don’t have Hansen’s disease,” she bit back, “and besides, it isn’t even transmitted through skin-to-skin-- that isn’t the point. It’s not you. You’re not the-- I’m the--” Her dad’s words drummed in her head. Thing. Monster. “I want nothing more than to-- Kaden, please. You have to know that. I want to be there for you, in every sense.” Tears pricked at her eyes. Even beyond what had happened with the turkey, her control over her voice had been poor since the incident at the morgue. Deirdre was right about emotions impairing her control. So many things had broken. The shed shook with her sobs for hours each night -- which she was promptly instructed to choke out. You are an instrument of death, and death is unfeeling, uncaring. It never worked. “You don’t know what I’ve had to--” But then, she couldn’t tell him. “It’s not you.”

Regan’s eyes ticked down to her hand, the bandage wrapped tightly around her palm, hooking around her thumb. The bandage that was about to become a permanent fixture of her life, at least for the foreseeable future. She couldn’t lie. But as the ivy tugged at her neck, straining her mouth, she was also reminded that she couldn’t tell Kaden the truth, either. When she had expressed that concern to Deirdre, Deirdre’s response was that Kaden would supply his own version of the truth, if he noticed at all. She hadn’t believed that. Deirdre didn’t know Kaden as well as she did. He would notice. And he wouldn’t believe a lie, especially one that rended her open to speak it. Regan squeezed her eyes shut, her stomach flipping inside of her. Truth and lies both damned her. “It’s-- I--” The ivy grew thorns. Deirdre was right about one thing: Kaden wouldn’t understand, not completely; he would want to see this stopped. “It’s… it’s probably exactly what you think it is.” The ivy relaxed, just slightly, though Regan only felt more defeated. Somehow, a vague answer seemed worse than no answer at all. Just like Kaden probably thought coming here, talking to her from ten feet away, was worse than a text message. She wouldn’t even blame him for thinking that, though it made the sting sink deeper into her. “Please don’t--” Worry about it? Ask about it? She wasn’t even sure. “It isn’t important right now.”

She could see the string of his composure winding further and further away from him. Soon, there’d be nothing but panic and raw emotion at his core and if that happened, he’d be prone to going off and doing something stupid and getting hurt and-- “Kaden!” She said his name again, this time practically shouting it. The unintended screech echoed through the dark, empty street, and Regan bolted upright. Hand over her mouth. She assessed him with fearful eyes for a second, before determining that his hearing hadn’t seemed greatly impacted. There was no pain on his face. Well, beyond what was already there. She exhaled a massive, shaky breath, more tears falling. She had almost hurt him, even from this far away. Again. It firmed up that she needed to stay away, for his own good. But she still-- she couldn’t leave him like this, leave things like this. He was spiralling. He felt alone. If he hadn’t felt like this was the most dire thing in the world, he would have kept his distance and not stopped by, like Regan had asked him.

“Kaden, stop. You’re-- stop it. You’re not anyone’s problem. You’re the opposite of that. Stop it. Abel is going to be-- we’ll make certain Abel will be okay. He’s in excellent hands, by the sound of it.” Though she was still going to double check. “You’re not doing anyone any favors by-- especially yourself. So stop. Sit with me. Put those rocks down -- they look filthy -- and sit with me. We’ll figure it out. That’s what we do, right?” Regan’s voice tightened. It felt like barbed wire against her sore throat. “Please talk to me. You came here for a reason. And I’m not letting you push me away, either.” She ran a hand through her greasy hair and stared up the street, where the rocks had landed, before looking back at Kaden. She pushed herself a couple feet closer, but drew a hard line there. “This isn’t just about Abel. That’s obvious. So can we-- can we talk about it? Your hunting. That’s it, isn’t it? I could tell at the lakehouse that you-- please, stay.” Her head sank down toward her chest for a moment, and an idea struck her. She couldn’t tell Kaden about anything that happened in the clearing, but she could tell him about what occurred back at the shed. “I can teach you some of the breathing techniques Deirdre has been working on with me. They might help. While we’re talking.”

You don’t know what I’ve had to-- The words lit him like a flame. “Because you won’t tell me!” Kaden turned and shouted it at her without a second thought. “I could know if you would only tell me! I just want to--” It didn’t matter. He couldn’t help. He couldn’t help fucking anyone. The one thing he was good at was killing and he was starting to wonder if that was helping fucking anyone. He kicked at the pebbles on the ground. They didn’t go far. They remained closer to him than she would dare inch.

Any hope that her injury was minor, some stupid accident or clumsy mistake washed away with her words and demeanor. Concern mixed with anger; her attempt to push it away only made him want to dig his heels in deeper. “No.” His voice was hard, unflinching. He’d told lies a thousand times, about cuts, bruises, scabs. Deflecting was all too easy. Let the adults who asked questions come to their own conclusions. It was usually safer and more innocent than the truth. She could be twenty feet away and he’d see through that. “What is it?” he asked again, eyes pointed at her bandage, jaw hardened. “What happened to your hand? Because right now I’m thinking it’s more bullshit you can’t tell me. And I’m wondering what part of your life I can be a part of if I can’t even ask about the very obvious fucking bandage on your hand. Which is pretty fucking important to me. So what happened to your hand, Regan?” The anger was easier to hold onto, less crushing than the rest of his emotions stirring inside him. The anger at least felt like something. It served a purpose. It pointed the right direction. That’s what he was constantly told growing up. He’d tried so hard to take Morgan’s advice, just accept that he “didn’t want to know.” Which was crap. Not knowing, being told he wasn’t allowed to know did nothing but spike his curiosity, sent it spiraling to every worst possible scenario it could make up. And with all of it he just couldn’t find a reason why he couldn’t know. Not a good one. All it did was ignite the fire of anger, and he wanted to hold onto whatever warmth he could find right now.

Her voice shocked him. It shouldn’t. He had grown accustomed to the screeches, the sighs that stung and broke glass. But this was loud in a way that wasn't destructive. It was loud and carried through the streets the way he’d wanted his to. It wasn’t destructive. This time. But it still punched a hole through his resolve. Kaden faced her and saw that she was panicked, her eyes wide, hand clasped to her mouth. Any hope that he could prove to her that it wasn’t that dangerous to be near her vanished with the wind, blown away like the echoes of their voices. She was so fucking scared that she could hurt people, that she would hurt him. It killed him to see it. It killed him even more to stay back and offer no comfort. But what could he do to change the situation? Shit all.

“You sure about that?” Kaden asked her, shaking his head. “I don’t feel like I’m doing anyone any fucking good right now.” He was already seated, the air from his sails gone. The anger had died down, so had the sadness, he was in a lull of nothingness, waiting for the wind to decide which way it wanted to blow. His head was still in his hands when he heard movement and he shot up to look at her. There was no way. He held his breath and-- She only moved one more meter closer. Better or worse? The tightness in his throat didn’t feel like much of a positive answer. “I came here because you’re who I--” His lip quivered and he wished the wind would blow the other fucking direction. “When things are bad, you’re who I--” The lump in his throat wouldn’t let him finish the sentence, it closed up every time. He wasn’t sure the ending mattered much anyway. Still, she was talking. And she was there. It felt like getting scraps from the table. But it was better than going hungry, right? “What about it? What do you want to talk about?” he muttered, sniffling, voice small. “I don’t think breathing techniques are going to make me feel any fucking better about what I did.” He looked at her, trying to let it be enough.

Regan could only freeze, her blood shocked cold, as Kaden demanded to know what had happened to her hand. She knew this would happen. Deirdre was full of crap. Kaden would notice. And were he to find out precisely what was under the bandage, and why, he would do everything he possibly could to put a stop to it. Maybe that was why Deirdre was so insistent that no one other than Morgan could learn what they were doing in that clearing. But Kaden had a point. This wasn’t some small part of her life that she’d edged him out of. Right now, it effectively was her life. Each day was the same, bleeding into the next. She woke up in the shed, soldiered over to the clearing, screamed until her lungs burned and her throat bled, slid the knife across her palm as she tried and failed to keep her fist from closing over the injury, and started the whole damn thing over again every time she flinched. Only to wake up feeling empty nothingness the next day, like a cadaver with all of the organs removed en bloc. The shade of what was next lingered over her constantly: more animals dead by her hand, drowning, iron. Detachment. Numbness. Perfection.

She turned to him, weary and tearful, lacking the punch of his anger. She tried to hide her hand, held it close against her chest, covering it with her right. It felt as ineffective as everything else did. “You know that I can’t tell you. I literally--” Even that was enough to make the ivy choke her. The promise had been exchanged in the clearing. Regan bowed to the pain and sobbed. This wasn’t what she had wanted. This wasn’t something she had fully factored in. “I wouldn’t-- if it weren’t necessary, I wouldn’t--” The ivy squeezed, and Regan sputtered for air for a moment, before sinking down further against the curb. “Kaden, I’m not sure you actually want to know. I trust you, but I don’t-- I think you would try to stop this, if you knew everything that we were-- ” He would. She knew he would. If he went to her and claimed that he needed to tear himself apart, completely unmake himself, before he was safe to be around, that was liable to override her pacifist existence and she’d slap him in the face. “I’m doing what’s necessary, okay? It’s necessary. If I want to prevent what happened at the morgue from-- it’s necessary.” With a deep breath, she slumped forward, elbows on her thighs and head cradled in her hands. “If you’re sure you want to know, I’ll talk to Deirdre.”

“Positive.” Even though Regan wasn’t sure Kaden went to the right person for this, right now. What good could she be? She couldn’t even get near him. Couldn’t even give him a hug or a kiss or hold his hand without being crushed by dread and fair and grisly images of his internal anatomy shooting through her head. Maybe her first instinct had been right -- she should have pushed Kaden away alongside the rest of her life. But unlike her occupation, he had been able to fight against that happening. He bemoaned how stubborn she was, but didn’t recognize that he was just as bullheaded sometimes. And not just about wine and cheese.

“Why is that?” Regan soured immediately after asking the question, because it sounded precisely like what Al always shot her way as a rebuttal. “I just mean-- you have so many people who love and care about you, Kaden. You do. I mean, you just listed several of them, and I can think of others. So, sure, maybe it’s hard to feel like you’re imposing on those people, but they want to see you happy. I want to see you happy.” Her stomach sank. She felt like she was sending him in the opposite direction. Had Deirdre managed to cling to any relationships or friendships during her training? She had Morgan, now, but she wasn’t a risk. Did her mother allow her any friends or loved ones when she was young? Regan knew the answer to that, and it made her heart take on water and capsize down to where her stomach was sitting. She palmed the necklace Kaden had given her, squeezing it. “Kaden. Inhale through your mouth and exhale through your nose three times. Then tell me about what you’re thinking. Not--” She wasn’t sure she could manage hearing more of his thoughts on her training -- “I mean, your hunting. What happened with Abel. It’s connected, right? So talk to me.” Please. The word died in her throat, though. How could she beg him when he couldn’t do the same? Regan looked up toward him. “That’s exactly what I said, you know. My exact words.” There would be humor in it, if everything weren’t so dismal. “And then I tried it, and I still thought it was absurd, no merit to be found, and-- okay, I still think that, to an extent. But try it. You’re currently breathing shallow and quickly, and your face is likely getting numb. So slow down. Panicking isn’t going to accomplish anything right now. Abel is-- he’s going to be okay. And you still have me, okay? You do, even if it doesn’t seem-- you do.”

Seeing her sobbing and doubled over hit him like a punch in his own gut. His anger started to melt, fizzling down as soon as it had flared up watching the pain he was causing her. Then again, it wasn’t really him, was it? A little, sure, but ultimately it was the promise bind. It was Deirdre who forced this situation. It was so hard to see the benefit of word binding, the need for it. All they did was cause pain. Sometimes Kaden questioned if their only promise of precaution was even a good idea, if it could be used against them somehow and hurt them, too. It likely could in the wrong hands. “I know. I do know that. I get that I don’t understand but I do know you would never put yourself through any of this if it wasn’t--” He shook his head at her insistence that he didn’t want to know, the same one Morgan gave him. Maybe he was stupid for clawing for this information but the curiosity, the concern wouldn’t stop gnawing at him. “Stop telling me what I want to--”

There was another piece, one that wasn’t familiar or well tred. There it was. The real reason it was being kept from him. Not because anyone thought it would hurt him or spare him or do him some kindness. Kaden never believed that lie to begin with. No, it was because they thought he’d stop it. They thought he’d interfere for one reason or another. That he was just an obstacle to everything. Like so many things that had happened tonight, he didn’t know how to process that. She trusted him. But not enough. Or was it too much? Why did they think he would stop it? How-- Why-- His mind went into overdrive for the hundredth time trying to concoct scenarios that were so bad he wouldn’t want to know and would throw himself in front of to stop, factoring in the sole evidence he had, the cut on her hand. She was slightly right. He didn’t want to imagine them. But he knew he’d see them play out in his imagination all the same. Sill the question she presented him with; was ignorance really bliss? No. He felt cut off from her enough. And he knew he wouldn’t stop asking or hurting her by trying to get more from her. “I’m sure.” His voice was shaky, but he knew he couldn’t stay in the dark forever. Not if he wanted to make this work. Not if he wanted things to get better. He had to believe that.

Though Kaden wasn’t so sure why she believed that people cared about him, that anyone else would be there. And of course she had to ask him why he thought otherwise. Honestly, it was hard to say for certain. “I don’t-- I can’t be a burden. I don’t want to just ruin their lives and make things worse. If that’s all I do, then why would they bother with--” Maybe it was easier to assume people wouldn’t be there for him than to reach out and learn the truth of the matter the hard way. “Hell, I’m not even sure I should be here right now.” With how much she was taking on herself, it almost seemed unfair to put more on her. He looked up from his hands at her and saw a flash of silver. He flinched. The last silver he saw was--- He gulped, not sure if he was pushing away the thoughts or the bile driving its way up. He caught a better look and saw it wasn’t a knife (of course it wasn’t, not in her hands of all places), just the light from the street lamps glinting off of something around her neck. For a moment, he assumed it was the amulet, the one that hid her wings. But it was still flat against her chest. So it was the heart. She was holding the heart. He wished it were his hand instead. It lit a spark of hope, a small light in the emptiness trying to swallow him whole either way.

“I hope you also said the ‘fucking’ then, too,” Kaden said with a small attempt at a laugh. It was more like a puff of air. He brushed his face with the back of his hand, shoving away the tears and snot that wouldn’t fucking quit before doing the stupid breathing. It didn’t make him feel better. Rolling his eyes while he did it, on the other hand, did improve his mood ever slightly. Enough to try to answer her. “I was out hunting, though. If that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t want--” Why did everything sound so fucking stupid when he went to say it out loud? “I was going to leave Abel at home. He’s not-- I mean you’ve seen him, he’s not a--” He felt himself getting choked up again, thinking about Abel on the table in the exam room, barely breathing, seconds away from death. He did the stupid breathing shit again, exhaling the thoughts of Abel and his panic as best he could before carrying on. “I didn’t want to be out there alone, not after what happened. The time. With-- You know, the time Walker saved me.” He held his arms against his chest, pulling himself in and gripping as tight as he could without bruising. “There was a wer-- a wolf. A monster. It attacked. Almost-- Abel jumped in to-- Even though I told him to go home. He saved--” It struck him for the first time tonight that he’d needed to be saved from a werewolf every full moon he’d even encountered a wolf recently. Walker, Oscar, Abel; if it weren’t for them, he’d be dead and buried by now. Maybe his mother was right. Distractions were clouding him, affecting his hunting, making him vulnerable and powerless. Happiness was fleeting and pointless, just like life without duty or family. His eyes locked with Regan’s. He still had her. Abel was still alive. But how pointless was it trying to hold onto all of it? He saw her fingers again, fiddling with the necklace and he felt it again, the small warmth of embers. Pointless or not, it was something. Something he wasn’t ready to let die.

“I’m not sure you should be here right now, either,” Regan said honestly, eyes flicking down. It was tempting to grab her own fistful of gravel. Were the rocks sharp enough to grind into her palm if she squeezed them? Would pain flicker across her face? Would Deirdre command her to do it again? She just stared for a moment, then looked back at Kaden. “I’m glad you are, though. I mean, as glad as I think either of us can be, at the moment.” She watched Kaden’s face knot up again as he talked about Abel, his voice thick with emotion. Not a hunting dog? Well, technically he was, but more of a failed one than anything else. He seemed to be good at locating decapitated heads. Though not as good as she was, of course. Regan took a long breath with him; her whole body seemed to move so slow compared to his.

A wolf. Another wolf. Or something like one. Regan wasn’t clear whether it was a wolf or a monster or a wolf Kaden was calling a monster, but she didn’t think it mattered. What he said next, though -- “Abel saved your life?” Her eyes widened. Of course he felt like fecal matter. He would anyways, but that dog-- Abel would have died for Kaden. For a moment, despite their pain, Regan was grateful that Kaden had decided to bring Abel with him. She knew she couldn’t voice that thought, but when Abel recovered, he was going to receive many, many peanut butter treats. She sat in silence for a moment, just listening to Kaden -- his panic and his breathing slowing down. She thought she understood something more about his panic now; part of it was about what would come next for him. “We’ll figure it out,” she repeated, talking over the silence. “What you want to do. After Abel is-- we’ll figure it out.”

[vagabond-art]

Bruce Wayne’s Favorite People

Check me out on Patreon at Layne Creates or /layneismakingart to see this un-watermarked and close-up, plus a ton of wips, fanfics, and all sorts of exclusive content that you can’t find here.

First Girlfriend, Silver St. Cloud (she)

Silver and Bruce met at a private high school for the deaf where they dated up until college when they... stopped. They fell out of contact for several years, meanwhile Silver got her degree, and while she doesn't have a job and lives off her family money, she busies herself with community service, event planning, fundraising, and whatever will benefit Gotham. Silver and Bruce reconnected when he returned to Gotham after 5+ years of soul searching, and Silver is 90% sure Bruce is Batman.

Best Friends, Harvey Dent (they/he/she) and Barbara Gordon (she)

Deirdre Harvey Dent, or Harv, is the current mayor of Gotham. Bruce and Harvey met during a political rally and they clicked almost immediately. They've been best friends since, though Harvey doesn't know that Bruce is Batman. Harvey tries their best to be make Gotham a better place, and though they struggle with various mental issues, they have the love and support of Bruce, and of Harvey's wife Gilda Gold-Dent.

Barbara Gordon is the current Commissioner of Gotham, after taking over when her father retired, and is Bruce's best Bat-friend. Together, Babs with her own Batsuit, they work to eradicate crime in Gotham city. Barbara is the first disabled Commissioner, though many people don't know she has a disability. She is paralyzed from the hips down and uses highly advanced Wayne-tech robotic leg braces which allow her to move and kick serious butt.

Frenemies, Selina Kyle (she/they)

Selina, or Catwoman, is an on-again-off-again criminal in Gotham, and full-time nuisance to Batman. Bruce just hasn't been able to catch her yet, and though it frustrates him, both he and Cat enjoy the chase. Selina makes her money through theft and uses it to support the animal shelter she used to work at. Her best friends, aside from her cats Isis and Roz, are fellow Gotham gals, Harley and Ivy, and she often works with them, and other Gotham rogues, to mess with the Bat-family. She is currently in a complicated relationship with a fellow Cat lover.

Greatest Enemy/Boyfriend, Joker (he)

Bruce's relationship with Joker has always been a crazy one. While initially not quite getting along, Batman and the Joker became a pair that couldn't exist without each other. It took an awful long time for Bruce to come out of his shell to admit his feelings for Joker, but now the two are happily together, all thanks to Joker's scheme (yall saw the movie). After the two had worked together to save Gotham, Bruce revealed his identity to Joker, so Joker is the only one of the rogues that knows. Joker's backstory is a mystery, though he'll tell anyone that it all began at Ace Chemicals when Batman saved his life.

Dad, Cousin, and Son, Alfred (he), Kate (she), and Dick (he)

Bruce's legal family. Alfred Pennyworth, of course, is the adoptive father of Bruce, who raised him after the deaths of Bruce's parents. Alfred is incredibly proud of his son and Bruce has always felt like he was more of a Pennyworth than a Wayne,

Kate Kane is Bruce's cousin on his mother's side. While they were very close when they were younger, they eventually drifted apart. The last time they saw each other for several years was at the funeral for the Waynes. Kate always felt like she and Bruce were very similar, as she knew what it was like to lose family, and she wished that she could have been there for Bruce as Bruce had been for her. Kate has only recently returned to Gotham after having been kicked out of military school and is still trying to find her place in life. She is a favorite in the tabloids for being a hard-rocker, for her various love affairs, and her shameless attitude.

Dick Grayson-Wayne is Bruce's adoptive son, and though it took a while for Bruce to accept him into his life, Bruce loves his son and couldn't think of a better crime-fighting partner. Dick helps out his dad as Robin, and has a ton of other super-crime-fighting friends, like a speedster bestie, a cyborg boy, and a princess from another planet.

[TBA] ??? ;)

[inspirationdivine]

The Welcome Mat

Timing: Today Summary: Lydia comes home Warnings: head trauma mention, blood mention, stalking

“Lydia Griffin, pleasure to meet you.”

Lydia was barely out of the car, hobbling on her crutches, when the man came to greet her. She squinted in the sunlight, and didn’t shake his proffered hand. She’d barely been away from Deirdre’s house for ten minutes, and she was already ready to return to bed. 

“Perhaps it would be under other circumstances,” He continued, looking around at the individuals around them. “We’re from the personal protection agency, the -”

“Yes, I know who you are, I just need to know why you’re wasting my time,” Lydia interrupted sharply. 

“Right,” he replied, unphased. “We’ve got eight people who’ll be alternating twelve hour shifts around you. Two at a time. Wanted to introduce them all now, and explain what steps we’ve already taken to secure the property.” 

Lydia nodded, slowly starting her hobbling up to the front door, as she was introduced to Mark the bugbear, Mohammed the werewolf, Jenny the zombie, O the zombie, Indra the Siren, The Mime, Lu Jing the Kitsune, and Jeremiah, the werewolf who had been driving her around today. He explained the doorbell that let her see who was outside without having to get up, the new cameras, and the fencing he’d arranged for the property to be installed soon. Lydia nodded to all of it, and waved him away as she reached the door. It wasn’t until she pulled out her keys, fumbling them before she dropped them, that Lydia realised she had no idea whether the individual who helped picked it up for her was Mark or Mo or O, or maybe even the owner of the business. Hell, she wasn’t sure what gender O even was. The owner had been talking to her for three minutes, and she had no recollection of what his voice sounded like. 

“Shit, thanks,” she murmured.

“Thought you were meant to be fae,” Mark/Mo/O/owner said, and Lydia flinched at that as he opened the door for her. 

It was clean. She’d sent a cleaner, who had said there wasn’t much to do at all, because Remmy and Morgan had done it all. Lydia didn’t really know what she expected - to see it all as she remembered as she’d been carried up the stairs? Her last glimpse of her home before she’d been plunged under her frigid water? 

The more she looked, the more she saw the evidence of it. The dent in the doorframe, scratches up the bannister. Final struggles in a fight she was never going to have one. One she might lose again. He’d probably seen all the security being set up, and smiled at the thought of her screams. 

Lydia crumpled, suddenly, sharply. A night of Deirdre at her side and Morgan and Remmy just outside hadn’t been enough to get all of the tears out of her. She sank to her knee, leaning against the bannister. Her memory of after was messy, but the moments before were clear as crystal. She could still feel her blood pouring out of her back. The water filling her mouth and nose had tasted of her own coppery blood as her lungs had spasmed to keep the water out instead of letting air in. Wood splintering under her grip, giving her away. 

He’d ripped her strength out of her first when he’’d torn off her wing, but the loss of strength now was so much more insidious. It would be better once she was out of the hospital. Once she’d proven she could get herself up and down the halls and up and down stairs on the crutches, once her cognitive tests had reached normal levels, once she was good enough to leave…. Then the goal posts had shifted. Once she’d gotten herself to Deirdre’s home, once she’d slept and reassured her friends that she was alright…. And they’d shifted again. Once she’d gotten home, seen how much things hadn’t changed, once she felt safe-

What could they be now? She hadn’t gotten normal levels, she hadn’t reassured her friends, and as she stood in the hall of the building she’d worked so hard to make a home, she felt none of its warmth. 

Just the cold of the water as it splashed out of the bath around her. 

[sylwritesstuff]

Families are complicated, Crowley always wear black, and how many extra rooms does Aziraphale have? 

Co-written by @syl-writes-stuff and @skimmingmilk

—

Chapter 11

He couldn't afford doughnuts, but he brought a box in anyway. Aziraphale had still walked him to the inn the day before, and he'd still kissed the back of his hand. And it had felt, for the most part, as if nothing had happened between them. As if Aziraphale hadn't lied to his face and he hadn't known. 

Yet there hadn't been more and they'd both gotten used to more rather quickly, especially when they'd spent so much time together over Sunday and Monday. Crowley hadn't been shooed out after tea or the pancake Aziraphale had insisted he eat for breakfast. He hadn't left until they finished their afternoon tea and scones, in fact, and the only push to go had been him too aware that he could've stayed even longer.

But there was, it seemed, a line. As much as Aziraphale's cousin annoyed and upset him, he still wanted a relationship with him. The reasons were a mystery, but Crowley wasn't going to push. Maybe one day when they knew one another better, when or if Aziraphale grew to trust him, he'd find out why. 

Until then, he'd be available for venting and not fixing. What did he know about family dynamics anyway? 

He set the doughnuts in the kitchenette, lips quirking when Aziraphale bustled about to make tea for two and chatted about finishing Northanger Abbey. What the characters had done and why and the literary themes because Crowley had only ever vaguely heard of the book. 

By the time everyone else shuffled in, he was well-appraised of Jane Austen's crafted world, three doughnuts had been eaten (by Aziraphale sans one bite Crowley had taken to appease him), and things between them felt normal again. Crowley really couldn't have said why it mattered. He didn’t care what people thought of him - you do - and had certainly never let himself get so wrapped up in one particular person's opinion, but Aziraphale’s mattered. 

The whole little shop mattered, it seemed, though Crowley waved away Deirdre's pleased gratitude for fixing her husband's car. He'd let Aziraphale take care of it since it was technically a job. 

Even with Gabriel's obvious disapproval, he still seemed set to keep it. It was definitely a relief as he set about brushing each and every cog and gear and pivot of the Tyler clock. Every piece of brass shone like new by the time he was done, and he was able to work out the dent in the hollow pendulum by borrowing a tiny magnet from Tracy and a hammer from Newt, and he was more than happy to explain this reverse hammering to Aziraphale. He'd already decided he enjoyed working beside him, though got the impression that the former clockman had this spot specifically so Aziraphale could keep an eye on him. Crowley also got the impression that he'd been competent, but not very thorough or patient. Or confident if he'd really believed this old thing to be beyond salvageable. 

The new spring winder had arrived just that morning, so he was able to replace the old one easily enough. Though it was more dangerous than the small mantel clock had been, it was all the same process. Careful hands, some patience, and-

“Yer father's name was Anthony.”

[Continue on Ao3]

[rocket-remmy]

Running Up That Hill|| Deirdre and Remmy

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @deathduty and @whatsin-yourhead SUMMARY: A stroll through a cemetery and a stroll down memory lane. CONTENT: Suicidal ideation mentions, Descriptions of dying, PTSD Trauma, Guns

Life isn’t fair, Remmington. His voice echoed in Remmy’s head despite having not talked to him in almost thirteen years. Get used to it. Their dad had told them that a lot. The last time was when they’d come home bruised and battered, late, and he’d been there, ready to add to them. But he’d paused when he saw the shaking in their arms and the blood smeared on their face. And they’d asked him why, and that’s what he’d said. Later that night, they’d called the recruiter back and told her yes. A week later, they’d left for good. 

It wasn’t a fond memory, by any means, but it was the memory that stuck to Remmy’s head like tar stuck to feet. It stretched and burned and stuck and wouldn’t go away. Even as Remmy scrubbed at their face until the skin was raw and red. It healed in an instant anyway. Even when they beat their fists into the walls or the punching bags at the Ring until there were dents in both and everyone else around had backed out slowly. Even when they’d screamed into the night in the middle of the forest and Moose had whined and put his tail between his legs and suffered through it because he had to. Because he loved Remmy. Even after everything with Morgan, the words still clung to Remmy, as if they were a part of their soul now. Such simple words, too. Words that rattled in their head as they stopped in front of the cemetery gates and glanced around for Deirdre. They wondered if she’d come. They’d understand if she didn’t, though. She was mad at Remmy, she blamed Remmy for Morgan. And that wasn’t entirely wrong. But Remmy didn’t know their place in her life anymore. Even if she said she wanted to be friends. Remmy didn’t know their place anywhere, anymore. And so they just waited.

Time had its way of expanding and closer and escaping through Deirdre’s fingers. Or it did, recently. Normally horribly punctual, she found herself unaware of how time progressed, and where she stood among it. She made her way to the cemetery late, out of breath and apologetic--things unbecoming of her. Deirdre had lost much of who she was, it seemed apt then that she’d lose her grip on this one thing too. “Sorry I’m late, Remmy,” she flattened invisible wrinkles on her shirt, meeting Remmy’s eyes briefly. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but the forlorn look was a surprise. Of course, Remmy couldn’t have been taking this any better than Morgan was. And they’d been so sad before, so much longer before any of this. Dwarfed again by her inability to help, she moved closer to the zombie, arms outstretched. “Sorry, friend. I’ve been looking forward to this walk all week, you know.” She paused, offering a weak smile, “hug?”

Remmy looked over when they heard the crunch of gravel under shoes. Deirdre was making her way up the path, and even from this distance Remmy could see the weariness on her. It hung on her like a cloud, like it ached her bones or her muscles or maybe her soul. Remmy pushed away from the post they’d been leaning on and met her a little ways up the path, as if them doing that might make her trek up easier. Even when she reached her arms out and gave that tiny, weak smile, they wondered if there was a way they could be the one reaching out to her. Even through the pang of anger they still felt and held close to their unbeating heart. “It’s okay,” they finally answered, “you can’t really be late for something like this.” They moved in without a word and hugged her, falling into her arms very suddenly and tensely after a moment of hesitation. They hadn’t realized how much they’d craved this contact until it was happening, hands digging into the back of Deirdre’s shirt for a moment. When they pulled away, not looking up at her, they gave a matching, tiny smile, “Me, too.” 

"Can't I?" Deirdre wondered aloud. Couldn't she? This must have been one of those things, she decided, that Remmy simply said to make it better when it wasn't. But Deirdre was smarter, she knew not to fall so easily into false comforts. Even so, as she held Remmy and they held her, she could almost believe it—that she truly hadn't done anything wrong. But the hug broke apart, Remmy was back to finding Deirdre's eyes too atrocious a sight. But selfish, she pulled Remmy closer to her, walking with them with her arm wrapped around. The two of them had never shared any manner of bespoke physical intimacy, but she'd become skilled enough at learning what Morgan liked as a zombie, and wondered if it translated. Besides, if there was ever a time to reveal her embarrassing secret about how much she enjoyed being close to people, it was now. "Was Moose Day okay? I know it was a while ago but…" She never really asked, never really followed up. She sighed as she led them through the gates, into their long—and perhaps not as exciting as she first anticipated—walk. "I guess I'm asking if you're okay." But she assumed the answer to that was a resounding 'no'. 

“No,” Remmy answered as they started their walk. They noted the way deirdre held them close, even after they’d left the hug. They didn’t know if it was to help her feel better or them, but they weren’t about to move away. It did make them feel better. It also made them feel worse. How could they be angry at her if they craved her closeness so much? Why was it easier to yell at Morgan and not Deirdre? It was too much to process right now. Right now, they just wanted to go for a nice walk with a friend. They could yell later. “Moose-- oh. Yeah...it went fine. Blanche did some stuff with me and had us take a lot of photos. Moose was happy with the meat cake I made him, too.” Passing through the gates seemed to signal something. Whether it was a start or an end, Remmy wasn’t sure. Glossy eyes looked up at her. Well, one glossy eye. The other was still covered with a patch. “But I’m not okay,” they answered, gaze dropping to watch their feet. They weren’t walking in tandem despite their arms intertwined. Remmy didn’t bother to try to make them, either. “I don’t think I’ve been okay for a long time.”

Good then, Deirdre noted. Remmy used the word 'fine' but it sounded better—comparatively at least. The admittance that followed was less inspiring. Deirdre frowned. She had suspected as much, she knew as much about Remmy, but it was different to hear it. She had nothing to offer, just as she could barely carry Morgan through her own pit, she didn’t know where to start with Remmy’s. “That makes two of us…” she sighed, mumbling. “I’ve heard it said that admitting it is just the beginning.” She barely had the facilities to be a good person, there was no capacity to become a therapist. Deirdre continued to walk, her strides were longer than Remmy’s, and she moved faster--but she slowed herself, hoping Remmy would spare a glance up at her. “Can I make it okay?” She asked quietly, “can we--can I--Is there something I can do to help?” She paused, wondering if the question was too daunting. She tried one with a simpler answer. “Why do you think you haven’t been okay? Is it the anger?” 

“I guess,” Remmy admitted, “I just wish I knew where to go from here.” Their feet weren’t interesting, and Remmy didn’t notice Deirdre slowing her pace to try and give them leeway. They didn’t look up quite yet, but moved their gaze from the path to the grass that lined it. “I don’t know,” they answered truthfully, though that was a fallacy. If only they could take the time to think about it, if only they could take the time to remember what happened, maybe they could know what to do. “I’m not okay because I died and I can’t remember and now I’m having blackouts and everywhere I look I see my squadmates’ faces and I can’t concentrate on anything. And it makes me angry. It all just makes me angry. And you make me angry and Morgan makes me angry and everyone who told me that this was okay makes me angry. And I don’t want to be angry at any of you, but I don’t know how else to be anymore.”

Deirdre listened, her face fallen into a frown. There was one simple answer, and several more complicated ones. "It is okay, Remmy," she sighed, knowing it wasn't as convincing as it used to be, especially with Morgan vocally against any part of zombieism. "Is that it?" She tilted her head, now forcing them to halt their slow walk. "That you want to know how you died? I can do that. I can summon that vision." She didn't imagine it would help, but she knew enough to say that Remmy certainly thought it might. And if she could offer some peace to her friend, she would. But what happened then? If it didn't? If Remmy held hope just for another thing to crush it. Deirdre's face betrayed her skepticism, "are you sure you want to know? I can—If you really think it will, then you don't need to live without the knowledge any longer." She couldn't summon her odl arguments to convince Remmy that being a zombie truly wasn't terrible, but she always knew how to summon death and its visions. This, at least, she could do. 

“No, it’s not and I wish you would stop saying that! I wish you all would!” Remmy said, pulling away from Deirdre. “Clearly it’s not okay if this is what it does to people! If the only thing Morgan can feel is this anger and pain and sorrow! Clearly it’s not okay!” And it wasn’t and they weren’t sure they’d ever think it was. Or had ever believed it was. “I-- you-- you can?” They stopped, still parted from Deirdre’s grip, looking at her with confusion and hurt mixed on their face. “H-how? What-- you mean you can see how I died?” The desperation clear on their face. They knew it wouldn’t solve all their problems but the reality had been a black space in the memory for so long, since they woke up, that it had to have some sort of catharsis for them, right? It had to. I had to. “Yes,” they said, “I want to know. I need to know. Please. I-- I need to know.”

"It is," Deirdre replied evenly, though she did not push it as far as she might have weeks ago. In her heart, she held the belief that if Remmy truly had thought it was completely terrible—completely hopeless—they wouldn't have bitten Morgan in the first place. And whatever it was they were experiencing, it would pass. "She says she loves me still, and if there's the capacity for that, there's always hope for more. And there is for you too." She sighed, far too exhausted to explain this. It would have been nice to just give in, give up, crawl back to Ireland and pretend everything was one long, bad dream. She held her hand out, "I can. I'm a banshee. This is…" What they did. What she did. And though she was a failure by most accounts, she could do this still. "...what I offer." Her frown grew deeper, with her eyes she spoke a silent desperation: this will not help. She didn't think it would. But, then again, what did she know of help? Her best efforts only served to push people away, the best things she ever did was….murder. What did she know, really? Deirdre gestured to her open palm. "Give me your hand, Remmy. And I can start." And though she knew little of gods, she prayed Remmy could find the pace they were after. 

Remmy didn’t want to argue the point anymore. They were tired of listening to people lie to them about it. It wasn’t okay, no matter what they said. Cearly, it wasn’t okay. But Deirdre was offering something Remmy had wanted since the day they’d woken up. A memory that was lost to trauma and time and the hole in their head. The doctor had told them that it was probably for the best, that they didn’t remember. It was too traumatic, and their brain had purposefully blacked out the memory. But they needed it now. They needed it because they needed to know, they needed to understand. How they died and why no one cared and why no one cried. They needed to know what made them different from Morgan. They needed to know if they were alone. Remmy reached out. Deirdre’s eyes told them this wouldn’t help, but they didn’t believe her. It had to help. Silently, they took her hand.

Deirdre squeezed Remmy's hand back, offering a small smile. At once, the whites of her eyes flooded with deep black. The world darkened with it and she searched around her for the right threads to pull. This was always harder in a cemetery, so many people had died and all of them clamored for attention. She pushed through newly deceased housewives, around worn men and past confused children all to pull at the core of Remmy in front of her. She tugged. The visions met her with resistance. She tugged again and again until she tumbled backwards into it. She was consumed by sights and sensations that were not her own. All she understood, suspended in time, was that this was how Remmy had died, and death had granted her the vision of it—her body lurched until suddenly it was not her own. The cemetery dissolved into the rocky desert. The lazy sun above, not yet pulled to its height, still burned with a ferocity Deirdre did not know, but that this body she was in had grown accustomed to. The body was light for a moment, then sharp pain split across their chest in an instant. The body did not move, the body could not. The body fell backwards by the simple force of the impact, caught by the arms of another. He was handsome, despite the circumstances, though fear and panic twisted his soft features. He took the body tenderly against his dark skin, curling himself against them. He sobbed, his words lost to the whistling sounds of gunshots overhead. He tugged on the body a moment later, quick for even the way the world had slowed to a crawl, clawing across sand to drag them behind a rock. The body's eyes rolled lazily to the cover, Deirdre could feel the inevitably of it: the rock was too small, there was too much happening around them. She tried to will the body to speak, to tell this man to leave as the body's gaze turned back to stare up at him. Yet all sound was consumed by gunfire and shouting, as if their little world behind the rock was not sacred enough, not precious enough to be protected. Tears streamed free from the man's face, he pulled the body closer to him, a hand futilely pressed to their chest. The body watched helplessly as bullets struck the man, red staining his military browns. The body had stopped feeling pain, perhaps so far consumed by the kind that rippled out of their chest. The body watched the man cry. The body was—"Remmy."

Deirdre's eyes blinked back into their usual whiteness, she dropped Remmy's hand, needing hers to clutch her chest as she heaved, then as she tried desperately to pull out a bullet that wasn't there. She picked at her shirt, unaware her face was lined with its own tears. She spoke Remmy's name desperately, choked up by sobs. Her fingers ran frantically over the fabric of her shirt, drawn to her eyes only to verify that there was no blood. The lazy morning sun had been replaced with the cool midday one she knew, and there was no rock too tiny for their bodies. Slowly her body relaxed, and slowly she brought her gaze up to Remmy. "W-who is he?" She asked first, swallowing as she knew he'd died too—they all had, hadn't they? "There was this guy—" She began to mime the shape of his hair, the way his face wrinkled when he cried. "He had a good smile, I think. I couldn't see it. But I bet he had a—I could tell he had a good—" It was wrong to see him so struck by horror, she could tell. "W-who was he?" 

As Remmy waited, they wondered. They wished they could see it, too. They wished Deirdre didn’t have to go through this. Tears were forming in her eyes. “Deirdre?” Remmy asked, but she didn’t move, still caught in the vision. Remmy’s body tensed. They shouldn’t have done this, they shouldn’t have asked her to do this. Was she hurting? Did this hurt? Had their death been so painful that it was hurting Deirdre, too? She cried out their name. Not loud, not fearfully-- but desperately. As if searching. Remmy caught Deirdre’s other hand, trying to steady her, until she pulled away. They watched her frantically pull at her own clothes, her own chest, and something struck a chord in Remmy. A painful throb, just above their heart. Remmy looked down, bewildered, but nothing was there. No blood, no bullet. Blinking, the pain was gone, like a ghost. They found Deirdre’s desperate eyes again, shaking with the memories fighting to claw their way back into their head. Her words echoed in Remmy’s head. Who was he? The one with the gentle smile? Remmy knew. Remmy knew right away, but his name wouldn’t form in their mouth. Who was he? He was their everything. He had been their everything, even after they’d decided they couldn’t be together. Remmy had been ready to start a life with him. “After we get back,” they had said, “maybe we could settle down? Retire? I think we’ve earned it.” They hadn’t known what was going to happen back then. “Darius,” they finally said, found themself fraught with tears of their own. “His name was Darius Mullberry--” a strained chuckle, “--we all always made fun of his last name. It’s just funny sounding, isn’t it?” They weren’t sure what they were saying, or why they were saying it. Deirdre didn’t need to know this. Remmy’s jaw quivered. “Did he-- was he in pain? Did you see him? Was he--?” the thought of their own death suddenly unimportant. “Was it quick? For him? Please, I-- I don’t want him to have suffered. He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t even want to be there. He was only there because of me. I told him I’d keep him safe and he--” died. Their failure had gotten the one person they’d loved with all their heart killed. Remmy crumpled. “He was a good person. He didn’t deserve that.”

“Darius,” Deirdre repeated the name with reverence, holding the sound of it against her tongue, against the memory of the man she saw, burned into the back of her eyelids. She could see them together, laughing about the Mullberry. She could feel a flicker of Remmy’s life, what she knew her mind manufactured, but what felt no less real. All her visions were of death, her mind toyed with the idea of a vision of life instead and she held the story to her heart. She wished she could have seen that instead. She closed her eyes and tried to force it to play out. “I don’t know.” There was nothing. She opened her eyes. “You died first, I think. And he was crying so much I couldn’t tell if--I don’t think he was thinking about anything else besides you, Remmy.” And she hadn’t really stayed long enough in the vision to replay it, or start picking it apart. “You’re a good person too. You didn’t deserve--” Her voice caught, she gulped away another onslaught of sobs. Deirdre wanted to ask for more stories about the jokes they shared, about why Mullberry was so funny or if he ever said anything about Remmy’s name back. Instead, she sighed. “How could you have known it would’ve gone that way? How could you hold on to that? To any of this? Is this what you carry, Remmy?” This. Their mother’s death. Was there an end to Remmy’s pain somewhere? An easy answer on how to release the poor zombie from it? “You died in his arms. He wept. He died holding you. Some time later, I imagine you awoke.” Hungry, probably. Did someone move Remmy’s body or did they eat---Deirdre gulped. “Was he special to you? Darius?” They seemed special to him. Special enough to hold, to cry for. To die by. 

Words flew by Remmy. He had cried for them. He had died holding them. He had lost everything in that moment as well. He had cried for them. Someone had cried for them. Someone had longed for them. Someone had cared for them. Remmy didn’t even notice the stream of tears down their face as they looked back at Deirdre. She was asking so many questions, but they couldn’t hear them. Their mind couldn’t process them. It was just words. Flying by them. Floating around them. The memory of his face. His smile. The way his eyes scrunched up when it got too big, the way his cheeks puffed when he smiled so big it became a toothy grin. As if it couldn’t be contained. The way he could see everything about Remmy even when they couldn’t. They way he knew they loved him but could never be with him like they both had wanted. They way he had always looked at them like they were the world, even when no one else noticed. When no one else cared. Was that why they’d loved him? Was that why they’d asked him to be theirs? Remmy didn’t know anymore. Is this what you carry, Remmy? 

They couldn’t see through the tears as they looked up at Deirdre, crushed under the weight of the question, of her words, of their memories. They wanted to reach out, to touch, to hold, to feel something, to know someone. Would they ever know someone like that again? Frozen in their spot, frozen in time, frozen forever. They looked down at their hands, their feet below them. The dirt underneath them. Searched for a metaphor in it, in the way the grass scrunched under their shoes, the way the neatly paved path held everything in place, in the way the dirt caved under the weight of their shoes. But they found nothing. Was he special to you? Remmy’s eyes wandered back up to Deirdre’s. Was he special to them? “He was the first person I ever loved,” they finally said. And it was all they said, and they couldn’t look at her anymore.

Deirdre’s hand twitched at her side. She ached to reach out, to hold Remmy the way she learned to care for Morgan--learned to care in general. She stepped closer, hovering beside them, a hand awkwardly raised as they cried and she could do nothing to soothe the pain. Was it better or worse to be doing this in a cemetery? Surrounded by people who had lost in this same way, who had perhaps lost more, who had come out of pain without their lives--or those that had passed with peace, something Remmy could not be offered. He was the first person I ever loved. Deirdre swallowed. She gave in and reached her arms around Remmy, pulling them tightly against her. This was not her job, this was far from something she even thought herself capable of doing, but in that moment, she thought nothing of her short-comings and only of comforting her friend. What could she say no except that she was sorry? Would Remmy even want to hear it? “Do you want to tell me about him?” She asked softly. “Do you want--What can I do? Tell me what I can do, Remmy. Please.”  

Remmy just crumpled further, trying to fold themself up so they could be put away and not have to deal with anything anymore. Maybe Deirdre could slide them into her coat pocket and take them away and none of this would have to happen. They wouldn’t have to face their death or his death or any of this. Any of this unfairness that life was dumping on them. They were drowning already, and the room was still filling with water. Remmy pressed their face against Deirdre’s shoulder and sobbed. And finally, it felt relieving. Like they were deflating with each sob, crying out the sticky tar that had swallowed their insides. “I’m sorry,” they said after a long moment, “I’m sorry. You don’t need-- I’m sorry.” They drew in a breath and held it-- not for the breath itself, but for the feeling. Closing their eyes, counting to ten. Letting it go. The exercises they’d been taught back in the hospital. They wiped their hand across their one good eye, prodding the patch over the other. “You’ve done enough, Deirdre,” they whispered quietly, drawing their knees to their chest. “You’ve done so much.”

Where had she heard those words exactly before? Deirdre held Remmy tighter, gritting her teeth. Hadn’t Morgan told her something similar? How could she be doing enough if there was still so much pain? How could she be doing anything at all if nothing was better? At least death made it clear when she’d done a good job, at least her family told her when she did her job well. What proof was there that she was helping anyone at all? “You can’t live like this, Remmy,” she said, her voice rising with anger at the helplessness of Remmy’s situation--of their life. “You can’t be this---it can’t be like this for you. All this suffering, all this pain. You can’t live like this. You can’t live holding on to Darius like that. With anyone’s death like that. Remmy--” She loosened her grip, tilting her head to try and meet Remmy’s eyes--well, eye. She’d have to see about getting them a new one. “--you need--” Help? Someone better at taking care of people? A new life as someone else? “--something.” They said answers would help. Did they? “I won’t let you carry this, Remmy. So you tell me what you want and I’ll do it. But you’re not keeping on like this. What’s in the past is in the past. You move forward and you…” Deirdre’s voice finally gave to her muted sobbing. She wasn’t sure why she was crying exactly, but something tore up her insides watching Remmy this way. “Tell me what to do, Remmy.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Remmy asked immediately, still not looking up at Deirdre. “Where am I supposed to leave them? On that battlefield? At the memorial? In their graves? If I do that, then they’ll be gone forever. I can’t do that. I won’t do that to him. I can’t let them be forgotten. It’s why I-- it’s why I woke up, right? Why I’m here? To carry them. To make sure they’re not forgotten on that battlefield. So that they didn’t die in vain.” They shook their head violently, planting their hands to push themself away from Deirdre on the ground. “Stop, please. I don’t-- I don’t need anything. You’ve done enough, Deirdre. I-- I can’t ask anything more from you, please.” Because if they did, they’d just ask for everything. They’d ask to be held and loved and carried and cried for, just like Morgan. They’d ask to be happy and soft and gentle, things so far out of reach right now they wondered how they’d even gotten there in the first place. They’d ask for a do over. They’d ask to just be done with it all. They’d ask for just...just one person to look at them they way Deirdre looked at Morgan. Just one. Because the one they had was gone now. And they didn’t get to watch him wake up. And they didn’t get to hold him again. And they didn’t get to cry with him again. Even if he’d cried for them in their death, who had cried for him? They did. They would. That’s all they understood, now. Why they’d woken up. Why they were still here. Someone needed to cry for them. Remmy clenched their shoulder, where the tattoo was. Remembered the touch of the needle, even if they hadn’t felt it. Remembered the warmth of Luce’s hands. They wanted to feel again. “Just make it all stop,” they said quietly, “I just want it all to stop.”

“Maybe you hold them.” Deirdre sighed. Once, she had known so much about death and loss. Once, she might have had true words of wisdom to offer. But what she once knew laid still under the weight of everything else. The Deirdre that could have helped was dead; perhaps she had never been capable of help at all. “Maybe you hold them in your heart, instead of carrying them. Maybe you keep it safe, and warm, and treat it with kindness...instead of...pulling it along with you. Maybe it’s different, Remmy. I don’t know. All I know is...that you can’t keep on, carrying everything alone. And maybe that just means you let someone else carry something too. I--” she swallowed. “I don’t know.” She let herself be pushed away lamely, unable to summon the strength to fight this too., to rend herself in there. She thought of Regan, with her hatred of her wings--begging them to be taken away. Her mind fell to Morgan, grappling with the loss of her anchor, asking to be turned back. She considered Remmy, another person asking for something that couldn’t be. And how many more were there? If she focused, she could feel hundreds of ghosts asking for the same thing. When did it end? How did she begin to help? Why did she want to? Why was this suddenly her problem? Why did she care? And why did it hurt not to? “I can’t do that.” She replied, curling into herself on the ground, defeated. “I can’t. You know I can’t.” She sighed, offering a meek glance up at Remmy. “You can ask for more, Remmy. I can’t give it, but you can ask. You should ask. You should ask for more things, Remmy.” She swallowed, thinking back to the vision. “He wanted you to live. And you’re living. And as long as you’re living, there’s always something to be done. And don’t---life is more than just a heartbeat, or the echo of where one used to be.” With great hesitation, she summoned a quiver: “what do you want to stop, Remmy?”

Remmy watched Deirdre from the side of their vision as she, too, curled up in defeat on the dirty ground. Remmy’s fingers curled against the skin on their arms. “I don’t know how to do that,” they said, “how to put them there. I don’t know if I can do that. What if I can’t do that?” they asked, a desperation in their voice that couldn’t quite figure itself out. As if they couldn’t possibly have a big enough heart to put them in, to carry them in. “I can’t ask anyone to do that. I don’t--” have anyone? And those that they did have-- Blanche, Skylar, Morgan, Deirdre-- they were all already carrying so much. They shook their head again, this time much slower, in defeat. “I can’t.” Repeating Deirdre’s words, in the same tone. Neither of them could. It was an impassable situation, stuck between the fallen rocks of their failures and the sheer cliff of what was ahead of them. “What’s the point of asking if no one can give it? What’s the point, Deirdre? Please, tell me. What’s the point? I don’t-- I’m not strong enough to know the answer. I can’t-- I can’t take it anymore.” They wrapped their arms tighter around their legs, head burrowing into their knees. “I want him to be alive again. I want him to be here instead of me.” 

“You have to,” Deirdre asserted, her voice equally as desperate. Remmy had to. Something would give, eventually, it always did when carrying something like that. And either Remmy figured it out or--Deirdre swallowed. She didn’t want to think about the alternative. “You will,” she said, a fierceness took her then, and she looked over at Remmy with a steadiness. “And you ask. You do. You have to. You need to ask as many people as you can, no matter if they can’t give you anything. You have to ask. You have to let people try. You can’t---asking is half the battle, isn’t it?” And it had to be. It would be. She couldn’t let Remmy live like this. She wouldn’t. She didn’t know the first thing about care or comfort but she needed to do something. “Everyone can give you parts and pieces and maybe they make a whole if you let them Remmy but---” Deirdre reached across, the palm of her hand pressed firmly into Remmy’s shoulder; a strong presence, not a forceful one. Her voice took the same quality, stubbornly sure now that something had to be done. And that she wouldn’t let remmy succumb to defeat, not if she had to personally fight it herself, tooth and nail. “Absolutely not. One life is not more precious than the other. And you love him, and I’m sure he loved you, and no one who cares that much would ever agree to such a thing. You are alive. And you will live. And you’ll figure it out, what you need to do, the kind of things you should ask people for, and where to hold this pain in your heart. You have to, Remmy. I know it’s--” she swallowed, weavering for a moment. “I know it’s hard. I know it’s unfair. I know I sound like I’m spewing crap at you right now, Remmy. But you’re my friend.” Deirdre paused. “And I love you too. And I won’t let you think that way, not forever. Maybe we can figure this out. And maybe for now it starts on the floor curled up in a ball but…” she inched closed, her voice dropping to a gentle breath. “Will you let me hold you, Remmy?”

The sudden turn of Deirdre’s voice threw Remmy off. The sternness, but it wasn’t filled with anger. It was filled with assuredness. As if she’d simply figured something out in the moments of silence that had hung between them. Her palm pressed firmly against Remmy’s shoulder, a steadying grip, somehow both pulling Remmy up and keeping them grounded. They blinked through their haze, through the pain still clawing at them, as their mind continued to process all the new information it had been given, still not reaching the spot where they’d been told how they’d died. Deirdre’s eyes were blazing and gentle all at the same time. They didn’t know how she did it. How she stayed so steady and so firm and so soft at the same time. How she could confidently say these things and support all the people in her life, while still holding all of her own pain, all of her own misgivings. If Remmy could help her, even a little, even with one small thing, it wouldn’t even hold a flame to all the things Deirdre gave and never asked for in return. They wished they could offer that for her, too. For anyone. They wanted to be to someone what she was for them. Hands gripping tighter for a moment, Remmy finally let out all the tension they’d been holding in. “I don’t wanna be alone anymore,” they finally admitted quietly, whispered into their lap. They lifted their head to meet Deirdre’s gaze. “I’m tired of being alone.” Of being angry, of being tired, of only remembering pain. There had to be more, didn’t there? There had to be more. And maybe there was. They hadn’t been alone in death. Maybe that was enough to hold onto for now. Remmy nodded in answer to Deirdre’s last question. 

Deirdre waited until she had an answer before she moved forward, wrapping her arms around Remmy again, holding them tightly to her. There was not much else she could say that she hadn't already. Not much else she could do. This, at least, she hoped could be some manner of a start. "You're not alone now, Remmy." Not anymore. And they never would be again. 

[deathduty]

Smash Mouth || Deirdre & Morgan

Deirdre and Morgan have an emotional conversation on the floor. Again. (following the events of this)

Why did all keys have to look the same? Deirdre had tried about a dozen keys (or actually the same key a dozen times foolishly hoping it would work) before she finally found the one that fit into her door. Then she set about the task of turning said key and pushing open her door; something much harder than what her hungover body wanted to handle. Eventually, with great struggle, she managed to walk into her house. The foyer, unsurprisingly, was empty. She assumed Morgan was in the shed, or at the bottom of the pool again. But as she did every time she came home, she waited at the threshold of each room anyway, looking for her. 

Except what she found instead was disarray. Shattered glass, chipped tiles…and she was still in the foyer. Anya, once nestled in her arms, jumped down and mewled, scampering up the stairs and away. Deirdre’s heart sank and she took a shaky step forward. “Morgan?” She called once, in a quivering whisper. She swallowed and tried again, louder, “Morgan?” When the house responded with silence, she moved quicker. “Morgan?” And more frantic. “Morgan!?” Air drew into her lungs rapidly--in and out and in and out in a mockery of the steady breathing she knew. “Morgan!” She was yelling now, throat tight. “Morg--” Her words became choked away with sobbed breaths. She darted into the kitchen. There was a dark stain on the wall. More glass. Dents and holes in places they shouldn’t be. “Morgue?” She called out quietly, pleading. If whatever powers that be could hear her, she thought she might start begging to have Morgan back now, before it was too late even to grovel. But her body tugged with familiarity, and the feeling--like the warmest embrace around her--pulled her around the room. And eventually, into a corner. 

“Morgan?” She asked the slumped body, taking only a moment to confirm the identity. She dropped to her knees, arms outstretched for her. “Morgan?” She kept calling and waiting for a response--calling and waiting, calling and waiting. “Please, my love, are you--are you--” She leaned closer, nearly gone to her crying. “Hey, please, please answer me.”

Morgan had spaced out long enough that she wasn’t sure she was really hearing Deirdre until she was screaming, too distressed for anything her brain fatigue would make up. She peeled her head off the floor, blinking as she tried to get her eyes to focus on real things in front of her for the first time in--shit, she wasn’t even sure what time it was. She groaned, throat tight and rocky with tension. Her eyes settled on Deirdre, slumped before her, reaching out. “You...you really came back?” She rasped, her face wrinkling with confusion. Slowly, she turned her body towards her, reached out a tentative hand towards her, squeezing her hand. Solid. Shit. “You really came back.” The realization struck bitterly. She’d come back to her, for whatever reason, and Morgan had made a mess of the house. Of everything. Morgan looked up at her, abashed. She didn’t know how to explain herself, how to keep Deirdre from rescinding whatever forgiveness she’d come to give her. “I’m...I’m sorry,” she stammered in a whisper.

“Of course, I…” The sentence hung unfinished on the tip of Deirdre’s tongue, struck to an early end by the sheer absurdity of the question. Of course she’d come back. Of course she would be here. Of course there was nowhere else she’d rather be. “What happened? Did someone break in? Was it Kaden? Was it--” Her panicked sentence also met a quick end. She’d just come back from meeting Kaden at Strawford, and the guilt that played across Morgan’s features seemed like it was for more than the telling-a-hunter-about-being-a-zombie thing. “Morgan…” She held her hand back tighter, trying to invite her girlfriend into her arms instead of on the floor. Deirdre swallowed thickly, plagued with her own guilt. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Morgan. I didn’t think--was this because I--” Was it her fault? She wanted to ask, but her heart shed raw from all the crying she’d done last night feared the answer. “Of course I came back,” she settled on instead, always finding it easier to speak about her love and devotion for Morgan than she could anything else. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Morgan crawled slowly towards Deirdre, following her pull. She wasn’t sure how to answer. Earlier it had seemed painfully obvious why, but Deirdre didn’t seem to think so at all. She lifted her gaze upwards, searching her expression for any sign that she was holding something back. “I--I screwed up,” she said quietly. “I scared you enough to drive you away and...and I screwed up. And...you took Anya and one of your bags and I thought…” She hesitated, gestured vaguely with her empty hand. She thought the world was coming apart again, like it always did. “I’m all wrong. I...I thought it would be okay, telling him, that nothing bad would happen, at least nothing worth worrying about, at least not to me. And I know that’s awful and screwy and...it was too much. And then I was just…” She looked over at the mess trailing through the house and hung her head again. “I just wanted everything to stop for a minute.” But instead, she had almost definitely made everything worse. “I can, um, start cleaning up…” She offered feebly.

Deirdre held Morgan tighter, closer, a headache completely forgotten in favor of doing one of the only things that felt right to her in months. How could she begin to explain the breadth of the problem? How much of her heart panged and ached and demanded that she run but screamed to stay? Nothing had been good since she’d grown fond of a human, nothing made sense but the very love that tore apart everything she knew. And then that human died, and now she was stuck in a life she didn’t want and there was no good way to communicate how scared Morgan’s sadness made her. What happened when she decided that being dead was better than being undead? “It’s not--” And how did she start to explain how angry she was that Morgan hadn’t stayed then and had now gone off to put her life in the hands of a man who thought she was a monster. She could understand Morgan’s kind heart, but it was reckless by all accounts. But it was fine now. She got drunk, she groaned about it in the privacy of a hotel room, she shoved all feeling back down where it belonged and she could ignore the rest. “You’d never--” She reached her hands up, holding Morgan’s face. “Do you want a promise? A vow? That’d I’d never--I’ll always--that--” Though, even after all this time, the weight of her love was daunting and the depths of it wouldn’t come as she tried to summon them. “Because I will. I would. Promise you that.” Promise her anything. If only it could help, if only something could. With enough heart, enough good intent---like magic. “It’s okay, I’m not mad.” She was mad, but that boiled down deep inside of her and she ignored it just as well as she did talking about what Morgan had told Kaden. “You don’t have to clean. Please don’t. I don’t want to let you go.”

Morgan melted in Deirdre’s hands. She shook her head pitifully and dragged her arms around her, holding her with as much care as she could. “No,” she whimpered. “You should be able to--I don’t want you to be trapped with me. If it’s too much, you can say, and you can--I’ll understand if you change your mind. I’m used to being--I know this is so fucked, and I make things hard. I know that. I don’t even want to be stuck with this, so why should you?” She brought a hand up to press one of Deirdre’s closer in, savoring the pressure of each finger. “You should only stay as long as you want.” She looked at her with a confusion that begged for answers, however harsh or crushing. “How can you not be mad? I drove you away, how are you not mad? Just tell me. I know it was stupid, just tell me.” Tell me instead of disappearing, she wanted to add.

“I’m not trapped with you. It’s not too much. I’m not stuck---” Deirdre swallowed. There it was. Of course, she knew how much Morgan hated being a zombie, but it always stung to hear, more so when there was little energy left to pretend like she had boundless optimism---or the kind of stubborn hope Morgan once possessed. “You wish you hadn’t woken up, don’t you?” She breathed the question cautiously. “You hate being a zombie. You miss being a witch. I can’t fix either of those things for you, even if I knew where to start. I can’t be mad at you for that, I can’t blame you for it. I can’t be mad that the good part of you felt you needed to tell Kaden. And if he comes to kill you, if he tells some other hunter, I can’t be mad. I don’t know what to--” She swallowed, her lips quivered and her face furrowed together as she failed to stop the steadily growing stream of tears. “I don’t want to be alone again, Morgan. I don’t want to remember what a world without you is like. T-that’s all that this is. That’s all that---” She sucked in a shaky breath, hoping she might save herself from sobbing if she just breathed right, blinked enough and kept her body stiff. “It was stupid. It was stupid because you have no idea how much it---how much---and I know it’s selfish, I know it’s wrong of me but I---I don’t want to be alone. I’m sorry.” 

Morgan could only whimper at the truth she’d avoided telling anyone for so long. “You were holding me, and you loved me, and then I just went to sleep,” she said, voice breaking at the memory. “And I haven’t gotten to sleep since. I can’t find out if it feels better in the morning, or after a nap, it just never stops.” Sometimes she could carry the weight just right, like she had for that day after Beltane. It had almost been normal, a good kind of lazy and staying in bed. So far, though, she mostly felt like she was trudging in place, pulling and pulling, just so she didn’t lose any ground. And then sometimes, she just let go. And something felt cruelly right about how easy it was, even as it made everything else around her worse. Morgan’s body shuddered with the weight of the admission. That the only thing she knew of death and ease and no suffering wasn’t anything she had here, but in that rest she’d had for just a little while. She brought their faces together, clung tighter. “I want to fight it for you,” she said. “I’m trying to fight it. It’s all I have left, I just keep...I get tired. Or I do the wrong thing. I’m not trying to screw it up, I’m trying to be here.” She pressed in harder. “I wish I’d never left the stupid hotel more. I wish we could just be happy like we were. I screwed that up too, I was just trying--” She’d been trying to exist in the world in a way that felt right, even then. “I don’t want to go, I never wanted to go in the first place, I just don’t know what to do! I don’t know how to fix me!” She grimaced. “Don’t be sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to go. Don’t be sorry for still...for still loving me. I don’t mean to make it hard, it just is, sometimes…” She shook her head. “Please don’t be sorry.”

“But it’s easier not to fight. And it’s not like---not like I’m doing much in particular to help and it’s not--” Deirdre snifled. She hated crying, but she kept doing it. It made her feel like a child, and there was no feeling she hated more than that helpless state--grasping at a world so much larger than her, scrambling for any semblance of stability. Why couldn’t she be stronger? Than this? Than everything? Than falling in love in the first place, even, if she dared to think it. “You didn’t screw anything up Morgan…” She breathed, calmed by the act of being near Morgan, focusing enough on the pull inside of her instead of the bubbling darkness. “I’m not sorry that I love you,” she sighed after a moment of silence, unable to summon anything else to say. And what could she say anyway? “I’m sorry that I want you. I always have been.” In her life and in her death, Deirdre had held that guilt. A guilt of knowing how terrible of a partner she must have been, how horrible her selfishness must have made things for Morgan---must have continued to. Maybe someone kinder could do this better. Maybe someone who knew how to manage their own emotions, maybe someone who wasn’t lost herself. Maybe anyone but her; she’d always thought it. She hadn’t stopped feeling racked with inadequacy. It could only be made more clear in the face of the hopelessness of Morgan’s situation, and the thrumming unanswered pain inside of Deirdre. “It’s not hard to love you, or care about you. It’s just hard to be--” The person that she was: the disgrace of a fae, farce of a banshee, traitor to her family. “I wish you wouldn’t have told Kaden,” she interrupted herself, “there’s no screaming for the undead and if something---if--I won’t know. And--I can’t--” She swallowed. “I can’t not know.” 

Morgan sagged heavy against Deirdre, testing her energy with small repetitive gestures, like when they played their touching game, how hard, how soft, each of them in a different direction until it was just right. Morgan suspected Deirdre cheated sometimes, calling ‘fine’ when it wasn’t really. She was so ready to give, to sacrifice, even when she didn’t have to. “Of course you help,” she mumbled, brow knotting. How did she not know? How was it not obvious? “You’re the one that makes it better.” She brushed away the tears coming down Deirdre’s face. She cried so rarely, but it seemed, in an awful way, that she had reason to do it so much more. “I’ve always wanted you, you know? And maybe I didn’t feel as bad about that as I should’ve. I just remember it being like...like a good kind of pull. Like something in me already wanted to fit with you, however I could. Even when we were just talking, I couldn’t stop checking to see if you’d replied yet. So you can’t be sorry for wanting me. I wanted you first. That’s on me, if we’re going that way. I wanted you more than I was scared of cursing you with me. And I guess I still do,” She shrugged. It was a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. “Oh, Deirdre,” she sighed sorrowfully. She pulled her banshee’s head down to rest on her. The world was heavy, thicker than the thickest fog, but Deirdre already seemed to be in the sinking pit with her. Morgan thought of it like that as she wrapped her up, pressing against her tired to comfort her. “I didn’t realize. Why didn’t you say sooner? He won’t do anything to us. He sees enough of a person after all the weird conversations with alive-me to be saddled with guilt, and enough of a monster to be too scared of getting bit. I told him I would if he ever tried to hurt you. But I didn’t mean to make you think-- I didn’t know you were scared like that already. I didn’t know, Deirdre.” She pressed a firm kiss to her hair and brought her cheek down to rest there. “Tell me how I can fix it. I could promise you something, just tell me what it is.”

But not better enough, Deirdre held her tongue. She didn’t want Morgan to feel poorly for her sadness, or to amass any kind of pressure or expectation to be happier before she was ready to. But the work she did to help...didn’t feel like anything at all. She wanted to know where the mountain to climb was, the person to kill, the seeds to sow or the field to till. Where was the work that helped? What did she do besides blind attempts at comfort? It was hard to tell what worked and what didn’t--and most things seemed like they didn’t work at all. How many times did she need to tell Morgan that her life could be good again? Sometimes it felt like her throat went hoarse with the words. “But I should have...not let you.” As she had been raised to. As her mother had told her, repeatedly, that she was not someone who loved---was loved in this way. Was this the proof? Or was it somewhere in the blood of that dying Morgan in her arms? Would everything be better if only Deirdre could have performed her duty better and shunned Morgan? Would she not have felt happy enough to leave the hotel room? Would she still be alive? Whatever the answer, Deirdre spoke no more about it. Morgan had her own problems, Deirdre was sure the last thing she wanted was this. 

“That’s not that---that’s not the point.” She sighed against Morgan, unwanting to visit that topic either, but knowing she couldn’t avoid it without drawing suspicion. “Even if he was somehow trustworthy, who stops him from telling a hunter friend who isn’t? Who stops the slayer that looks into the reports of scared joggers and nearly drowned swimmers? And it---you need to be---you have to be careful. And when you don’t--when you’re not it’s just---it’s like---” Scary, for one thing. And though she knew it wasn’t personal, she couldn’t help but to feel it sting against her as a kind of slight---as if Morgan didn’t care entirely about the way Deirdre had upended her life. As if her re-death would only end one life, instead of two. How could she go back to what she knew? Better as it was to love Morgan, the worse gnawed at her darkly; this was all she had, wasn’t it? Selfish as it was, wrong as it might have been. But even these feelings were only a fraction of the ones swirling around inside of her; unopened, and desperately kept that way. “There’s nothing to be done.” There was never anything to be done, fate worked in one horribly particular way. “Forget about it.”

Morgan held Deirdre tighter. “You don’t really mean that, do you?” She asked quietly. “That you shouldn’t have let us happen. You’re the best part of my life. We got so much life out of four months because of you. And we...we were happy a little while ago, weren't we?” By the Beltane fire for new growth. Under the stars, and then in each other’s arms all the next day. Morgan kissed Deirdre’s temple hard enough to feel it herself. “Hey, I love you. I don’t want to lose you. So, please,” she murmured. “Please don’t. I’d still do most anything for you. I’d try, Deirdre” She nuzzled her face down to press closer to hers. “Please don’t shut me out. Your heart is the only thing I can still feel like I used to.” Although not very well, if this had been mounting with each successive outing she’d been on. “The only part I have a hope to. And I want to. Know you, understand you, be with you…” She could make herself. She could hang on for that. She pushed back Deirdre’s hair and held her gaze, anguish to anguish. The last thing she wanted was for a door to close between them. It was already so hard to feel her on her lowest days. If Morgan lost the Deirdre beneath the surface, she didn’t know what she would do. “I don't ever mean to hurt you,” she said sorrowfully. “ And I’m so sorry. But let me try? To be here as long as I can. To try to be...careful. I’ve never been so good at that, but I could try to learn. I could make it into a promise? Or something else?”

"You're the best thing that's happened to me, the best part of my life now. Everything's that's good...it's you." Deirdre breathed the sentence with ease, peppering firm kisses to Morgan's face in any place she could reach without untangling them even a little bit. "My only regret is hurting you; not opening myself to you sooner." But how exactly did she explain that by loving Morgan, she'd learned her own life until that point had been terrible? That, once, her duty was the best part of her life and now it simply rang hollow? "But I would take all of the pain I knew before you back if it meant you didn't have to suffer like this, Morgan." Deirdre wasn't special, not in this way. Morgan would find someone else who loved her just as much, loved her more—if that was possible. Loved her in a way that wouldn't have them consistently ending up on the floor spilling feelings. A girlfriend that understood emotion far better than Deirdre could ever hope to. "It doesn't matter," she sighed, "it's just a thought. There's no way to change any of that." But the simple idea of not knowing Morgan, of never having those long conversations or the nights spent together or the enchanting sight of waking up next to her, Deirdre's heart ached. It was a selfish ache, she knew, but it hurt worse than any other. "I'm not—" She swallowed, her face soured at the idea of spilling her feelings, feelings she barely knew how to grasp. She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't know how to start talking about it. She barely knew what it was. Morgan's face, strewn with anguish, asked her gently to share and it was hard to deny it. "No." But her mind could not oblige. "You don't—you don't need to worry about—I'll fix it. It's fine. Don't worry. I'm not shutting you out, I just—" 

Deirdre’s throat tightened and full words could no longer escape. How did she explain that in four short months nearly all that she knew about the world was proven wrong? That all she'd lived for was her family's approval, which was both not here and thrust into impossibility? That she had the suspicion all 32 years of her life were horrible, and they must have been, because of the way Morgan looked at her after she shared a childhood anecdote? That she'd known pride to be the only feeling she was capable of until she was suddenly shown otherwise? That she'd never really grown okay with any of these things, but she had tried so desperately and she was tired of trying things that always resulted in failure? And lost herself, she selfishly clung to the only emotion she knew without question—Morgan's love, her love for her and vice versa. How did she begin to explain how sorry she was for being so dependent on that feeling to help her through the rest, for being so selfish in the first place? What kind of a monster dared to share any of this when Morgan's problems were worse, when what she needed was a stable force, not more insurmountable feelings that weren't even her own? "You don't need to promise me anything. I...what would you even promise? There's no point." Life was horrible, and now it was horrible and unpredictable and she could run the numbers in her head but it wouldn't make anything better. Nothing would, really. Not about this. "I wouldn't ask you for anything, Morgan." She had already taken so much from her, she wouldn't dare ask for anything more, even if she wanted to. "Let's just not...do this. I don't—let me take you to bed? We can watch some Grey's instead." 

There was something achingly familiar about the distress knotting Deirdre’s face. There were all the times Morgan now suspected Deirdre wanted to say how she felt, or explain what her duty demanded of her. And it seemed to be a reflection of her own angsts, of traumas and problems too deep and sharp to extract in one pull. “Sssh, it’s okay. It’s something hard, I can see that now. I see how hard it is. You don’t have to say right now. But sometime. Sometime, please.” She answered each of Deirdre’s kisses with one of her own, firm and desperately insistent. “And you wouldn’t be asking for anything. I want to give you something to help the hurt. You’d just be letting me.” Another kiss, firm and lingering on her lips. “I want to give you so much. And I hate that I can’t all the time. But I’ll keep trying. And we’ll just, uh…” She looked back at the destruction in the house, wincing with guilt. “Cross ‘zombie smash’ off as a coping method that doesn’t work in the house.” She wrapped Deirdre up in her arms again, drawing strength from her devotion, the constancy she fought herself to keep and give to her. Was it bad that she felt a little special, to be worth all this trouble to someone? And at the same time, a little monstrous, for not being selfless enough to let her go, or strong enough to keep from hurting her. Sometimes the alchemy between them was a trick she hadn’t meant to cast, that they were stuck, for better or worse. Some days twice as strong, twice a happy, and others, twice as fucked. She should be sorrier for it, but stronger than the guilt was the relief that she still belonged in the one place where her body felt right. “Bed and Grey’s sounds good, babe, if that’s what you want,” Morgan said into her hair. “I’m guessing you had a rough night too. Just watch your step on the stairs, okay?” She contorted herself into a position where they could stand without letting go. 

Part of Deirdre had expected Morgan to push it more, and there was disappointment and relief that she didn't. In stuffing it all back down, the weight settled against her again, but even if Morgan had asked, Deirdre truly didn't know what to say. "Thank you," she murmured into a kiss. "Sometime." She answered with awe, unsure why anyone would want to hear what emotional distress she was hiding. But, as she'd learned so many times, Morgan wasn't just anyone. "You know just this is fine," she smiled softly, her eyes raking over the damage Morgan had done. It was just glass, Deirdre was far from a stranger to smashed glass, and she was sure she would have done far worse in Morgan's place. There had to be more damage in other places though, considering all her tantalisingly delicate vases were untouched. "Hey," she turned back, fixing Morgan's hair and plucking tiny glass shards out as she noticed them. "Smashing things is fun. You seemed to avoid the decor though. What's all this stuff you broke?" If it helped, even just a little, Deirdre was more than happy to offer vases and plates to the good cause of 'zombie smash'. Moving while staying wrapped up in eachother was a skill they had oddly come to perfect in their time together, and it wasn't so hard to stand and walk while being held and holding back. As it turned out though, Morgan really wasn't joking about Deirdre having to watch her step. Nearly tumbling up the stairs and into their bedroom, Deirdre paused before they would inevitably fling themselves on to their welcoming bed. She leaned in to kiss her again, firm and half-fueled by the anger that settled beyond reach. "I missed you," she mumbled, lingering by her lips. "I know I left—I didn't think you'd want to play witness to my drunkenness—but I missed you. And I know it was only one night and some hours but—" but she'd missed her, so terribly. Even if Morgan could offer no wisdom, nothing more than an apology, if all Morgan had the strength to summon to do was hold her, she was missed. Just her, just as she was, missed. "Although, it did get me thinking about something and…" she reached down and held Morgan's hands, looking into her eyes seriously. "Morgan, do you…" she breathed in, "...want to get another cat? You said you wanted more, before. And Anya is lonely and well...I don't know. But they are kind of cute, and I do enjoy waving that—" Deirdre made a motion with her hands, "toy thing around." 

Morgan pressed her face against Deirdre to give her a better angle on her mangled hair. It was getting long, inching towards how it used to look in college with each passing week. “Just the normal alcohol,” she said. “I tried to get drunk too, and then I remembered I couldn’t. And then my old stuff, in that guest room.” She nuzzled her as she worked. “You really don’t mind the smashing?” Deirdre didn’t hold the same reverence for things that she did. Nothing was special, ever, unless it was a bone or a gift. But it stripped a layer of weight off her, to hear Deirdre talk about it so casually. She guided them up the stairs, remembering mostly where the biggest clusters of mess were and which sides of the hallway to avoid. She kissed her back, clinging to her lip just a little longer, curling her fingers up in her hair. “I missed you too.” She kissed her again, hungrier now that her admission had been made. “So much. It was awful, even if it was barely a whole day.” Which, with anyone else, would have been absurd, but she could tell by the way Deirdre’s voice tumbled out that it was just as hard for each of them, that the pull between them twisted and stung when they were apart for the wrong reasons. “I could’ve stayed in the shed, if you didn’t want me to see. You don’t have to go, unless you want to. I don’t want you to.” 

She let Deirdre take her hands, holding her gaze with a tired kind of gentleness. Then, a semblance of a smile cracked through her face. “You want to get a cat together? Really?” She hadn’t thought of it before, but she missed Anya coming onto her lap when she was sad. She missed a lot of things, but it was hard to stay angry at her when she kept Deirdre company so well. Anya was reaching the point where she would sniff around their bed or the couch or wherever they were laying together and meow curiously before running away, as if asking Deirdre what she was doing with this Not-Morgan. It stung, but it was better than being bit around her ankles for having died in the first place. But another cat, maybe a little leggy six month old? Or a one year old? A little fuzzy sibling Anya could teach about being a cat, who wouldn’t know her as anything other that what she was right now--that stung and twisted too, but it also dangled the possibility of relief. “I’d like that very much,” she said, kissing her again, so soft to her senses she felt she was brushing her lips on moth wings. “We can see what the animal shelter website has. After you’ve had some rest and we’ve made up for the night apart.” The suggestion was so normal it made her body ache and her brain tired and frenzied at the same time with want. But for now, all Morgan wanted was for her world to settle back into what few familiar shapes it still could, mostly around the firm comfort of her banshee.

“There is a way for you to get drunk, actually…” Deirdre started in a small voice, “but it’s not worth the work.” And they had yet to have a discussion around how Morgan felt about human brains. The shards of glass in Morgan’s hair got smaller and smaller until it was impossible for her to know if she’d plucked them all out. Still, she ran her fingers through Morgan’s hair before moving to brush her clothing off. “Things are just things. I can always buy more things. I shattered a lot of things in my youth, you learn to put so little value in what can be replaced. Which is to say...I don’t mind.” She finished, satisfied that Morgan was now glass-free, even if she couldn’t be hurt by it. “Why would you do that…?” She asked softly. Her laid-back attitude to material belongings wasn’t shared, she knew that much. Morgan coveted her things, even if some of the more magical items could no longer be used. “You like your things. You didn’t have to---next time, you can smash the vases. Take a painting and punch it if you want...but don’t take away from yourself.” Even if that part of herself was long gone. “Please?” Deirdre hummed, once again thwarted by the physical limitations of how close to bodies could be to each other--she always wanted them closer, somehow. Her body with its pull to Morgan always begged for her to be dragged in. “It’s worse if you’re in the shed; here but not here. It’s worse. Like...what you said about sleeping in the guest room those nights. It’s so much harder, and it’s already very hard being apart from you.”

“I was just mad,” Morgan said quietly. At her alive-self for having driven herself to the kind of place where she could have lost so much in the first place. Sure Mike and Constance and Remmy pulled the strings, but if she had just been different too, maybe. And then her dead-self for being reckless and angry and screwy enough to damage what she touched without the help of a curse. At Kaden for being sorry for himself and talking about her like there was no coming back. “I didn’t want them to still be there waiting for me anymore. Not those things. But I won’t do it again.” Even she knew that was the saddest, most desperate part of her night. She wasn’t sure how much she had changed her mind about any of those people she was angry with, but she believed in the sadness in Deirdre’s voice. She believed in not making this any worse for them if she could help it.  “Okay?” She asked. “I won’t. And I get it, about being only a little separate. I’ll miss you more, if you ever have to again, but I get it. It’s okay. It’s all okay, babe. Especially the part where we get a cat.”

Deirdre smiled gently, “yeah?” She didn’t imagine flipping through pictures of cats to be invigorating, but somehow doing it together made it all the more exciting. “I’d like to get one, actually. And I’d like that...finding one together.” This felt like some kind of those human-defined relationship milestones, the same way that moving in had, but she didn’t ask Morgan if it was too soon to be thinking of a cat--she figured that Morgan would tell her if it was. “So let’s do that in the morning then…” She trailed off, moving their bodies finally to the bed, settling them in together as they had countless times before. It was strange to think of how much these mundane acts excited her, or how she’d have to live with the fear of death like some human might--but everything, even the horrors, were made better, easier, with Morgan beside her. 

[faolanmeadowes]

there we will go // self-para.

Summer of 1800. Meallán Cottage, Ireland. tw: implications of suicide

He watches the sky in the days leading up to their anniversary, half-afraid it will turn into a winter storm in the middle of summer. Irrational, but this tiny fear lives within him. He’s unsure if he can handle the sight of their home obscured in a spattering of snow without feeling his heart squeeze in his chest, but he shrugs it off. He cannot be afraid when he’s already lived through his greatest fears, there’s no room left in him for it.

His steps drag. He knows this route, he recognizes the trees on either side of him and the shadows they cast over the path. There’s a carving in one of the trees, a permanent mark in a slowly changing world. Touching the grooves of his son’s name is painful to the point of sickness, heart squeezing at the uneven loops of the letter B, the shakiness of the R and the A as he tried to curve the knife, and the jagged lines of the N. Bran, it says, and it hurts. 

Faolan tears himself away from the tree, heaving for air. It’s been almost a decade since he stepped foot onto this land of theirs, and twenty-five years this winter since he last saw them. 

Can he bear to see the rest? He must. He must, he promised.

The carving in the tree heralds the change from forest to meadow and a cloudless, sunny day meets him as he breaks through the cover of trees. Their cottage is there with its crooked chimney and ivy-strewn walls. It almost looks like he can open the door and see them waiting, smiling, laughing. Any second now he’ll hear Bran and Deirdre’s laughter as they tell stories to the chickens. He waits, and waits some more when he realizes it’s not going to happen. 

Vines are crawling over the stone and dust coats the windows. No one has been here in some time, likely not since he last stood here, and Faolan stares at the door for several long seconds, hand hovering on the handle. But, no, he cannot go back inside. It’s no longer the ruin and mess it was twenty-five years ago, he found the strength to do that much, but the care in which he took to keep the inside preserved meant he couldn’t bear the idea of going inside and stepping in on something that is no longer his. The inside of their cottage is for them, he will not go inside until it’s time to be with them. 

He doesn’t go inside.

He stops at their graves, a finger brushing over each name, the gut-wrenching pain no less with time. No tears come, he feels as though he should have none left for this, but Faolan knows the truth. Knows the feeling will hit him as it always does, a vicious cycle of thinking he’s free from the anchor of grief only for it to snag around his ankle once more. He presses a kiss against his fingers, brushing it over the stone bearing Caoimhe’s name and two for the kids on her behalf, before making his way to the back of the property. 

A shallow creek trickles to his left, winding around the side of the cottage and into a large, overgrown pond in the back. The willow tree next to it is twisted and bent, long branches stretching out and near kissing the water’s edge, turning the pond into a tiny, secluded haven. Once, he stood beneath this tree when it was little bigger than a branch sticking out of the dirt, holding her hand and promising to love her forever, and now it dwarfs him many times over. 

Flowers grow, ripe for plucking, and he could take dozens without making a dent in the way nature has taken over this meadow. Maybe, one day, he’ll come back to find it swallowed up altogether. He hopes it does, and if it does, it’ll start with the patch of naked dirt near the back window. His eyes are involuntarily drawn to it. No more grass than it did the last time he was here, as if the ground has made a permanent mark where she died, as if nature is mourning his daughter as much as he is. 

He half hopes when nature reclaims this place, it’ll take him with it. Let him be devoured by the grass and trees and flowers, let him rest and return to them. He isn’t so afraid of dying as he was in his youth, not really, it seems an almost peaceful thing to do in this place, surrounded by the best and worst of his memories.

He takes the yellow flowers for Caoimhe, pushing the thought of everything else from his mind and settling on the edge of the water. They are cold in hands, stems wet from the recent rain, and his mind circles back to this day and this time years before, when it was her hand and his holding the stem of a flower. He remembers his hands shaking, and his heart galloping, and he recalls the certainty that their future together would be long, happy, and endless. 

“I gave you a flower like this one once. Do you remember what I said?” he asks. “‘Thank you for saving me, but you could be quicker about it, I thought I might--” He chokes, clearing the lump from his throat with no success. “‘I might really die there’ and you… The look you gave me.” 

Once, he would laugh, remembering the look on her face. “You saved me. I saved you. That’s what we did.” Until-- until-- No, he must not. He must finish this. 

Faolan clears his throat again, shifting forward, placing a flower on the water for a moment. “You are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone…” he murmurs to the air, watching the flower float in the water. “I will always hold you…” He repeats their vows, choking and stopping after each aching word. The flower sinks like a stone on water. 

Battle for composure long lost, he feels the weight of the world returning, tears falling without pause. “I will never leave you…” His eyes are blurry, and the tree casts a shadow over the water so like a person that his heart stutters. If someone is there, he isn’t afraid of them. He has no room left in him for fear, but a desperate hope clings, as if he might see her standing there. His fingers meet empty air. No one is there, he knows, even as he imagines her hand on his shoulder, her fingers on his cheek, her lips on his own. 

[danetobelieve]

Car Shellsman || Alain and Winston

Despite a giant crustacean attacking their car and forcing Winston to run away with a weirdo who would then go onto buy them lunch, Winston managed to get their car to Babineaux Garage. They had to admit that they were starting to wonder whether mechanics were bound by the laws of an automotive equivalent of patient and doctor confidentiality. There was a giant rent down the side of their car, starting on the left side of the bonnet and taking an immediate sharp left down it’s side, ending in the wheel arch. Not to mention the already pre-existing problems with the car. Gently, carefully, they wheeled their vehicle into the garage and came to a neat stop. Stepping out of the vehicle, they headed towards the ‘office’ section of the garage. “Hey,” they said adjusting their thick lenses as they spotted a somewhat dishevelled mechanic that they thought they might’ve spoken to online, “we spoke online, I was the guy with the rattling car… that chugged out a load of smoke.” They really hoped that this mechanic didn’t notice the giant sheet of torn car bonnet.

Alain was doing bookkeeping when he heard what he suspected was the rattling car from that guy online. Yeah, that did not sound good at all, like someone shaking a box of rocks underneath it. The exhaust system, probably. He did not look up from his computer screen, however, his eyes narrowing at what the software was telling him to do. He hated this goddamn thing. Things would have been a lot easier had it been done on paper. “Fait chier,” he mumbled under his breath, spinning in his chair to get a look at his invoices. Scratching the back of his head, he glanced up at a young looking person, happy to get a break from the paperwork. “Alright, let’s have a look,” standing up from his chair, he headed in the garage. The first thing he noticed was the giant sheet of torn car bonnet. What the fuck. A loose catalytic converter, ok, that was normal. This? No. This car was a wreck. Between the car body and the converter, this would not be cheap. “You cannot drive with your hood looking like that. You’ll get arrested.” What the actual fuck.

Raising an eyebrow gently, Winston winced at the obvious sight of the hood. Swallowing somewhat awkwardly, they shrugged gently. “Uh, I don’t know what to tell you other then it wasn’t like that when I left the house, you probably wouldn’t even believe me if I did tell you what happened…” They trailed off and shuffled their feet. Their car was a touchy subject. It had never really run well, even when they got it. But then again by the time it made its way into their possession it had already been around the block thousands of times. “Normally I wouldn’t be driving this,” another lie, Winston drove everywhere they could, “but the truth is that I really need it to get to and from college, I can’t really afford to pay for a bunch of body work right now so maybe we could … I don’t know … patch it up with duct tape or something and try and make sure that it stops overheating.” They were hoping to avoid a fiery death if they possibly could but it seemed unlikely with the now trademarked bag of rocks sound that their car was making. “Can you save her?”

“Huh,” scoffing, the mechanic rubbed at the back of his neck. Of course Alain had seen cars in worse shape, but they were usually classic cars people had bought and wanted to be made brand new again. This, was a whole other situation and another kind of damage too. “Try me, you have no idea what stories I’ve heard in the past,” obviously his stories weren’t as wild as stories someone working at the ER could hear but still, people were never proud of their accidents. Alain walked around the car, running his hand on the dent on the left side. “If you’re going to be using duct tape, you’ll be the one responsible for that. I don’t want to be associated with that kind of job,” he took pride in his work, and that was simply unacceptable. Of course he was used to broke kids crashing his garage and expecting a discount because they would rather get a new pair of brand new Nikes rather than save a couple of bucks in case of such scenarios. The entitlement was terrifying. “So, just to be sure, you are completely broke, and I should save your car because…?” His hands on both hips, Alain was now chewing on his lower lip and shaking his head slowly.

“Well, the car overheated, but that isn’t that weird, it does that a couple of times a year and normally if you just leave it to cool down then it is completely fine,” Winston paused a little guilty. Cars weren’t meant to just overheat and they knew that. “Then after that I was accosted by a woman jogging who said it looked like a shit car and a shit car had had sex and given birth to this beautiful baby,” they rubbed the roof of their car affectionately, “it was at that point a giant lobster and / or crab thing turned up and assaulted my poor automotive.” They raised an eyebrow about the comment on duct tape. “Well, y’know I was joking about using duct tape but whatever you feel would be the best tool for the job, I trust your professional expertise.” They hated it when someone tried to tell them how to do their job when it came to working with computers, they were sure Alain felt the same way about cars. “Obviously I will pay whatever the work costs, but I’m a college student who works an unpaid internship and inherited this car from my elder siblings, it has a lot of sentimental value. If I can save her I want to, I’d rather not scrap her for the sake of it.”

“Did you ask her out ? She sounds lovely”, Alain commented as he squatted and had a look at the back of the car, putting on gloves before he grabbed the exhaust pipe to shake it a little bit. As he expected, that thing was loose, and that fella’ was lucky it had not fallen down on the road. “A giant lobster?” His eyebrows raised up on his forehead. This was .. interesting. Even if he did not have a habit of going after beasts, the variety of them always astonished him. At least, with vampires, you had a certain routine, the night, the solid ground. Beast hunters could easily end up several feet above the ground, or beneath the surface of water. Alain admired them but he did not envy them. His time at the ring had been very instructing and while he wouldn’t be completely clueless in front of those things, he left their care to those who had trained for them. There were enough unholy things for him to stake care of. “You don’t have to pay it all at once,” scratching his cheek, he rubbed a recent scar, one he could thank Deirdre for. “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to look for used car parts in junkyards,” he only had to make a phone call or two, maybe look online, which wouldn’t take long. “It might not be the right color, but we can change that if necessary.” Most people did not particularly enjoy having a patchwork car.  “The catalytic converter on the other end, it has to be brand new, or it’ll just go back to making sounds,” he shrugged. The kid could go for a used part for this too if he wanted.

Shaking their head, Winston shrugged. “Honestly she was way older then me … and I don’t really go for girls that are there to make fun of my car. I don’t see why it matters what I drive as long as I get from A to B.” Pausing for a moment, they gazed as the mechanic set to work. “Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it kind of stood on my car and did that to it, honestly I was worried it would rupture a fuel line or something but I guess I got off lucky because I managed not to die or anything.” Honestly they weren’t sure what they expected this guy to believe. They probably wouldn’t believe it if they heard it. But so many weird things had been happening recently and they weren’t sure what the hell was really happening to this town. Listening to Alain’s recommendations, they paused and nodded. “I can deal with that, I think it's probably best to fix the car so that it runs as best it can, but I don’t know how far away from going to the junkyard it really has left on it.” The car should’ve been scrapped years ago really, Winston knew it, they were just too cheap to let it go.

"I've heard worse stories," Alain took a step back from the car. If a gigantic beast had stood on this car then there might be more damage than what he could see here. He'd have to check that too, but that meant dismantling everything under the hood and checking each piece which would take hours of labour. Besides he had no way of really knowing whether the damage was due to the giant lobster or to the fact that this was a wreck anyways. He did not question the veracity of the story. It probably was true. "To be honest, it'll probably cost more than what the car is worth," he scratched at the back of his head. Fixing it was something he could do and he was not afraid of that ; he felt bad for that kid, and while he would fix it if they really wanted him to, they had to know that it was a waste of money they apparently did not have. "I can already fix what we said, I would count around $500 if I can find used parts for everything." And it was unlikely that they had an insurance that covered any of this either… Alain held back a sigh and motioned them to follow him back to the front office. He'd have a look online and maybe he would even have good news.

“I dread to think what worse stories there could possibly be.” Winston wasn’t even joking, with everything that was happening recently. There was no real good news here. They could probably afford to pay that, but at that point they might as well just scrap it and sell it for parts. “Damn,” Winston winced and adjusted their glasses, “look, I appreciate the offer but I don’t even think that the car is worth that much…” they sighed and pulled their glasses off. Rubbing their eyes exhaustedly Winston sighed. “Do you have like a good scrap guy that I can try and make some money off of what is left of this thing…?” Winston looked at Alain hopefully, wishing that they had a better option than this. They felt like this was something that they could do without, but for now they would just have to deal.

“Well, the giant lobster did not eat anyone alive in your story,” Alain’s smile grew wide, so wide you could not tell whether he was joking or not. Shaking his head, he took off his gloves and headed back to his computer to have a look at prices for late 90s Buicks like Winston’s. He did not expect that they could be, after all this time, still priced at over $2,000. Well, then, maybe repairing it was worth it, but they could probably get a good price from a junkyard too, and buy another used car with that money. “Change of plans. It might be worth it. I’ll do my best to keep it affordable,” turning the monitor so that Winston could have a look, he waited for them to take a decision. Even if this car wasn’t what you could call a nice car, he could see that they cared a lot about it, and Alain appreciated that. “This might take a bit longer than two weeks,” he rubbed his bearded chin. “I could let you leave with a courtesy car if your insurance covers it.”

“Would that be something that would do? Why don’t you sound like you think I’m having a nervous breakdown or something? Why is no one concerned about how weird all of this shit is?!” Pausing for a second, Winston scratched at their stubble and considered Alain’s apparent new proposition. The possibility of keeping their car intact would be good, but only if it was worth it. There would of course eventually come a point where Winston knew that they would have to just cut their losses and hope for the best. But despite that they were somewhat attached to the car. “I can cope with a bit of a wait if there is something that you can do, I’d have to check with my insurance if they cover a courtesy car but I truly doubt it. I guess if there is anything you can do then that’d be good, but if it is going to get really expensive then I’ll have to scrap her…”

"What? Eat a person whole?" His eyebrows raised with concern. Maybe he was indeed a bit too laid back about all of the things happening in his town. "Look kid," Alain almost raised a hand to pat him kindly on their shoulder, but decided against it, scratching at the back of his neck instead, "if you're new in town, you'll either get used to it or you'll end up in complete denial," this had to be the case for about 90% of the town population, he estimated. Alain was not representative of the normal White crest citizen, far from it, and this dated back to his childhood. It was probably best for Winston to not dwell on it. Maybe they would even forget it was ever real. "I'll have a look under the hood, check if there's anything damaged. I doubt you could have drived here without lights flashing red or orange on your dashboard," he observed, filling out a form for him. "I'll need your name, address, phone number and assurance papers, etc." Pointing at different spots on the form, the mechanic glanced up at Winston's face. "Don't worry, I'll email you a quotation in a couple of hours. I'm not doing anything until you respond to the mail, ok?"

“You were the one who didn’t seem that bothered about it moments ago,” Winston replied with a laugh, “not me!” They shrugged gently and sighed. “I’ve actually lived here all my life, things were always a bit weird, you know like my neighbours cat once turned up with no fur, or one time a tree moved gardens,” they scratched at the edge of their sleeve, “but I’m starting to realise that maybe I’d been in denail before, I’m not sure how I didn’t realise all of these things before.” They sighed gently and listened to Alain’s procedure for the car. It sounded as if they were going to do a good job with it and they quickly set about filling out the requisite parts of the form that Alain had given them. Writing down their name, phone number, address and the various details that would be needed, including an email address where they could be reached. “Thanks, you’re … you seem cool.” Despite the fact that the news of a giant lobster hadn’t seemed to phase them, Winston thought that they seemed to be at least halfway decent, and they had only had a brief professional interaction.

“It’s not that I’m not bothered. I’m…. blasé ? Jaded.” Alain shrugged, sitting back in his office chair and idly playing with a pen. “Oh, I’m sorry, I assumed…” he trailed off and looked away from them. Taking the form back from Winston, Alain looked at the information for a moment, holding poorly back a smile at the compliment. “That lobster, where was it by the way?” If it had attacked once, it could attack again unless they had killed it, in which case they would probably get along very nicely. "Hey it's okay. Just don't get willingly in trouble because you no longer are in denial…" Alain had witnessed it before in others. Curiosity was something Alain had also been cursed with but at least he could afford to be curious, unlike regular humans of White crest. "Don't hesitate if you see anything weird, ok? I might be able to help," an odd offer, but he wasn't taking any chances here.

“Blasé?” Winston replied somewhat bemused, “Is there something that I’m missing here? If you’re blasé about it then you’re going to have to have been aware of it for sometime so that you could have reached your jaded state… so I guess what I want to know is what your secret is.” They shrugged. “Don’t be sorry, I’m still learning about it all. I just, I didn’t realise it was so obvious until it whacked me across the head, kind of. Figure of speech y’know.” They considered it before pulling up google maps on their phone and pointing to the road they had broken down on. “Uh, it all happened over here, so I’d avoid it …” then Alain was saying that maybe they could help and Winston was once again curious, “so you could help?” they asked somewhat skeptically wondering exactly what a mechanic would be able to do in this instance, “What is it exactly that you would be able to do against a giant lobster … thing?”

“I started learning about those things before I could read,” leaning back in his chair, Alain raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Yeah, I had a weird childhood,” and that was all Alain would say about being a child in a slayer family. “I see. Well, I can’t blame you for being in denial for a while. None of this make sense,” it was against everything they taught you at school, everything your parents normally told you. Don’t follow strangers was normal advice. If you see a vampire, stab it with a pointy stick, was not normal advice. Glancing at the map on their phone, Alain rubbed at his chin wondering if he should just tell that fella about his activities. While he doubted that they were dangerous, Alain was not willing to start a fight with a protector of supernatural creatures in his own shop. He had a glance at the shredded car and sighed. No one would have gone through so much trouble to confront a hunter, right? “I don’t hunt these specifically, but I might know someone who does,” he finally replied, scratching at the back of his head.

“Woah…” Winston couldn’t really imagine what that would be like. Deliberately choosing to learn about this. That was something that they were having to do now and they already felt as if they were behind on the game. But if they had known since they were younger then maybe they would have been able to come to terms with all of this or at least know what to do. “I mean, weird sure, but at least you know what you’re doing and how to deal with all of this … y’know … stuff.” They paused for a second more and shrugged. There was only so much that they could do. “Well, if you could put me in contact with them then I’d really appreciate that, it would be nice to know that there is someone that I can call incase I get trapped by one of those things. I don’t even know what the cops or animal control would be able to do against these things.”

“Woah indeed,” raising his eyebrows, Alain started typing a couple of things on his keyboard before putting phone numbers on a post it note for later. He’d have to make a couple of phone calls to fix Winston’s car and those always took time because he didn’t particularly talking over the phone. Heh, maybe he’d ask his employee to do it for him instead. Iker probably hated it too, but that was a perk Alain had, choosing who did the things he personally disliked. “Sure, I’ll send you that by email,” now whether Kaden charged people for doing his job, he was not sure, but Alain felt like saving a life was priceless. He would never do it for money, but some people had to make a living, and he could not blame them for monetizing life. “It’s quite easy, they’ll do nothing. All you’ll get is your face on the front page of the newspapers and a headline saying it was a wild animal who did it.”