#i mooset tell you something

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

I Moose-t Tell You Something || Morgan and Kaden

LOCATION: Moose Caboose PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY:  Morgan tries to be honest with Kaden. They are swiftly punished by the great Mime-Moose.

Exhausted didn’t even begin to cover how Kaden felt after this week. Hell, after this month. He was pretty sure this outing with Morgan wasn’t going to be nice and light hearted or any sort of reprieve, despite the location. God, he was so tired. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to help the bags under his eyes. Didn’t mean he wasn’t trying as he sat there and waited for her in one of the booths. But coffee wasn’t going to fix this; the frustration he felt at everyone around him holding something back. Morgan, Regan, Blanche, Nadia, for all he knew Alain and Evelyn, too; he could feel all of them keeping something from him all while acting like they trusted him.  At least saying they did. That he was a good guy. Sure. Just not good enough. Which alright, that might be true. He could think of plenty of reasons for them not to trust him, but he still fucking hated feeling like this. Whatever this was. He’d just drown it all in coffee and nicotine. It’d be fine. He saw her walk in and waved her over. “See you found the place. Hopefully you didn’t bring any fucking mimes with you.” Looking at her, he wondered which of the two of them looked more exhausted and weary. He still didn’t know what happened but no doubt it wasn’t anything good. “How’ve you been?”

Stars, Morgan missed the variety of human food. Brains were fine, now, but it was like having tuna salad as your favorite food, and then deciding to never have anything else for the rest of your life. She found the pretense of cooking depressing, some sad form of denial that hurt more than it helped. Going out to another White Crest diner was a whole other level. But what could she do? Call Kaden over to the house and tell him, hey, wanna see the shed where I came back from the dead? And while we’re at it, guess from all the taxidermy what our girlfriends have in common? So she pulled herself into one of her cleaner sets of ‘I just died and can’t be bothered’ loungewear and drove to meet him in the afternoon. She found Kaden easily, he couldn’t have brooded harder if he was on the cover of a Batman poster, and plopped down in the seat opposite.

“I’m peachy with a side of keen,” she deadpanned. “Just like you’re walking on sunshine over there.” She was being flippant, but he really did look worse for wear. The part of Morgan that knew better, that cared for Kaden despite the inconvenience, felt guilty over it. She sighed and asked, “You uh, wanna vent about anything first?” I have literally all the time in the world, she silently added.

“Oh yeah. It’s been a wonderful week. Full of mimes and splendor.” Kaden went to take another sip of his coffee only to realize it was already gone. Putain. He ran his hand through his hair instead. Did he have anything to vent? Shit, he had a mountain of things to vent. He could be here all day and maybe the next if he started on all of that. That wasn’t why he was here, though. Still, might as well dump some of it. “Did I mention I got attacked by a mime that looked just like me? Twice. That was fun.” His foot ached at the thought. Thank god for hunter healing but he wasn’t about to go running again any time soon. “Regan ran away from me in the middle of dinner because the ghost of my mother decided to show up and say  ‘boo.’ More or less.” It felt like he was being crushed under the weight of this fucking town. He wasn’t aware he could feel this much stress at one time before he moved here. He’d dealt with a lot but nothing like this. Maybe it was that whole caring bullshit. Is this what it did to you? This? God, there really was a reason he was avoiding it all this time. “Enough about me. You wanted to tell me something.”

“Oh, shit.” Was all Morgan could say at first. Maybe she should have postponed this meeting for a better day, one where there was enough of her outside of the pit to give Kaden some comfort. A pat on the shoulder or something kind and smart about how to take these things in stride. She knew all about breaking under the weight of too much suffering. “That’s...a lot, bud. And I…” Shit, this had all been a terrible idea. But what else could she do? She was already here. “I don’t have anything to make it better. Don’t you, um…” She hesitated. He was a hunter, right? Was he just too stressed to feel the dead on her? “Are your spidey senses going off by any chance?” Or maybe that was the wrong tack to start with. “Just, you know, curious. But anyway, you didn’t fuck up the bowl because it’s just a bowl. I wanted to make you fess up to your feelings out loud. Well, I wanted to talk you out of giving Vera your money too. But also the first thing. I thought it would help you. Harmlessly.”

It was odd, she wasn’t picking at his emotions like normal. Maybe she was just giving him some breathing room before digging in. Her first question threw him for a loop and Kaden’s brow furrowed. “Uh, no.” Why was she asking about his hunter senses? Did… did she get bitten by a werewolf? Was that what she was afraid to tell him? He paused and tried to pay closer attention to those senses, see if he got that feeling, the chill down his spine. No. No sixth sense. “Are they supposed to?” Strange she’d ask. He looked down into mug, watching the few grinds left swish around and was about to start concentrating on what he could hear, see if he was missing something, when she mentioned the fucking bowl. “Wait, what?” His head shot up to meet her eyes. “You-- It didn’t--? It wasn’t--?” His mouth pulled into a thin line and his eyes narrowed at her. “Great. Thanks for that. I-- I made Regan think--” He could get up and leave right now. Just leave some cash on the table and book it. He let out a strained sigh and stayed seated instead. “Why would you want me to do that, anyway? Fucking with me is one thing but you fucked with Regan, too.” He wanted to take the salt shaker and chuck it across the room. He settled for gripping the mug to the point it made his knuckles white instead. He felt like such an idiot for buying into that shit. And even worse for giving Regan false hope like that.

“Yeah, well, Regan wouldn’t listen to the actual truth, so a little witchy mind trick on you to get her to do the same fucking thing and actually take care of herself seemed like a fair bargain,” Morgan replied dully. “There was nothing wrong with the amulet, but you guys really wanted to think there was so I stepped in and made y’all feel better about it for a hot second. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I wasn’t very good at seeing the big picture either. I did a lot of stupid things.” She fiddled her hands in her lap, painfully aware that this was not the sort of confession Kaden really deserved. She should be explaining, somehow, that she’d been genuinely touched by his willingness, and she hadn’t expected him to listen to her in the first place, only then it was a little too late. She should explain that she did, somehow, want him to be okay. But she didn’t know where those words were. They were buried somewhere in the pit that sat at the bottom of her chest. She looked back up at him, frowning and guilty and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

Something was wrong. Kaden’s nose scrunched as his brows knit further together listening to her speak. He didn’t know Morgan all that well and she was far from happy to see him in the past, but this was off. Defensive. Sullen. Not snippy in the way she’d been in the past. It was harsher, blunter, in a way he couldn't quite place a finger on. It made it hard for him to hold on to his anger. Putain, when the fuck did worry and concern become his default fucking state of being? He felt like that's all he ever was now. Like he forgot how to turn off the switch once it flipped back on. “Look, I don’t even know what the amulet does. I didn’t think it was broken. I just wanted to help her, alright?” He tried to soften his tone some but exhaustion didn’t exactly let him. “Morgan, what the fuck is wrong? Why’d you have to tell me that in person?” It wasn’t that bad. He was still bristling a little, sure, but it was more for Regan than himself. It was a grudge he couldn’t be fucked to hold onto right now, not with whatever strange tension he felt coming off of Morgan sitting across from him. Still it felt too silly to be the sole reason she was here. In the moment of silence, he tried to listen closer, see if there was anything he could pick up but it was no use. Even at an off time with less people, the place was still too noisy for him to focus on much of anything. All he could hear was the shuffling of feet from the servers, muffled conversations, the clinking of knives and forks against plates, the little bell on the door as someone walked in. His hunter senses still didn’t go off but he got the feeling something was off all the same.

Morgan spread her arms in an impression of that shrug emoji Blanche liked to send her when she was at her wit’s end. “It’s the nice thing to do, or something, maybe. And I thought I’d get all the bad news out in one go where there’d be plenty of witnesses,” she said. “Cause the other thing is, I’m dead. Like super dead. There was this cute little pole that went through here,” she traced a circle over the spot with her finger, “And I bled out on the pavement. And then I came back. Not in the fangs way, but the brains way. Which, gotta say, has just been the worst for all kinds of reasons you probably wouldn’t think of at first.” Her voice grew heavier as she went on, no longer glib and deadpan but weighted with the pull of the death-pit inside her. She turned away from him to look out the window. Only a few days ago she’d been riding high from her Beltane night with Deirdre. She’d made dinner. She’d picked up flowers to press. And then something had given out, she couldn’t even remember what, but zoning out at the ceiling had slid suddenly into hiding in bed. Now she was here, and she couldn’t grasp why she had believed anything would turn around for her for long, curse or no curse. Morgan searched the middle distance for an answer, but found nothing. Nothing that is, except for-- “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” She whirled back to Kaden, pointing out the window. “I thought you said mime-moose weren’t real!”

All Kaden could do was blink at her for a moment as his mouth fell slowly open. That was a lot to process. All at once. Very bluntly. Dead. She died. And she was talking. And then brains. Which meant. “Putain.” He rubbed his face with his hands. Shit. This… shit. It-- Nope. He couldn’t process this. He couldn’t take one more fucking shitty thing. Obviously he knew that people turned into zombies and vampires and werewolves. That’s how they spread. That was the problem at its core. But he’d never met anyone who had turned. Why would he? His entire circle was full of hunters. Anyone who could turn didn’t let themselves. With his eyes closed and his fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose he concentrated and tried desperately to hear her heartbeat, like maybe she was lying and he could will it to be different if he just listened hard enough. He didn’t get to listen for very long. His eyes shot open and he turned to face the window just in time to see a fucking black and white striped moose. With. A. Fucking. Beret. “Putain!” This fucking town. There was a crash and glass shattered as the antlers came charging through into the restaurant. With a grumble, Kaden reached into his pocket to pull out a knife and stomped over towards the fucking mime moose. He’d normally charge in but his enthusiasm was a little curbed. “Animal control, everyone out!” he shouted as people scattered, hoping it’d clear the room faster so he could stab this monster without witnesses. At least not live fucking witnesses.

Morgan still couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Moose didn’t wear berets. Evil pulpy mime-doubles were one thing, but a moose with a beret and stripes running through is fur, charging the diner in complete, raging silence--that was a level Morgan had hoped White Crest wouldn’t think to seek to. Glass splattered into the diner. Morgan shielded her face and threw herself out of the booth and onto the ground. When the rain of glass ceased, she picked herself up, checking for signs of the moose. A creature like that should be huffing, wheezing, growling. But she heard nothing. She lifted her gaze and saw its large black-and-white snout. Its black eyes, dotted white around the lids, were not the blank, stupid animal shade of black. Morgan had stared into the eyes of enough deer and rabbits to know that look by now. This creature was something else, something furious. “You heard the guy!” She shouted to the room, not breaking eye contact. Slowly, she staggered to her feet. “Are you bookin’ it or--” Without warning the moose swatted her body across the room. Morgan’s spine bent like a rubber noodle over the bar counter. Her arm, stretched into the air useless to catch itself, crumpled in on itself. “...Ow,” she whined. She braced herself up with a sturdy hand and staggered, as best she would, while her body reset itself. She waved her mangled arm in the general direction she thought Kaden to be. Blood bloomed up from somewhere in her shoulder and soaked her torn sweater sleeve. A shard of glass she could barely perceive jutted out from the apple of her cheek, wiggling as she offered a weak ‘I’m good!’ smile.

Knife in hand, Kaden braced himself as the moose charged forward at him. He reached out and caught a chunk of flesh but ducked and rolled as a striped antler threatened to impale him. He scrambled to right himself, just in time to see Morgan facing off with the moose. Shit. He pushed off the ground but he wasn’t in time to do a damn thing before she went flying halfway across the room. He winced watching her body bend and break like a ragdoll being tossed away. He stopped dead, stunned to watch it. And then she spoke and got up. Putain. She really was dead. And that-- Shit. No time to be horrified. He hopped onto a table and leapt across a few to reach the moose. The beast turned to him and started another charge. Kaden waited as it got closer. Closer. And right as he could practically feel its silent breath he pushed off to the next table and threw himself around to catch the back of the moose with his knife. He pushed down hard as he could, black tar like substance oozing and bubbling up from its black and white fur. Ought to slow it down. He hoped.  

Morgan winced as her body reconstructed its old shape. Nothing hurt, not the way it should, but the sight was more than she could bear just yet. When she could stand upright and use both her arms, she scrambled to the other side of the bar, looking for a weapon, anything to fight back with. She tore open every drawer, one after another, until she found a nice pair of butcher knives. She held one out, hilt offered to Kaden. “Need another?” She mouthed silently. The moose opened its mouth as if to roar. The silence wasn’t as comforting on her ears as it should have been and Morgan gave Kaden a look that said he really should consider the big foodie blade and slid across the bar closer to him as she crept towards the moose with her own.

Kaden looked back to see Morgan’s body repairing itself from behind the bar and sliding him a butcher’s knife. He blinked back the image of her bones piecing themselves back together, he’d save the mental gymnastics on that one for another time, and took the knife, looked it over. It’d be a shame to waste a good cooking knife on a monster. Luckily, this wasn’t a good cooking knife. He wasn’t sure what she planned on doing with her own knife exactly but at least he didn’t have to worry about her getting killed. He stood his ground as the animal let out a silent bellow. It ran, he moved to the side, took one of the tables, and shoved it in front of the moose’s path. The mime stumbled, barely, but it was enough of an opportunity for Kaden to launch himself at the animal, a knife in each hand. They sunk into the side of its flesh, more black goo oozing out. The antlers swung as the moose tossed its head and thrashed in pain. Kaden clung to the knives with all his might and tried to hold on.

Morgan leapt at the mime-moose as soon as Kaden pinned it in the aisle of the diner. She dug her hands into the wooly fur of the critter and dug in tight. He was not happy to have a dead weight flopped on its back and thrashed violently, snarling, and huffing without even the whisper of a breath. Morgan flailed to keep her balance, kicking Kaden’s hand in the process. Clawing up its body, muscles straining, even in undeath, she worked her way to its neck. She jabbed the knife into its throat, stabbing awkwardly over and over until she was thrown off again, crashing into the bar stools. The black and white moose stumbled on its feet, straining to stay upright, and finally collapsed. It didn’t even make a sound as it fell to the ground. Morgan was only sure it was dead because of the way its beret fell to the ground, swallowed at once by black, tar-like blood. “Stars. You don’t see that every day,” she mumbled.

Kaden’s hand was kicked away and he lost his grip on the knives. Before he could fall away, an antler clipped his side and sent him reeling across the room. Fucking mimes. Couldn’t catch a fucking break. He peeled himself up off the floor and saw the creature collapse, more of that black crap bubbling out of it. He watched as it faded away into a puff of striped smoke and let out a sigh. Hopefully that meant it was fucking gone. Wait. Fuck, so was his knife. Putain. Like this could get any worse. He pushed himself up off the floor, wincing as he felt the full hit of that mime-moose’s attack. He walked over and held a hand out to help her and then it hit him all over again like a wave of confusion. Shit. Morgan was a zombie. She-- but that. He considered pulling his hand back. But didn’t. “When did it happen?” He knew the answer if he thought about it long enough but he needed something to say.

Morgan jerked back to reality, away from the melting mime-moose. Right. She’d told Kaden she was a zombie and now he had a whole body horror show of proof. She staggered to her feet, her shoes slipping on the black goo that came out of the creature as she tiptoed over. “That big accident on Main Street. Got my foot caught on some stupid banner. You wanna know how it feels to get a metal rod stuck through you, or car parts on your legs?” She looked up at him, meeting him square in the eye despite her fear. There were no witnesses now. No one to help her if he decided to take out one of those knives and run her through with it. “You wanna know what it feels like to die, Kaden?” She asked.

Kaden steeled his gaze as he watched her, putting his hand slowly back down at his side when she ignored it. This wasn’t the woman he’d met before. It was but, it wasn’t just her body that had changed. She was different. Harsher, maybe. “Not particularly, no. Gotten close, though.” Resentful. That was the word. He watched her, kept his eyes fixed on hers, looking for the person he knew. Was it just anger, a reaction, or was it something worse? She’d invited him here. She’d acted like she still cared before. The drawing she’d asked for. The stupid shitty drawing. He couldn’t believe she was gone. Not after that. He kept his face stoic but god he hoped she’d give him some sign that person was still there. Even if she had fucking tricked him into sharing his stupid feelings with a shitty bowl.

“It’s, um, it’s actually not that bad,” Morgan said, folding her arms over her chest. “About to die, sure, completely, but…” She shrugged, sniffing stiffly to keep her composure. The sleep had been fine. And stars, she missed being able to go to sleep some nights. “Anyways, I didn’t want you to find out some other way. And I can’t do anything magic for you, not that I managed to do much in the first place, before. But you should know I can’t. Not good for much besides staying up all night these days.” She stepped closer to him, holding his gaze, searching for some read on what he was thinking, how he was seeing her. “Am I still a person to you, Kaden?” She asked quietly, lip quivering. “I don’t have a grave or anything for you to go to. It’s just me. This. Am I a monster to you now?”

He watched her, kept watching as she spoke, tried to take in what she was saying, how she was saying it. Tried to process it. Kaden saw her resolve start to crumble, something beyond the anger and apathy she’d been displaying the whole time. It made it harder. Harder to figure out how to handle this. Zombies were bad. There was nothing right about dying and coming back in that sort of half life she was doubtlessly existing in. The fact that they could lose control-- that she could lose control and spread her condition like a plague, how could he let that stand? And a few months ago and this would have been an easy fuckin answer. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. But standing in front of her now, it was harder. A lot harder. Every instinct in him was screaming yes, that was a monster. She fucking came back from the dead. He’d watched her limbs break and put themselves back together. What else did he need to know? But looking in her eyes, it still looked suspiciously like the woman who he bartered for some magic over waffles. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe both.”

Morgan didn’t know what she’d expected from a hunter. It was just like the humans back home; everything was fine until it wasn’t. Until they knew something they didn’t like. And in this case, Morgan wasn’t sure how much she disagreed. She didn’t feel like a monster, she hadn’t hurt anyone she hadn’t meant to. But there was the hunger, the thing that made her groan and fall down on her knees before a battered corpse. The thing that she feared enough to stop her mouth sometimes. And she didn’t feel like she was all herself most times. She kept trying to tell everyone there was less than there used to be. She frowned and backed away from him, “Does ‘I don’t know’ mean you’re gonna try to hurt me now, Kaden?” She asked, sniffling. “I wasn’t a perfect human, or anything. I was just cursed and miserable and for a couple months I thought things were gonna get better, and then it all fell apart and I died, so.” She gave him a sad, bitter smile. “Haven’t eaten anyone yet. It’s honestly not that hard to keep up with. I don’t even need three square meals a day to stay full, which is kind of sad, so I eat more anyway. I can’t burn your skin off anymore or pay you in laundry lent counterfeit, but if you hurt Deirdre or Ricky, I’ll bite you. Whatever I am now, I care about my friends. You know, when I get off the floor and stuff. And you were kind of a friend too, so I figured, what’s a little reckless endangerment with a guy you cheated with a bowl?” She shrugged helplessly. “So how stupid was I, Kaden? Telling you what happened to me?

Kaden didn’t expect the sting he felt when she backed away. Somehow it was like daggers, poking at him, reminding him that he was dangerous and that people couldn’t be close to him. Shouldn’t be. He knew that. Well, he had, before coming here. Not letting anyone in was his rule of thumb. He still wasn’t sure how he fucked it up so badly in White Crest but clearly he fucking did and it was causing some major complications. Like the one standing right in front of him. “It means you’re asking me to tell you something that I don’t know if I can yet.” He sighed and looked away a moment, trying to piece together how he felt. It was hard to do when he didn’t know. “You can’t say you’re not a monster. At least a little. You know that. You have to feel it. You died. And came back. Telling me to ignore that completely, it’s-- I can’t. I won’t.” His words weren’t meant to be harsh, just the truth. Just how it was. He was sure some of her friends were trying to ignore it, tell her it was fine and she was the same. She wasn’t. Still, her excuses kept coming. He didn’t need to hear them, didn’t want the standard lines he’d heard before but from people he’d never known. “But I’m not going to kill you.” He couldn’t, was what he wanted to add. Something couldn’t bring himself to even really consider it. Which made him want to vomit. He should be a better hunter than this. He knew better. “I--” His throat tightened a moment. “I’m going to miss who you were, though.” He wasn’t sure what to make of this, whoever he was dealing with now, how he felt about her, if he could-- So it was all he could find to say. “Even if you were a pain in the ass liar who tricked me with a fucking bowl made of dirt.”

A sad, sobbing laughter bubbled out of Morgan at the hunter’s last words. “You know, you’re the first person to say that to me since I died,” she said, checking her face for tears. Just a few, nothing too embarrassing. “I miss her too, so you know. It’s not great so far being who I am now, at least most of the time. And that alive-me, she was kinda pathetic and lonely, but she...I did my best, when I was that person. I didn’t let go of people, even when they let go of me. I screwed up, but I tried to keep things in balance, and I did…not all that much, but I didn’t give up about it.” She didn’t accomplish even half of what she wanted. She’d thought she was just getting started and there might be a whole other soft world waiting for her on the other side of the curse. “But whoever I am now, Kaden, however much of me death ends up keeping, I’m not a fucking monster. Monsters are the ones who see people as things. And I think you’re a good enough person to know that.” She gave him a hard look through her grief and stormed out the door.