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cordeliawhohung · 2 months

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In Limbo [Chapter 13]

mafia!141 masterlist | In Limbo masterlist | general masterlist | taglist | playlist mafia!Simon Riley x fem!Reader

in limbo

cw: non-con (touching, groping, assault, attempted coercion/quid pro quo of a minor), major death, murder, blood and gore, depression, anxiety, PTSD, vomiting, passive suicidal ideation

wc: 7.5k

Suddenly, you are sixteen again.

Your fathers face is printed onto a piece of paper, and he won’t stop staring at you. It’s an old picture. Grain thick and fuzzy, distorting the features of his face. Nose running into his cheeks running into his jawline, all morphing together until it’s a blob of flesh. It’s impossible to discern the color of his eyes through the flare. Terrible. Amateur. Your father never liked when people took photos of him. This was the only good one your mother could find before his wake.

Someone soliloquizes on the podium before your fathers body. They speak into a microphone as they rattle off some meaningless eulogy that doesn’t quite reach your ears. The volume of their voice blares through the speakers, but it’s a waste. There’s not enough people in attendance for it to be of any use. A whisper would suffice. It’s only you, your mother, and a handful of blurry faces you don’t have the energy to attempt to place names to.

All you can do is sit there and look at the memorial bulletin, and your father’s face when it was still warm and full of life.

“Would you like to see him?”

Paper crinkling in your hands, you shake your head. This version of your father, the one held delicately in your hands, is the only one you want to remember. Tears blur the image where they well and fester in the corner of your eyes. It stings. Bitter needles piercing through your scaleras. You swallow down the grief and look up at your mother, inflamed eyes staring back at you, burning as they desperately attempt to hold back her own sorrow from streaking down her face. It is then, that you realize, you have to go up there with her. For her sake.

A few small steps disrupt the path to where your father lays peacefully in his casket, and each one you climb feels treacherous. Air grows thinner, gets caught in your nose and sears your throat as you try to force it through anyway.

Head propped up on a pillow, he peeks out of the casket as if playing peek-a-boo. He wears a suit, something sleek and mostly black, and it does not fit his personality. Not the rambunctious, cheeky man that raised you. He looks… old. Like he hasn’t been long for this world for quite some time. Eyes closed, hands resting upon one another — he looks as if he’s sleeping. Immobile. Peaceful.

Wrong. Contorting. Incorrect. This is not your father. Not this corpse with his scraped up fingers and tiny sutures attempting to conceal violent compound fractures. The bones aren’t straight. Can’t be set straight. There’s nothing living left to heal. And his lip. Busted. Fat and wide but not swollen — his face droops because of it. As if he’s melting. As if he’s been rotting all along. Poorly matched makeup stains the sides of his face, a waxy sheen obscuring an entry and exit wound that burrowed through his brain. A small hole by his temple. Then large portions of fractured skull gone and fixed up, erasing the violence that had been wrought upon him.

This cordolium is too thick to swallow. Too blisteringly violent to go down easy. You stare because it is all you can do. Stare and think about how those fingers had once taught you to play cat’s cradle. How those lips used to curl with mirth as he held you tightly. Now, he is ruined. Broken apart and shoved back together for a hasty goodbye. He was alive, and now he is not, and he sits here in front of you as if trying to convince you otherwise.

There is a desperate attempt in trying to remember him how he was. When he was still full of vigor with that shine in his eyes, but you can’t. It’s just him. With crooked fingers and deep lacerations and this suit he would never wear, he replaces all the versions of him you had ever grown to love. His death ruins him — ruins you — and you fear with that anguish inside of you, it’ll kill you too.

Just as you feel yourself start to fall through the floor — down into the depths your father is soon to be buried in — a hand grounds you. It’s soft. Gentle as a feather as it rests on your shoulder. You blink and you are back in that building with that corpse and with those strangers.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Truly.”

That voice speaks with a Russian lilt and it has you turning your head to be met with a stranger. You’re unsurprised; there are very few people you recognize in this place. Murky eyes look at you the way everyone else has since your father’s passing; with pity. His hand falls from your shoulder as he glances at the body. The stranger does not flinch despite the proof of violence strewn before him.

“It is hard, losing a parent,” he continues. “You will have to be stronger. Smarter. But you seem like an intelligent girl. One that knows how to stay out of trouble.”

Something buzzes at the base of your skull. An incessant insect that traverses through your brain, leaving holes in its wake. Devouring everything but the neurons that allow you to fear.

“Who are you?” It’s meant to be a gentle question. One in curiosity; a polite excuse to learn about this strange man. Instead, it bites. Still, the man does not flinch.

His full attention returns to you with a courteous smile and an outstretched hand. He does not answer your question until you take it, and his fingers are ice cold as they wrap around yours.

“Vladimir. A friend of your father.” A gentle vibration irritates his pockets as his phone goes off, and he releases your hand in favor of glancing at the screen. You watch him with a dull face as he smiles at you. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long. I hope you are able to find peace. My thoughts are with you, friend.”

This man — Vladimir — excuses himself, but you don’t respond to his farewell. You’re tired of saying goodbye. You watch him leave, phone pressed against his ear as he escapes the building and vanishes into the bitter December air.

Despite the well wishes bestowed upon you and your mother, peace doesn’t come easy for either of you. Each day is full of tears and wordless meals while your nights are plagued with bad dreams and a bed that doesn’t feel comfortable with your fathers absence in that empty home. Any attempt to soothe this throe is met with backlash. Movies offer no comfort without his aimless commentary. Delicious meals taste bland without his assistance. The walls are cold without his laughter.

You are a shell. A husk void of all the feelings that make life worth living.

Against your mother’s wishes, you return to school. She tells you to stay home. To not put too much pressure on yourself, but you rot in that place. Maggots fester in your skin the same as they do in your fathers except you waste away in the comfort of your bed — you cannot stand yourself. You cannot stand the fact that you draw breath while he does not.

Your teachers try to tell you that you are allowed to take a longer bereavement period. That all of them had come to the same conclusion of exempting your end of term exams in favor of your mental health. Their concern falls on deaf ears as you continue to participate with glassy eyes and mindless doodles in the corner of your notes. They offer you resources. Counselors and books on healing. You speak to no one and read nothing. There are whispers shared between your classmates. Careful and benign questions flitter between one another as you play with the string in your hand.

“She’s back already?”

“She looks like she hasn’t slept.”

“Don’t say that, that’s rude.”

“I heard her dad was murdered.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, really. Shot, I heard.”

“Shot?”

“You think it was the mafia?”

It’s only natural for them to be curious. You remind yourself as much during meal times when the whispering becomes so overwhelming you can hardly hear your own thoughts. Perhaps it is for the best. To have someone else do the thinking for you, lest your brain tear itself apart cell by wretched cell.

On the last day of exams, you are given a bouquet. Stunning sympathy flowers clump together with red ribbon, complete with a card signed by most of your classmates and teachers. Their handwriting is beautiful. Elegant swirling letters dance across the paper in some well meaning note, yet your eyes can’t focus on it. Just like everything else, your mind filters it out. Pushes it away.

You walk home. It’s grueling in the frigid weather, and you’ve forgotten your tights to wear underneath your skirt. Or maybe you did it on purpose. To feel something, even if it’s pain. Bare skin tightens and freezes against the breeze, and even the petals of your flowers begin to wilt midway through your travels. They shrivel and curl into one another and against your chest as if huddling for warmth. You’re killing them slowly in your own selfish way, and yet they still cling to you as if you can save them any better than you can save yourself.

The TV is on when you arrive home. Muffled voices drone through the speakers, none of which properly reaches you. Just like everything else, you’re experiencing it second hand. Through a film you can’t break through no matter how thin it seems — this veil is suffocating.

Ignoring both the sounds and the lack of oxygen, you don’t even bother to take your shoes off or announce your presence before slipping away into the kitchen. Over the weeks both you and your mother have been bombarded with floral arrangements from distant family members and friends. They’re much too lazy to offer their condolences in person. There’s bound to be a vase left over for you to resuscitate these poor withered plants in your hands.

Your mother is in the kitchen, and she is sitting. Legs wide on the floor, back slumped against the cabinet, her eyes burn a hole into the floor in front of her. It isn’t until the tips of your shoes dip into thick cruor that you fully realize the blood on the ground. It’s everywhere. Spreading along the linoleum, soaking into the crack just under the sink — she is motionless and torn to shreds in front of you. Offals press out of her stomach just underneath where her hands rest, attempting to keep herself from spilling. Now, she cools on the floor with parted lips and dried tears on her face.

“Mum?”

She does not respond. She only stares at the floor.

A hand clasps over your mouth before you’re able to process the mess in front of you. Pitiful feet squirm and thrash as you’re dragged through the room, flowers soaring through the air and blood smearing on the soles of your shoes, before you’re violently spun and shoved against the wall. You attempt to make sense of the black hair and green eyes in front of you. Of the hips that pin you against the wall while this intruder leans back to get a better look at you. Yet, when he smiles with teeth just as sharp as the knife pressed against your throat, all you can do is stand there and panic.

“Easy now,” the man warns. Each syllable washes over your nose with mint so strong it burns your eyes — like he’s trying to hide something vile behind the freshness but it isn’t quite working. “Pretty thing you are, aren’t you? Yeah… Yeah, let’s try to keep it that way. Gonna move my hand and you’re gonna keep those lips sealed, right? Not gonna give me any trouble.”

The only thing you can think to do is nod. To confirm you’re not a threat. To do anything to ward off the blade against your throat. And still, when he removes his hand you whimper. Eyes wide with terror, you look over this man and find nothing recognizable. Not his attire nor grin — not even the heavy cologne that burrows into his clothes. There is only one thing that seems remotely familiar, and that is the heavy lids over his eyes, like he’s ravenous and he’s sizing up a good meal to eat.

When he asks for your name it stumbles from your lips like it caught on your tongue on the way out, and he gives you his in return. Marco. He says it as if you are having a polite conversation; like your mother isn’t slouched against the cabinet by your feet.

“Sorry about the mess. Dear mum wasn’t very cooperative. But you seem like a smart girl, yeah? So you’re gonna stay quiet and listen to what I have to say. Nod.”

Just as ordered, you nod with a tremble, throat bobbing against the blade. Marco allows himself to drink in the sight of you. Blood stained shoes, long winter skirt, pristine coat — your mother had just ironed it for you that morning. Delicate hands working with grace to make sure you looked well and proper while off at school. It’s a sour memory, now. Those hands now cover a mortal wound she couldn’t save herself from.

“I’d like to apologize about the loss of your father. Good man, he was. Hard worker. Managed to get himself in a bit of a mess though.” A wince tears through your throat at the pressure of his hips against yours, and he finally seems to register just how close he is to you. Offering you a smile in faux reverence, he moves back only an inch before pressing the tip of his knife against your sternum. You can’t feel its blade through your layers, but you feel the dread that stains the steel. “The type of mess that got him killed. That got your mum killed. One that’ll kill you too if you don’t play your cards right.

“Now, your sweet father works — well… worked — for a very important man named Vladimir Makarov. Heard of him before?”

Vladimir. Your mind reels, images of your father’s funeral flashing before your eyes as you remember that strange man and his cold grip. Is that the Vladimir he speaks of? The same man who offered you kind condolences?

“He… he’s the one they’ve been talking about on the news,” you conclude.

Marco’s smile is accompanied by a chuckle so saccharine it turns your stomach. “Yes. Yes, very good. Smart thing, you are. Everyone knows him. Makarov. The Russian Mafia. Your father worked for him.”

Confusion rattles your bones as you shake your head, bottom lip jutting out and trembling. Marco sneers at it. At the twitching of your skin and the way you shudder against him.

“But, no… No, my dad worked-”

“Your daddy was a liar,” Marco interjects. “A fat fuckin’ liar, yeah? Sure he didn’t mean any harm by it, but daddy kept a lot of things from you. He worked for Makarov as a drug runner. Sure you know what that is, right? Makarov makes a lot of money off of that little side business of his. Lost a lot of cash for the big man the other night. Got himself killed trying to deliver a shipment. Lotta money we’re short on now. Care to venture a guess, babe? How much do you think we’re missing?”

Numbers spin in your head like gambling machines and your eyes squeeze shut. This isn’t something you want to play. Some deranged guessing game with a knife pressing into your chest and a wall against your back. You wish he would kill you already. Leave you onto the floor next to your mother where you can cool and congeal in peace. You hope you’re buried between her and your father. You’d like to be able to reach out and touch them both again.

“Roughly three hundred thousand,” Marco eventually answers once he’s had a fill of your petrified silence.

The number he names is astonishing and cruel. Your eyes open, body no longer trembling, and your mouth opens in an attempt to respond. Nothing comes out. All you can do is stare at the widening sneer growing on his lips.

“I know. Bad, isn’t it?” he humors with a crass chuckle. “Imagine how we feel, getting shorted like that. Not very good. Of course he’s too dead to pay it back, so I tried to talk to good ol’ mum. Didn’t take too kindly to me visiting. Wasn’t very keen on wanting to pay back what your family owes. But you seem smarter than that. Smart enough to know what your options are, yeah?”

Reading between the lines is easy when he’s carving the message into your throat. It’s your turn to pay. Your turn to right your father’s sin, and if you don’t? Linoleum can only hold so much blood.

Maybe you wouldn’t mind joining your mother on the floor. You’d be too dead to care. At least this incessant void that continues to swallow you whole would be sated. There would be nothing left for it to feed off of. But then you look at Marco. Verdant eyes bore into you with more than just curiosity. More than a sick sense of power. There are things worse than death. A filthy wanton desire taints his lips as he wets them, and for a moment the stale viscera mixes with the mint on his breath and you think you’re going to be sick.

“I… I don’t have that money. I-I’m still in school, I’ve…” Whatever you’re trying to say, it won’t come out right. It catches on your teeth, in the tight confines of your throat, and chokes you.

“Quiet now,” Marco coos. Convinced that you’re not going to run, he drops the knife from your chest but the weight is still there. “I’m not a monster. Of course it’ll take time. We’ll work out a payment plan. Wait until you’ve got yourself a job, something proper without worrying about school. I’ll make things nice and easy for you. Always better that way, right? We have a deal then?”

Before his words properly register, you’re already nodding your head. Desperate to get him off your back. Doing anything to fawn and appease this terror as he stares you down, lips peeling in a gibe.

“Good. Good… wanna make another deal?” Before he continues he slips his hand into his pocket, stowing away that wicked blade after flicking it shut. With both hands free, he’s able to move easier. A warm hand settles on your waist and it burns through your uniform all the way to your skin, layers turning into ash underneath his fingertips. You don’t fully register what he’s doing until his other hand brushes against your cheek — your blood runs colder than your mothers. “I’ll knock the price down by a quarter if you let me fuck you.”

This is your fault. You should have seen this coming. From the very moment your back was against the wall and Marco had you pinned, this was his idea all along. And instead of fighting, you froze. Let him close in on you until you were caged. Leashed. Attached to him by a string of infinity that you can’t seem to break through. He feels it, and you feel it too. That lure. That connection that allows him to take and take.

A crucible ignites in your stomach as the hand on your waist ventures lower, the thick fabric of your skirt bunching as he moves it to the side. Your legs attempt to knock together, to shut him out before he even enters but he’s quicker. Faster. Stronger. His knee darts between them, and you try not to cry when he chuckles. This is his bread and butter. His favorite meal and the only sustenance he desires.

“I’d be gentle, of course. Like I said, I’m no monster. Could show me your room. Bet your bed’s plenty soft. Like you, huh? Pretty, soft thing, aren’t you?” Greedy fingers sear the insides of your thighs as he travels up and up… the tears begin to fall when his fingers reach your underwear. You squirm, shoulders fidgeting and hands trembling as the foreign feeling taints you. “I’d knock it down by half if you’re a virgin.”

You want to close your eyes. To pretend it’s not happening until it’s over. You don’t. You look anywhere but him as the tears mark your cheeks, and you swear they’ll create canyons in your face if they continue at this pace. Cutting deep until the flesh erodes away and there’s nothing but bone left. So you look away. You look at your mother. Her crumpled form hasn’t moved. She’s just the way she has been. The way you found her. Forever frozen in her last moment — with her final breaths — hands attempting to stitch together something she can’t.

She still stares at the floor. At the linoleum that glistens with her blood. And they’re dead. Her eyes are empty — her eyes are dead, and she is dead, and you are glad. You are glad, because you don’t think you could survive her witnessing what’s about to happen to you.

“Just say the word,” Marco eggs. He’s luring you in, fingers pressing harder, and it aches. You should be apoplectic. Should rage against him, but you don’t.

Wavering hands slither between your body and Marco’s, palms flat against his chest as you attempt to melt into the wall behind you. Amused, he cocks his head. Avaricious eyes rake over your face, drinking in the sight of your tears like he wishes he could grab a taste for himself. When his body jolts, you fear he almost does.

“I’ll pay the full amount,” you mutter. You can’t look at him when you speak. You can hardly even get the words out as is. “All of it. I’ll do it.”

He huffs in a patronizing scoff that has his breath fanning across your face again. Menthol burns your eyes and evaporates the tears on your skin. You wish you would evaporate with it.

“I’ll pay it, just… please stop…”

There is a fleeting moment where you don’t think he will. You’re convinced he’ll continue to take, to ravage you on the bloodstained ground next to the corpse of your mother, but he relents. Hand sliding away from your thighs, your skirt covers yourself as he releases you. Without his weight pinning you like a specimen to an examination board, your legs give out, knees bending into jello as your back slides down the wall. He chuckles, and it is purely virulent.

“Alright, alright,” he sighs. “Other half of the deal is still on, then. We’ll make arrangements at a later date. Best you stay in town, babe. Would hate to have to track you down somewhere else.” Marco pauses, filth stained hands shoving into his pockets as he glances around the mess he’s made of both you and your mother. “Call the police. You’ll need help cleaning up. Tell them you came home and found her like this, but don’t tell them about me. About anything else. I’ll know if you do. Makarov’s got eyes and ears everywhere.”

Vision tunneling, you nod. It’s the only thing you can think of doing as you stare at the stain on the floor. Part of you wonders if it would have been better to deny him. To let him sink his blade into you so you can cry pitiful squeals as you come to some unkind demise. You wonder if you were ever really given a choice. If you said no, would he have even bothered to kill you? Would he have taken you to your room, undressed you, forced himself on you until he had his fill? Would he ever have his fill, or would he just continue to take, and take, and take, and —

“Hey.” His shoes come into focus as he stands in front of you, and he gently kicks the side of your leg, prompting you to look up at him. He’s amused. You’re nothing more than meat to him. “That other offer is still on the table. Just in case you find yourself changing your mind. I’ll be seeing you later, babe.”

The door slams behind Marco as he leaves you. Crumbled flowers lay on the ground, feeding off of the blood as they rest next to your mother. You want nothing more than to crawl into her lap as if you were a child again. Aren’t you still a child? Sixteen and in school, uniform and all — you feel like an adult shoved into a child’s body. Or a child shoved into an adult’s. You’re fractured. Spiraling and sparkling like kaleidoscope fractals to be gawked at with wet lips and greedy tongue; you are in between a girl and a woman.

In your prime state, you are now a meal, and he is everything more.

It isn’t long before flashing blue lights smother your neighborhood like some village smothered under azure waves. The officers arrive before the ambulance does, and they find you curled up and shivering on the front steps of your home. The scent of decaying iron had become too much to bear. Trembling fingers clutch your phone as you stare at the pavement. Unlike the kitchen floor, it’s pristine and clean, void of all blood and gore, yet you still see it. It haunts you. Scarred deep into your retinas until all you see is red.

When a new pair of shoes invades your vision, you’re certain it’s Marco again. Already come to collect your dues and more. This new figure is kinder. There is not a single shred of the violence you had been subjugated to before as they kneel in front of you, hand on one knee. They do not seem to care about their pristine pants as old dirt stains the uniform, nor do they grunt at the joints that pop and crack throughout their legs.

“Hey, kiddo.” He’s a man. Voice amicable and soft, it coaxes you into glancing up to look him in the eyes. You squint, blue lights diffusing around the curves of his hat, and you see him smiling. You wonder how he can smile when there’s a corpse in the house behind you. “Come on. Why don’t we go somewhere to warm up?”

For the next few hours, you are a broken record. Retelling your falsified story to investigators; reliving every gruesome detail except for the one that scares you most. It doesn’t feel good to lie. You hate lying. It makes you swelter, sweat beading along the back of your neck as if you’re cooking in an oven under their gaze. If they see your deceit, they don’t say anything, and so you keep repeating what you were instructed to. You walked home. You found her body. You called the cops.

You walked home. You found her body. You called the cops.

Somehow, after it’s evident that the fringes of your family died with your mother, you end up in the care of the same officer who cajoled you from the stairs of your home. You don’t argue with it. It’s certainly better than sleeping on the streets for the night. It’s quiet in his car — nothing but the hum of the engine and grind of the weathered road beneath the tires — but he breaks it to tell you about his daughter. She’s older than you, already moved out and engaged. It’s small talk. Something to keep your mind off of everything. You appreciate it until he shares that you remind him of her; you nearly apologize for it — that he might have a daughter like you.

His wife calls him Chief when he brings you inside their home, but she freezes at the sight of you. Puzzled at your presence, she brushes it off quickly before welcoming you, too as if you’re old friends. You’re brought to a room that looks like a spare with plain sheets and walls, but you can tell it’s lived in. They already have spare clothes and toiletries on hand, and they’re left at the foot of the bed for you. It isn’t until you lay down that you realize they’re used to fosters. Vagabond, wayward children with nowhere else to go.

You don’t sleep that night, even though you desperately want to. Anything to not have to be conscious through this new, miserable existence. Instead, you rot in that bed with your soiled body, still marked from Marco’s fingerprints, and you want nothing more than to burn them away. You think you’d have to burn yourself alive with it. Immolate yourself as an offering to whatever sick god decided you deserved this fate. As long as the memory lives on, so does the crime, and so does your shame.

Shame for being alive. Shame for enduring what you had to. Shame for surviving it.

Come morning, you slip into the bathroom to try and clean yourself up properly. To wash your hair and face and forget the blood that stains the soles of your feet. Chief and his wife provide everything, and don’t skimp on it either. When you exit your shower, your skin has never felt softer, and for a simple, fleeting moment you’re convinced you might be able to sleep despite the sun’s position.

Everything falls apart when you go to brush your teeth.

Mint floods your mouth, smothering your tongue with its cooling burn, and it hardly begins to foam before you’re freezing. Your stomach recoils; twists and thrashes at the flavor and you try to will the nausea away, but you can’t. Because underneath the menthol and frigid bite, there is your mother. There is your mother, and her offals, and her dead, glossy gaze, and there is Marco — and there is you; too weak to do anything.

Your toothbrush clatters to the floor just as your knees do. Torso curved, stomach constricting, you hardly make it to the toilet before you throw up. It’s vile. Bitter bile coating your tongue, washing away the aftertaste of the horror with acid. You pray it torches your senses. Renders them completely useless so that you’ll never have to think about that man or that kitchen or the mess ever again.

“You alright in there, sweet pea?” The question comes with a gentle knock and a fair amount of concern from Chief’s wife. Feet shuffle just underneath the door in your periphery, and you try to quiet yourself.

You spit the last remains of vomit out of your mouth. “I’m alright.”

Christmas passes by in a blur you can’t remember. There are vague conversations that stick, but nothing of value. Just muffled voices to be added to the soupy mess of your brain. Disconnected. Disjointed. Bereaved, you spend your days wandering this strange home like a ghost as you try to plot out the rest of your seemingly decreasing lifespan. Marco’s threats still ring fresh in your mind. As do his hands on your skin. Surprisingly, it’s a very simple life. Work, pay, repeat. Pray Marco doesn’t hurt you. Repeat. Try to forget. Repeat.

Repeat.

What you don’t account for are the nightmares. The lack of sleep. The way you can still so clearly smell everything, feel everything. Breath against your cheek. Hand between your thighs. Fear boiling your blood. Mint mixing with gore and death. Something clean attempting to conceal something rotten. It follows you. Clings to you. Burrows into your skin. No, it’s deeper than that — it’s not some superficial wound. It slices through thick muscle and sinew, drills deep into bone and into the soft tissue of your head. Frying synapses until all you can think about is the despondent ache that pulses in place of your heart.

Unfortunately, Chief can sniff out death better than a cadaver dog, and you’re smothered in the scent.

“Now, you’re not in trouble,” he says, but his voice carries a sense of authority that nearly has you trembling as you sit on the couch. He stands in front of you with his arms crossed over his chest as you stare at the photo in your hand. “I just need you to tell me the truth this time.”

It’s Marco. A grainy, CCTV image of him, but you don’t think you’d be able to forget his face even if you tried. You see him with his hands shoved in his pockets just outside your house. Your real house. The one your mother still haunts. You swallow thickly as the picture stares through you — you want to look away but it won’t allow it.

“Who is that man?” Chief asks.

You shake your head. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t fight and call out your obvious lie. Instead, he kneels just like he did when he first found you on those icy steps. Soft eyes try to peer into yours, but you can’t stop staring at Marco. Not even the fuzz can obscure the smirk on his face, and you feel your stomach churn at the sight.

“I know this isn’t easy,” he says, voice soft yet still carrying the authority of an officer. “We’ve seen the video. Watched this man walk into your home. Watched you enter long before he left. It’s not easy facing men like that, someone terrible enough to take a life so flippantly. I’m sure he said a lot of things. Made a lot of threats trying to get you to keep quiet. I promise, whatever he told you isn’t going to happen. Not while I’m around.”

His confidence is almost laughable, and you would laugh if you weren’t terrified. Marco’s words echo in your head the same way they have for the last two weeks. Makarov has eyes and ears everywhere. Are they listening now? Are they testing you? Trying to see how easily you’ll crumble if given a way out? If tempted with even the mere thought of escaping this life so viciously forced upon you?

“I can’t,” you stutter out. It’s weak. Poignant and miserable, especially when accompanied by the tears that mark your cheeks. You cry so often these days you think the well will never run dry. “I can’t, he’ll kill me.”

“What did I tell you? That’s not going to happen while I’m around,” Chief assures. “Is he part of any syndicate? Is he on his own? I just need a little bit of information — a name, anything you have — and I can put him away for good. Please. Let me help you.”

A part of you believes him. There’s a quiet flicker of hope that has you praying he’s right. Perhaps most of what Marco said was an empty threat. Something to get you to be complacent and easy to abuse. Aren’t you, after all, still a child? Gullible and pathetic? The conflict roars in your chest; manifests as shaky hands and a chest that cracks with every beat of your heart.

“I…” This is going to kill you to say. It’s not easy being brave — it’s nothing but asperity. “His name is Marco. He works for a man named Vladimir Makarov and he… he…”

Everything wants to spill out. The blood, tears, and bile — the hands slipping underneath your skirt and the dead eyes that watch your defilement. It’s too much to hold by yourself. You don’t know what to do with it besides let it fester and metastasize inside of you. When you look up at Chief and see the look in his eyes, you can tell he already knows. That he’s known for a long while. He could see the cracks through your skin like dry desert clay long before you ever showed them.

He hugs you when you begin to cry, and it feels like your father is holding you. It’s the first fraction of comfort you’ve received since either of your parents died, and you’re unable to hold back the sorrow. You are a leaking faucet. Something that has no choice but to make a mess, and still he holds you through it all.

When your crying quells enough that it no longer racks your body, Chief asks you if you’ll go to the station with him to give an official statement. He promises that it won’t go public, that it will stay classified until everyone who could ever want to hurt you is rotting behind bars. Still sniffling back snot, you agree.

This might be the only chance you have to avenge your parents — to avenge the girl Marco ravaged and left to decay in that house.

New Year's Eve leaves all of London terribly crowded. Jobs close up shop early, public transportation is packed, pedestrians swarm walking paths like schools of fish; all of it leaves you and Chief in tightly knit traffic. Each stoplight you run into seems to last an eternity, and it only aggravates the already untamable anxiety that dwells in the pit of your stomach. A time bomb ticks away somewhere just out of your reach, forever slipping through your fingers, and it only gets louder as you weave throughout the city.

Halfway through the drive, Chief calls someone. His tone is clandestine, hushed and soft as if you’re in some other room and not in the passenger's seat next to him. Only a few of his words cut through the tempest in your mind. He mentions your name. The homicide case involving your parents. Marco and Makarov. The streets you’re passing on the way to the station. Lighthearted complaints about the traffic. His voice shakes when he laughs. You think he might be scared.

There is a moment in time when everything shifts. The air becomes thicker. Your body feels lighter after your confession, yet, there’s a trepidation that hangs so tightly around your neck you’re certain you’ll choke. But you’ve been choking all along, haven’t you? Marco’s had a hold of his end of the rope this whole time, slowly pulling and pulling as the noose constricts around your throat like a viper.

You suck in a breath of air as best as you can, eyes wandering over to Chief. He’s still on the phone, but you can’t understand what he’s saying. His mouth moves, jaw bobbing with his words, but it’s nonsense. Silence. Gibberish through static. When you exhale, you look at the steering wheel. One hand guides the car. Firm fingers keep it straight as he drives through the intersection.

When you blink, those fingers suddenly look like your father’s — crooked and wrong.

Pop!

Your vision is plunged into darkness as gunshot-like bangs deafen you. Muscles along your spine tense and harden as your body is jerked around, seat belt digging into your chest and hips as you’re helplessly tossed — a ragdoll in the hands of a merciless child. Something hits the side of your head, and your ears scream with a high pitched squeal by the time the movement ceases. Your eyes are open, but you can’t see anything. It’s blotchy. Underdeveloped images that fade in and out of existence. Sparkling glass. A white airbag. Blood on your fingertips.

Something shakes you. Prods you to look elsewhere. Your senses move slower than your body does. You’ve turned your head but your eyes don’t catch up until moments later. Chief looks at you, shouts something that makes your ears hurt, and yet you still can’t hear him. His brows furrow as his hand reaches for the side of your head, and when he retracts it, his fingers are red.

Everything begins to stitch itself together as you glance around. Crystalline shards of glass litter your lap, small pieces of it embedding themselves into your arms where beads of blood poke through your jumper. Frigid air hits your face through the broken window, and when you look to your left, you notice the door is bent. Metal morphing inwards as if to crush you in its maw.

A thick veil lifts from your body, but it does so agonizingly slow. Pain rages inside your skull as more blood trickles down the side of your face, and you’re finally able to make out the words Chief says, though he sounds like he’s underwater.

“We’ll get out of this kiddo, just try to stay still. Of course the tossers had to hit your side,” he grumbles.

As you turn your attention to him — vision still lagging behind your movements — you notice someone standing by his door. Your brain tells you it’s the driver of the other car, the one that hit you. He’s coming to check on you. To right his wrong. But your gut screams something tremulous.

When the door opens and you see the flash of a knife, you know there’s nothing you can do but sit there and watch. No scream leaves your lips as the blade sinks into Chief’s stomach. The assailant does it so easily. A practiced motion. One executed with too much confidence. There’s no sound that accompanies it. No clink of metal or sickening smack. There is only silence.

Ichor flows freely from the wound as the knife is yanked free, and Chief paws helplessly at it with a gasp. A begging plea for it all to stop leaves your lips, but this man with his dull eyes says nothing as he retrieves the cell phone lying on the floor of the car. He begins to pick it apart, hardware and internals ripped open just like the dying man next to you, parts being removed and shoved into pockets.

“Maybe I was wrong about you.”

The repugnant voice of Vladimir Makarov drowns out the ringing in your ears as he leans through your broken window. Your head only snaps to look at him when he presses against the wound on your head, and he grins at your surprise. He stares at the blood marking his fingers like it’s a trophy, and you want to scream but your brain refuses to relay the message.

“You’re not as smart as I thought you were, after all. Not witty enough to keep out of trouble,” he chastises with a titter. “Let this be a lesson to you. I don’t like teaching the same thing twice.”

More slurred nonsense leaves your lips as Makarov leans away from the window, attention turning to the man ravaging Chief’s phone. He nods to himself, tossing the phone back onto the floor before looking to his superior. The man dying before him is nothing more than collateral.

“Come, Andrei. We’ll have guests soon,” Makarov orders.

They fade into the mess of the commotion around you. Melting away like ghosts you can’t seem to catch nor escape. Dark figures joining the void. You’re always one step behind. Just another piece in a game you don’t know how to play.

“Chief,” you choke out. Your voice is raw and tight, vocal cords twisting and threatening to snap. “I-I don’t know what to do, please help me, what do I-”

He’s dead by the time you’re able to turn your attention back to him. Hazy eyes stare through the cracked windshield as stained hands rest over his stomach. It is the same thing all over again. A vicious cycle that spins around you. You’re at the epicenter. Approaching the event horizon that will soon rip you to shreds. For now, it lets you live, but it’s impossible to forget the gravity slowly dragging you in.

Just like you did with your mother, you sit and cry as the body next to you begins to cool. Each sob pierces through you, electrifying every nerve until you’re rendered nothing but a thrashing mess. Your arms flail, glass sent flying as you attempt to free yourself from your seat belt. Other people have approached the wreck, but their voices and warnings to stay calm do nothing to soothe you. They don’t understand. No one understands. The only person who even could is lying dead next to you.

Each moment that passes is a painful reminder of what you wrought upon yourself. Of the blood that stains your hands. You should have known better than to even attempt to harbor some useless meliorism. As if you could outrun voracious greed. No. There is only one way out of this game — this hell — this limbo you’ve trapped yourself in — and it involves death. It has to be yours. It will be yours, someday.

Until that day, you’ll continue to rot with the corpses that fall due to your negligence and stupidity. There’s no use in fighting. You’ll only ever be clean from this sin when the mortician washes you postmortem to lay you in your casket.

#simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #mafia!ghost #mafia!141 #f!reader #in limbo

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adverbally · 2 months

Text

Conversations with Dead People

Written for the @steddieangstyaugust prompt “Ghosts” | wc: 1,159 | rated: T | cw: past major character death, brief passive suicidal ideation | tags: grief, not a fix-it, Eddie is Dead | title from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode that inspired this fic (season 7, episode 7)

This takes place in an AU where Steve and Eddie have been together since shortly after the events of season 3. The events of season 4 happen as they do in canon.

———

He’s not really a ghost, Eleven had explained. It’s more like residual psychic energy that Eddie left behind when he died. An echo, lingering, a telepathic reverberation of his soul or brain waves or whatever made him Eddie. Him, but not. It’s a distinction that Steve can’t seem to make, not when he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of his living room in front of El, waiting for her to make contact.

“Eddie?” Steve asks tentatively. “Are you there?”

El is quiet behind her blindfold for a moment. “He says, ‘Hey, Stevie.’”

He doesn’t know what he was expecting but shock forces a laugh out of him, too loud and a little wet. “Hey, Eds.” He hasn’t said those words in months but it still feels natural, like a reflex. “I miss you.”

“He misses you too. He sounds sad but he’s smiling,” El reports matter of factly.

“You can see him?” Somehow this might be the thing that breaks Steve, the longing and the fear of seeing him again twisting in his gut. “Is he– does he look–”

“He looks normal. Not hurt. But he says you look like shit.”

Eddie can see him, Eddie is okay, Eddie is trying to joke around to make him feel better, Eddie is so close but out of reach and… Steve’s face crumples.

He can’t do this. Why is he doing this? Hope and despair are warring in a sticky lump in his throat, choking him until he can’t speak. He’s wasting his chance to talk to Eddie again. He doesn’t want to talk to him, he wants to feel him, cold hands and strong arms and sharp teeth and soft lips. He wants him back. He wants to be with him.

“‘Don’t cry, baby.’” The words are soft and clunky coming from El’s mouth but Steve knows exactly how Eddie must sound on the other side.

The sob he was suppressing rips its way out of him. “I miss you,” he says again, stupidly, but he can’t think of anything else. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes like they can stem the flood of tears now that they have begun. “I miss you so much.”

The static on the radio is the only response for long seconds before El says, “He’s crying now. He says he’s sorry. Not sorry he did it but sorry it turned out like this.”

Steve shakes his head. Any real anger he felt toward Eddie had been short lived, but the reminder stings. “You had to be a hero, huh?”

“‘It was worth it to keep you safe.’”

He tries not to think too hard about how much he wishes he could’ve switched places with Eddie. Eddie wouldn’t have let him, of course, stubborn as he is. Was. Is? Steve clears his throat before asking, “Are you… okay?”

It’s a stupid question. How can Eddie be okay? What could Steve do about it anyway? Thankfully Eddie seems to understand what he was trying to ask.

“‘I’m still dead, sweetheart,’” Eddie-El says, almost apologetically. “‘But I’m okay. I’m not in pain, I’m safe. It’s not like being in the Upside Down. It’s peaceful.’”

“Okay. That’s good,” Steve says, almost to himself.

El tilts her head like she’s listening. “He says he watches out for you.”

God, what must Eddie have seen over the past three months? How many nights had Steve sobbed himself to sleep, clutching Eddie’s pillow and trying to memorize its fading scent? How often had Steve put on a brave face to comfort Dustin and reassure him that Eddie’s death wasn’t his fault? How many times had Steve gone to visit Wayne, both of them sitting at the kitchen table while they cried into their cups of coffee and silently mourned the way that the trailer seemed so damn empty without Eddie there to fill it?

“‘Are you okay?’” El asks on Eddie’s behalf.

“We’re just trying to keep it together. It’s…” Steve wipes his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie. It was Eddie’s hoodie, actually, but Steve kept stealing it. It’s soft and it smells good! You’re never getting it back! he had laughed. Now it smells more like Steve than Eddie and he couldn’t give it back even if he wanted to. “It’s really fucking hard without you.”

“‘You’re always looking out for everyone else. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself?’” The inflection of it sounds like goodbye, like all those mornings of Eddie gearing up to head back to the trailer before Wayne noticed, like Steve begging for just one more kiss before Eddie left.

But there’s something final in it this time that makes panic surge in Steve’s chest.

“Nonono, don’t go, you can’t– you just got here, you can’t just leave,” he babbles, wishing Eddie had a physical presence he could hold on to. The logical part of Steve’s mind knew that this was only temporary, that any echo will eventually fade, but he hadn’t realized it would be so soon.

“‘I wish I could stay.’” El sounds so sad when she speaks for him.

Steve presses his hands to his mouth, tries to hold in the terrible sound of his grief until Eddie isn’t there to hear it anymore. He takes a deep breath and tries to keep his voice level despite the tears streaming down his face. “Will I see you again?”

“‘Hopefully not for a long, long time.’”

He thinks of the past three months, thinks of going through that three more times to make a year, then all of that over and over for as many years as he has left… It sounds like pure torture.

“‘Promise me,’” Eddie-El insists.

“I promise.” Steve’s voice breaks, but he tries to crack a smile when he remembers Eddie can see him. “Stay out of trouble?”

Even before El says, “He laughed at that,” Steve is picturing Eddie’s head tossed back with the force of his guffaw, his dark eyes glimmering with amusement. It settles something in him.

“I love you,” Steve says, snotty and shaky but as solemn as a wedding vow.

The radio stutters then, sounding like it’s flipping through frequencies on its own. When the jumble of static and indistinct speech stops, Steve hears Eddie’s voice, loud and clear, for the first time since March.

“I love you, Steve Harrington,” he announces. Soft and warm like spending a lazy morning in bed. Bright and smiley like adoring someone in a way that can’t be hidden. Exhilarated and awed like collapsing together in a sweaty, spent heap. Bittersweet like a kiss goodnight, like a little white lie, like a promise that has to be broken.

Steve feels that voice surrounding him, crashing over and through him. He shuts his eyes and hugs himself, tries to hold himself together, until the radio shuts itself off.

Then, in the echoing silence of his living room, Steve lets himself fall to pieces.

#steddieangstyaugust #steddie #steddie fic #steve x eddie #steve/eddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #ghosts #mine #please suspend your disbelief for the psychic mumbo jumbo #i cried at work while writing this

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