#jade: eulogy

[vengeancedemon]

TIMING: current. LOCATION: emilio's apartment PARTIES: @highoctanegem & @vengeancedemon. SUMMARY: tired of being ignored, jade shows up at emilio's apartment to find out why he's ghosting her. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

Jade wasn’t easily deterred. And okay, that was probably an understatement. That also, might have been the root of all her (hypothetical) problems, probably. She just didn’t know how or when to quit (and be called a loser? No freaking way, nuh uh. Over her dead body) (That would probably be dead cause she wasn’t deterred on time…minor details). 

Right now, though? It was totally a good thing, definitely leading her on the right path. Cause Emilio was being a weirdo. Ahem, an even weirder weirdo than he was when Jade left for California. Things had been super fine after the whole bird demon exploded, well… if you ignored a whole new portion of the town magically appearing from underneath. But the two of them? They had been amaze! (if she also ignored how she had a complete breakdown over her duty that sent her back to California in the first place). So, to come back to this? Nope, she didn’t like it one bit. 

(She had a total amount of zero feelings about important people in her life ghosting her all of a sudden, why would she? She chose not to speak to her parents, it was so not the same. (After they stopped talking to her, sure, but she had the final word, right? It was still a choice, right? It definitely counted in her head, where all things made total sense, got it?))

Even Axis looked more or less the same as she parked Roxie outside and quickly slipped into the building thanks to the broken lock. She happily swung her bag of presents (a nice bottle of Whiskey Onyx rec’d to her, a customized dagger, and a cute little banana magnet, for his barely used fridge) as she strutted down the hallway, still believing this was all a big ol’ misunderstanding. Nothing could be that wrong if Jade still saw Emilio online, being his charming self with the citizens of Wicked’s Rest. Yup. There was a totally fine, completely normal explanation to all of this. But like, she was threatening him with a hug for the inconvenience as soon as she saw him, it was the least she could do. 

Mere inches from reaching his door (from figuring out what was going on), her spine stiffened, something unmistakably undead permeating her senses. A question formed vaguely in her head, not quite making it to the forefront. It wasn’t the time for that. (In hindsight, that might have been her own head trying to protect her.) Instead, her hand slipped into the gift bag with mechanical ease, fingers plucking the dagger from its red leather sheath, and carried on carefully. Her boot pushed the door open with a gentle swipe. Jade peered inside, not bothering to conceal the creaking from the floorboards. Whatever was setting off her spidey senses, she almost expected Emilio to be handling it on the other side of the door. But nope, it wasn’t like that at all. She looked at the big, seemingly empty space where her brand-new bisexual couch once was, while the entire apartment reeked of the worst vibes known to man. 

And then her eyes landed on him. Both the man she’d been itching to see, and the apparent reason she’d pulled out the dagger, all wrapped up in a completely illogical bow. (There was no bow, duh. But if there were, it would be the crappiest, messiest, bloodiest little thing in the world). Her mind, for once, supplied nothing but silence at the sight.  

—

He’d been leaving his apartment very little since Eve dropped him off. He got out for cases he was picking up — the distraction of someone else’s problems always felt good for an hour or two, after all — or to rot away on a barstool at the nearest bar he hadn’t died outside of, but beyond that? Emilio had spent most of his afterlife sitting on the couch Regan had forced him to accept and staring at the wall. His phone rang with calls and messages that he largely ignored, preferring to engage with strangers or argue with people he didn’t like, anyway. 

But there were some people he was avoiding more than others, some people whose names on his phone screen sent him into a cold sweat. Jade topped that particular list. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, though there was some fear that her first reaction to the news of his demise might be to grab a knife. Jade was a better hunter than he’d ever been, willing to do what they were trained to do without question. That had changed recently, of course — Emilio liked to think he’d had some part in it, though he wasn’t sure if that made him a bad influence or a good one. Some things were hard to shake entirely, but Jade was his friend. He didn’t really think she’d saw his head off with no preamble. 

No, mostly, he was afraid of the way she’d look at him. Every hunter knew that there were only a handful of ways for their stories to end. Their lives were not open ended things, didn’t exist as mysteries whose endings could only be puzzled out when you got close enough to the final page to guess it. Hunters’ stories were written from the moment they were born. The details of how they ended might be hard to guess — there were a few different options on the thing that might end up killing them, after all — but the result was the same. Nearly every hunter who was born would die before reaching old age. Nearly every hunter who died would do so bloodied and in immense pain. It was the expected end result.

It wasn’t unheard of, of course, for something worse to happen after. There were horror stories out there, ones exchanged in quiet whispers at camp. Rangers who didn’t get immunity to werewolf bites and found out the hard way, slayers who were turned by particularly cruel vampires intent on dragging out the torture, hunters cursed to become lamias when they killed the wrong spellcaster’s loved one… When it came to the worst endings, most hunters had something like this on the top of their lists. Death was kinder than becoming a monster; they all knew that. Jade would know it, too, would know that Emilio agreed with the concept. There wasn’t a hunter alive who would want to exist in the way Emilio was right now.

And Jade would know it the second she saw him. That was the cruelty of it. She had the same sense he used to, the one that would tell her in no uncertain terms what Emilio had been up to during her time away. He didn’t want to face her, didn’t want to see the look on her face that would come with the realization. Would it be pity? Resolution? Grief? He’d been hoping he could at least wait a while to find out, even if he’d known he couldn’t wait forever.

But this was Wicked’s Rest, and hope never got any of them very far.

He should have known it was coming. She’d tried him a few times already through messages that had gone ignored, and Jade wasn’t one who could stand to be ignored for very long. He should have had some kind of a plan for it, should have been practicing what to say. But there were things you couldn’t plan for, conversations you couldn’t practice. Jade stood in his doorway, a knife in her hand and a look on her face. She looked at him, and Emilio looked back at her. It was the longest silence that had ever existed between them, the largest stretch of time she’d kept herself from chattering since he’d known her. 

He didn’t move from where he sat on the couch, his eyes staring at the dagger in her hand. “You’ll probably need something bigger,” he commented hoarsely. 

—

Forget about pin dropping, the living room was so silent Jade could hear how Emilio’s heart didn’t beat anymore. There was never supposed to be silence inside her head, it was never supposed to be empty like that. Silence was dangerous. Luckily! (?) She also felt the blood rushing to her ears and the tears pushing against her throat, so Emilio kinda ended up becoming part of the scenery while she tried to…be… or do… or say— while she tried… something. Staying upright, probably the ideal reaction. (Breathing? A respectable choice as well.) (A little too ‘rubbing salt in the wound’ in front of Emilio, though) 

Emilio. 

Who went ahead and died. After Jade specifically told him not to? Like, what part of ‘Love you, see you next week! Don’t die or anything, you still owe me $70. Mwah <3’ was vague? Hello? What part left room for misinterpretation? Actually, in some twisted way that would’ve been funny in any other context, it did sound like the type of thing he’d go and do just to be a contrarian. Just so he could get back at her with a ‘you were wrong’. But that thought didn’t make her laugh anymore. All it did was to feed the growing knot in her throat and the wetness in her eyes.

The silence stretched, approaching unprecedented lengths, cause Jade kept waiting for instructions. Kept waiting for Ruby or Onyx, (actually even Jasper would’ve been helpful) to come in with the good ol’ classics from the past. To feed her the lyrics, or to hum along just enough for her to pick up the cue and carry on with the forgotten tune. She looked down at the dagger, eyebrows pinching when he broke the silence. (He broke the silence) (The world was definitely upside down). And what did he mean she needed something bigger? She’s seen the type of blade he carried, this one was about the same size, right? And it was his…did he want her to return it for something bigger? Didn’t they have more pressing issues right now than…

That wasn’t quite what Emilio was implying. 

Did he want her to— The record scratch in her head made her visibly wince. They didn’t ask for this, Onyx finally echoed in her head. Wow, that wasn’t just one of his biggest hits, it was practically his debut single. At least that was how Jade remembered it. (How old was she? She never knew). The first time she’d heard it was when he’d finally brought her to the field, throwing warnings at her like he predicted she wouldn’t have the best reaction. Like she wasn’t made of the same stuff as all the rest of her siblings were, so rude. (He was right, to be fair) (That was when she caught that weird stomach bug that ended up being chronic after all).

It’s a curse, a fate worse than death, was usually what followed it. (But he did have a penchant for remixing it, depending on what she was struggling with on any given day). Sometimes he sprinkled a little guilt trip about how it’s irresponsible to let the human within succumb to the monster fighting to overtake it, but he always made sure to get to the chorus, their mission, their calling. (She did like that part the best. It was the only part that made her feel energized). We have to act before it happens, before they’re lost. We’re here to preserve their humanity, their dignity, we can’t let their legacy be destroyed. Obviously, he did upgrade his vocabulary as she grew. (The 20th anniversary version was just fresher in her head). 

That hit had gone triple platinum in her house, it had topped the charts consistently until summer ‘24.  (With the exception of that week in college when Zayn’s Pillowtalk had a few weeks at the top). Of course, she welcomed the earworm with nostalgic comfort. Those lessons were woven into her, so much so that it had taken her twenty years to find any real leverage to push back. Every contradiction to the narrative had felt like a threat, an attempt at making her a failure. Emilio himself had threatened the narrative more than once. And now… she’d lost the plot, the narrative could be anything. Maybe this wasn’t a dramedy anymore, maybe there was genre fraud. (Like The Bear).   

Why was she remembering all of this? Jade looked down at the dagger she’d gotten for him, again. Wondering if he’d actually ask for her to do it, if he was thinking the way a good slayer would. (There were no prime examples of that in the room with us right now). But she found the bottle inside her gift bag way more appealing. She pulled it out, letting the bag fall to the ground (banana magnet still inside) and forcing the cap open. She took a swig, grimacing. Part of the liquid burned down her throat like it was meant to, the rest got stuck, simply too nasty to take the second gulp. She spat it to the side, buying herself more time to again…do, or be… or say anything.

The whiskey stung her eyes with tears, which was perfect cause they were already there to begin with, she just had a better excuse to hide them. (He’d want her to hide them, right?). Then again, he also went and did the thing she told him not to, so maybe all bets were off. Onyx’s lesson still looped inside her head, low in volume, but still nagging her, reminding her to focus on the case instead of…

(Why did it matter, what Onyx wanted now? He’d made himself clear the last time they met that she was beyond fixing. Why did it matter, what Ruby would say? What Jade did now wouldn’t erase the words they’d thrown at each other).

(She knew why) (She felt it, despite everything).

She stepped closer, whiskey in one hand, dagger in the other, and simply dropped onto the couch. (It was a nice couch. Regan really had an eye for this kinda stuff). One thing felt distinctly wrong: His warmth was gone. Jade tried to take a slow, calming breath, but her lungs were already shrinking, and she didn’t remember how to count her breaths anymore, and somehow the wrongness her body felt was more damning than his lack of heartbeat, or the thrumming underneath her skin in making all of it real. It was real. 

Her best friend died. He died, and she had been too busy on the other side of the country wrecking familial bonds to hear about it. Wasn’t timing a bitch? And now he was… she couldn’t say the U word just yet. And decades of indoctrination demanded she saw it as an affront to life, and duty, and death. But she was relieved to see his dumb face again. Selfishly. And she was heartbroken that not even in death he’d found peace, that he couldn’t get the ending he would’ve wanted. A hunter’s reward, wasn’t it? The end of violence, at last. Hadn’t he paid a price twice as steep as the rest of them? Nope, that didn’t seem to matter. And here she was, like she’d been dropped in action two scenes ahead, no script or sides, trying to act like the seasoned professional she was and not be a crybaby about it, cause Emilio probably didn’t want (or thought he deserved) anyone crying over him. But her best friend had died. And worst of all, he’d come back. (Except, how bad could it be, if she got to talk to him again?) (And remember talking? She used to be so good at it). Forgive her for not being capable of speed running every emotion and locking back in this time. This was overkill; she felt like imploding. (Granted, she’d felt like that for weeks) (camels and straws).

Whiskey burn assisted her lip quiver, and that moment of weakness let escape a sharp, tearful exhale. Then a choked inhale… and the waterworks.

She kept it classy, sorta. Jade hadn’t mastered the single tear crying for nothing. And no one was around to corroborate that the tear per sob ratio was correct, so like, what if she sneaked a few more? She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, pointlessly, cause another tear rolled down immediately, her heart squeezing in her chest at the thought of him dying in pain. Like sure, that was what everybody signed up for when they joined the family business, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t messed up. It didn’t mean she wanted living (?) proof that it happened. 

But hunters couldn’t just focus on grieving, they had to multitask, she had to start jumping steps ahead. Spring back into shape. (And she was a hunter, still, right?) (She still wanted to be one, right?). It just took her… a few tearful minutes.

The how or when were the shiniest pieces of the puzzle. Finding them scratched that particular nosy itch. The what was that piece she kept noticing by her side, but didn’t want to acknowledge yet, cause its edges were way too complicated. Later. Or maybe never. His words were still spinning in her head. As did Onyx’s (they were not a great duo, mind you) (maybe they shouldn’t collaborate in her head again). Duty. She remembered the blade, limp in her hand. If Emilio needed it. If that’s what he wanted. She swallowed against the lump in her throat, sniffling. (And would that be the right thing?) (Entertaining the thought was a quick way to bring back that stomach bug). Jade breathed out, shaky, but there was a momentary pause in the tears. She cleared her throat. “What do we do now?” she looked to her side, vaguely in his direction. Cause, well, she still hadn’t learned how not to be a team player. Even when her teams kept disbanding.  

—

Jade Bloodsworth had always been a flurry of energy and chatter. It was something he’d noticed the first time he ever met her, something he’d found utterly strange and hard to swallow. Hunters were typically surly, angry, bitter things. With the lives they lead, didn’t they kind of have to be? Wasn’t it hard to be anything else when you were told, from the moment you were born, that your death would be a painful, bloody thing? Hunters were, in Emilio’s experience, mad at the goddamn world, and didn’t they have that right? Wasn’t it awful, the way their duty was to protect a world that wasn’t theirs to keep? Wasn’t it shitty that they had to die for a world they weren’t allowed to really live in? Hunters earned their goddamn bitterness. Emilio had always been so sure that he’d deserved his.

But not Jade. No, Jade had been something else from the first moment he met her. She was loud, but not in the same way that he could be, sometimes. Her laughter wasn’t bitter, her jokes weren’t at everyone else’s expense. While Emilio got loud in a mean way when he was angry or hurt or scared, Jade’s loudness was with her always, and it was never unkind. She was cheery, somehow. She jabbered on and on in a way that should have annoyed him but never really did. She talked about things he didn’t understand in a way that never made him feel stupid for not understanding them, explained herself to herself in ways that made no sense to anyone else listening. Emilio had come to associate the sound of her voice with the quiet warmth it poured into the pit of his stomach, even when they were at odds. 

Stranger still, perhaps, was the way that Jade was all of those things, and a good hunter, too. She was so much more secure in her duty than he had been, understood it better. For better or worse, Jade was the kind of hunter his mother would have at least respected, even if she might not have been a big fan of her personality. (Elena Cortez had never really enjoyed loud people. She’d barely tolerated Juliana.) Even in the middle of a hunt, though, Jade would talk. She would yammer on, would tell her strange jokes and make her incomprehensible references. It was like a soundtrack, sometimes, fading into the background in a way that made the scene easier to swallow. Her loudness was reliable, even when nothing else was. Jade always had something to say; it was something Emilio had learned he could count on.

But she was silent now.

It was heavy in a way silence never had been before, because Emilio liked the quiet. He preferred it when there was no noise cutting through, liked it when silence enveloped him so long as it wasn’t the kind that forced reflection. Comfortable silences with the people he loved were some of his favorites to enjoy. Silence was a friend, a comrade. It had been there for her in times where no one and nothing else could be. 

So why did this one feel so wrong? Why did it taste like the blood that had coated the back of his throat in that dumpster, why did it feel like the oppressive plastic of Eve’s body bag holding him in place? Was it because this silence came from Jade, on whom it was strange and ill-fitting? Or had the comfort he once found in quiet died when he had, when the walls of a dumpster blocked out all sound beyond the fading beating of his heart? 

He found it hard to look at her. His eyes were locked in on the knife she held in her hand — that was one of his, wasn’t it? — and it was impossible to pull them up any further. If he let them wander to her face, would he find grief there? Or would they be met instead by a steely resolve? Jade was a good hunter. She talked a lot, she made jokes, but she took her duty seriously. And here, in the heavy silence of this apartment, it was so clear what that duty was. 

She pulled something from her bag, and his eyes followed her hands. A bottle of whiskey was opened; he couldn’t follow its journey to her mouth. It struck him, as painfully as a burst of lightning hitting his chest, that it had probably been meant as a gift for him. She’d been gone, had visited her family, and she’d thought of him enough to buy a bottle of whiskey to bring home. Had she stood in a liquor store picking it out while he was bleeding out in that alley? Had she swiped her card at the same moment his heart had stopped? It was funny, almost, to think about Jade completing a quietly mundane task while Emilio choked on his own blood on the other side of the country. Wasn’t that always how it went? Sometimes when the world ended, you were in the middle of it. But most of the time? You didn’t know the apocalypse struck until it was already over. 

She strode across the room, and he wondered if the whiskey had given her the liquid courage she’d needed to finish the job. His eyes finally dragged upwards to look at her face, searching for the determination she tended to wear in the midst of a hunt, but he found none of it. Instead, there were tears in her eyes that he wasn’t sure could be blamed on the strength of the swig of whiskey. He marveled at them, tracing the way they brimmed her eyes and threatened to spill over the edges. 

He had cried when his brother died. When he was twelve, and Lucio left on a hunt with Victor and came back alone, when Emilio had been forced to face the fact that he would never see his oldest brother again, he had cried. He remembered the way the tears seemed to strangle him, as if they’d tied a noose around his neck and tightened it against his throat. He remembered the way his chest hurt, remembered how his hands shook. Mostly, though, he remembered how angry his mother had been. It was stupid, she’d told him, to cry about the death of a hunter. It was like mourning a broken knife, like grieving for the sunrise. Hunters were supposed to die; it was expected. Victor had died young, but that was his own failing. If he’d been better, he would have lived longer. 

Wasn’t the same true for Emilio now? His shoddy resurrection was a shock, but his death was inevitable. The ending to his story had been written the moment he drew his first breath, spelled out on paper in lieu of a birth certificate. Hunters were given eulogies on the same day they were given names, were born with the expectation of dying. To cry for them was a foolish, childish thing. 

He wondered, then, what Jade’s tears were for. Was she mourning his death, or his resurrection? Was she upset that he’d died, or was she angry that he’d come back? His fingers twitched on the couch as she approached, ready to catch the blade if she shoved it towards his throat. He wouldn’t be able to hold her off for long, but he’d like to at least give her a warning if she was going to try to end it for him, just as he’d given Eve one in the van. His death would be an explosive one; he didn’t want Jade to catch too much of the shrapnel. 

But no blade was thrust towards his throat; no stake was shoved into his chest. Jade sat on the couch beside him, and she was silent, still. And Emilio couldn’t look at her anymore, couldn’t face the grief etched into her expression, so he looked at the bottle instead. It had always offered the most tempting alternative.

Silently, slowly, he reached a hand out, wrapping it around the bottle. Each move was carefully calculated, spelled out before he made it. He was a monster; he had to carry himself like one, had to prove he was docile. His hand closed around the glass, and he pulled it gently towards himself.

What do we do now? The silence shifted under the weight of the question, expanding to make room for the words. What do we do now? We, as in the two of them. We, as if he weren’t a monster and she weren’t a slayer, still. We, as if they were still on the same side, as if they remained a team. We. It was such a small word, but in the quiet of the apartment, it felt bigger. He couldn’t decide whether it was a life raft lifting him from the raging waters or a hand pushing him further below the surface. Strangely, he wasn’t sure there was much of a difference between the two.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly, the words scarcely a whisper. Normally, he doubted they would have been heard at all in a room where Jade was always the loudest thing. But now? In this room, with this silent version of his loud best friend? His whisper seemed to echo as loudly as a scream. 

—

There were no clear instructions, no immediate course of action. No stake to plunge or head to chop, or body to burn. I don’t know, Emilio said, and Jade couldn’t pretend it didn’t rattle her, yet eased the immense pressure in her chest in equal parts. (And somehow, the world didn’t end now that both sentiments coexisted within). The hunting world had always been built around rules, and codes and… it had taken her too long to conform. To strip away the jadeness in the service of her higher purpose. It had started with a shaky foundation, sure, but with time, it had become sturdy enough that the clear lack of pieces at the base didn’t seem to affect her goal too much. (Like one of those Jenga puzzles that can last a while with just one block on the bottom, you know?). And now suddenly, none of it made sense. 

And normally, as in, in her personal life, Jade would’ve reveled in that. Coloring outside the lines? Thinking outside the box mentality? Yup, let’s go for it. What could be more fun than that? She’d like to believe those were still qualities she’d clung to even while she was trained to chase death to an end. She was supposed to shut down all of that when it was game time, obviously, but she’d never let that become her entire personality. Never let the slayer consume the person. Dealing with undead was a total separate entity; it came with a plan, and okay, she was still not great at sticking to those (and in her opinion, that was just her added flavor), but at least there were guidelines. (Ruby would’ve never let her go about things all willy-nilly). Wait, where was her head taking her with this…Oh. Emilio was… undead. And that meant… what, exactly? Emilio didn’t know. And Jade? Well, she’d never been the type of slayer anyone would want in a crisis. 

She lingered in the moment, sniffling as quietly as possible (about Emilio, about herself, about her siblings, about that TikTok with the baby ducks crossing the street), until she felt his fingers inch toward the bottle. She cleared her throat, loosening her grasp. “It’s for you, obviously, I don’t….” Her face contorted in disgust at the aftertaste. Maybe it wasn’t the time to point out that she’d gotten him a blade too. Not until… well, she wasn’t sure. He’d seen it, duh. Thought she was gonna make it the murder weapon even. 

She transferred the weight of the bottle to him, letting him do with it what he pleased. It was a good thing to have a free hand to wipe her tears anyway. The faint brush of his skin, unfamiliar now, different from what it had felt months and years before, set her off again. But it also unlocked more words stuck in her throat. “You should’ve told me,” came out, accusatory despite the watery quality to her voice. Something ugly flared inside her, simmering for a moment. And oh, she didn’t like that. “You can’t just…” What, disappear? Actually, she’d come to accept that people walking in and out of her life was as natural as breathing. It wasn’t personal, for the most part. They were like, guest stars for a season or two, until their contract expired. It didn’t mean they couldn’t have fun in the time they had. Being so headstrong about her beliefs would come at the cost of cherished relationships, Amber warned her very early on. And Jade accepted it. (Collateral) (That word just…kept haunting her, huh?). 

It wasn’t personal. Just… circumstantial, right? But this one stung. This was personal. But she’d rather let the burn in her chest disguise itself as anger than admit she was hurt. Jade didn’t get hurt. She was forged to take it all. Except, she always believed Emilio saw her as an equal. When she strolled cemeteries or shady alleys with him she wasn’t player number 5, or the runt, or the nuisance baby sister. She was his flamethrower buddy, not the girl relegated to her crossbow and covering people’s backs. She was even allowing him to challenge her views on hunting! He was the person she wanted to update about her California adventures. 

But he’d chosen distance. He’d chosen to keep her in the dark. Which obviously (cause her math was always flawless, of course), meant that he had underestimated her. Just like everybody else. Just like… That had to be why he wouldn’t tell her, why else? “I can take it, you know. I’m tough,” and maybe, she wasn’t exactly acting like the personification of toughness by choking on half her sentences. Fine. She wasn’t showing the maturity of a wise, seasoned slayer, or even that of a grown adult. Maybe Emilio had been right about the strength of both her character and their friendship. (Just like Onyx had been right when he insulted her resolve) (Just like Ruby had been right when she questioned her loyalty). Still, it would’ve been nice to be given the chance to have a different reaction. To have come prepared. And not get suckerpunched by both his death and his unlife in a one-two. 

Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, and she took in a shaky inhale, trying to cut it out, cause she didn’t want a repeat of her breakdown with Regan. She didn’t want the walls to close down and trap her before it was too late. She didn’t wanna be the one to have a meltdown when her friend was coping with the fact that he was dead. (He’d died) (Learning that kinda thing simply did not stop being traumatizing just cause she dealt with dead things on a daily basis) (Not that… she wasn’t traumatized, just like, she meant like, hypothetically. For others. Yup).

Even if she stopped crying, though, neither of them knew what to do. That was established. Emilio was freshly (?) dead, and had for sure undergone his own personal hell when he realized he’d come back as the thing he was meant to destroy. Jade didn’t think there was any immediate scenario where he would’ve been fine and chill to return as… a walking cadaver. Nope, that would’ve been the stuff of nightmares. He’d wanted to die for so long too, hadn’t he? Before Wicked’s Rest, at least. Back then, he wouldn’t have cared if his life ended. But she’d like to think this town had offered something different. Hope. She’d like to think that Teddy and Wynne and Nora, and Perro…maybe they’d made a difference. Of course, he seemed doomed by the narrative no matter what, and he was sentenced now, to outlive his family. Again. (That would send anyone into a spiral, really). 

Unless, of course… “I’ll do it.” Her lips trembled. “When… if you need me to, I’ll do it.” Better her, than some slayer who knew nothing about his life, nothing about his history, nothing about his pain. Better her than a random enemy looking to settle a debt. Maybe he didn’t believe deaths got to be meaningful, but she did. And maybe the Bloodworth approach was messed up, and flawed, and lacking nuance or whatever else people have dunked them for over the past year. But to treat him with mercy? That she could do.

She could, right? If Emilio decided. He’d know if it was the right thing to do? Not now, mind you. But he would. Some day. He was a slayer (or used to be?) (Wait, did he start with a clean slate?) In fact, he must’ve been weighing the pros and cons in this dark room since he opened his eyes again. Even Jade, inherently, knew she would have come up with a list. It felt wrong, but in the same way, it was natural. She was wired for it. Categorizing the degree of the threat. (If her sister didn’t hate her now, then maybe she would’ve been proud she still remembered the basics). Emilio might have made for a dangerous undead creature, Jade figured that was like, a fair assumption to make. His capacity for destruction (inward and outward), his unquenched thirst for revenge, his fighting and weaponry skills, all of it amplified by feral hunger, and the impulse control of a newborn. More or less indisputable facts. Technically, all of that would’ve made for a solid 5 out of 6 on the Bloodworth scale. Maybe a 6 out of 6 if Emilio had a say. 

There was just… one tiny thing, one minor detail that threw all objectivity out of the window. He was Emilio. And she was growing peppers in her garden cause they reminded him of home. And he’d trusted her even when she got the brilliant idea to work on her papers for a permanent stay at villain ville. And he put up with all her monologues even when they didn’t make sense to him. And he kept her need for mindless bickering sated. And he was the first friend she ever made when she moved across the country all by herself. And she loved him. And well, nothing on the other side of the scale came anywhere close to weighing quite as heavy, did it? That seemed to knock his imaginary threat score down to 0 real fast. Faster than a gold standard slayer would allow. So maybe she wasn’t the executioner. Maybe if it came down to it, she would fail, again. What else was new? 

But hadn’t she learned over the past year that sometimes, convictions could be defied? Everything she’d learned in her childhood hadn’t left room for people like Metzli, or Vic. Or Ariadne. But they existed, they were real. She’d met them. And not to go on full slayer mode (it was hard to completely shut down that side of her), but Emilio wasn’t a vampire, that much she knew. Whatever sustenance he needed… maybe it didn’t come at the cost of someone’s life, right? Maybe it was something boring like dreams...or… brains. (He could get those literally anywhere, come on) (And nope, she didn’t want to think about how she, of all people, was now bargaining for an undead’s life, no need to point that out). If he chose to take the unlife free trial, then… they could figure out the next step some other time. Hopefully, he wouldn’t leave her in the dark next time. 

Jade looked up at him, finally. If she hadn’t been able to sense death clinging to him, she would’ve said he looked more or less the same. Except for the slightly unhinged way he’d combed his hair. She pressed her lips together, biting down the untimely urge to make fun of him. (Not now… maybe in ten minutes). She traced his age lines, a small curve spreading on her lips, keeping the shock of his death at arm’s length in favor of reacquainting herself with her friend’s face. Realizing he would stay like that forever now. Frozen in time. Maybe it was a good thing that there would never be any new signs of the pain he was forced to carry. (He would’ve wanted to keep his good looks, at least, right?). 

Tears rushed to her eyes again, cause she couldn’t even find the humor in that yet. Her friend had died, and now he had to endure eternity, when he’d barely enjoyed the first run. And neither her tears, nor her jokes would’ve soothed any of his suffering. Life was kinda unfair, wasn’t it? If any tragic event could beat down her upbeat outlook on life, it would be this one. But he was still here, and she got more time with him, which kept her hope afloat. Despite. Despite. So maybe life was both tragedy and hope, in a way. It was bi or something. (She didn’t have the emotional strength to dig into the potential joke.) (But she should probably put a pin in it for a better time.) “I’ll do it. The— if, you decide. Just… don’t jump the gun. Stay a little longer,” She wasn’t gonna pretend it wasn’t a request that contradicted everything she stood for, everything she bled for. But what was one more giant hypocrisy to add to the pile of giant hypocrisies she’d been collecting this past year? This one, more than others, seemed like the one she could own up to. This one, somehow, didn’t have the same flavor of betraying herself she’d tasted well over a year now. “… Please?”.

—

He took the bottle, and the weight of it was familiar in his hand even now. Everything felt different — the stillness in his chest, the emptiness in his lungs, the way his eyes no longer cut through the dark like tissue paper, the way strength was something he’d need to relearn — but the bottle was the same. Gripping the neck of it made him feel more like himself, even if only for a moment. And he knew that wasn’t a good thing, he knew. But it wasn’t like his liver was at risk anymore, and what else was he supposed to do with Jade looking at him like this? What else was there to hold onto in the dingy apartment with the too-nice couch and the canyon that lived between them?

The bottle lifted, and it took him a moment to register that it was him lifting it. It met his lips, and the burn of whiskey down his throat felt warm enough to make him forget how cold his skin was now, how cold everything felt. He didn’t want to look at Jade. He didn’t want to look at Jade, and he didn’t think Jade wanted to look at him, either. But he was having trouble getting his eyes to settle anywhere less painful, because everything hurt. 

He could still see the way the dust in the far corner of the room remembered the sofa she’d had delivered to his place because she and Regan hadn’t found their new one yet. The shadows on the wall seemed to dance into new shapes, putting on a quiet play of old memories. Jade, showing up at his place after those couches (one couch, he’d insisted then, one couch and a chalk drawing) had been delivered, handing him a bottle of whiskey then just as she had now. The pair of them collapsing onto his old couch after a successful hunt, worn and aching but so incredibly alive. Coming back after the stupid fucking worm funeral in the woods, hollow and empty for reasons neither of them wanted to talk about. 

Since coming back here after waking up in Eve’s van, Emilio had come to think of the apartment as a crypt. It wasn’t a place where anything lived, wasn’t something anyone would ever mistake for a home. It was four walls and a roof big enough to house a single corpse, a container where a dead thing could lie and rot. It didn’t matter that the paint was peeling, didn’t matter that the floor was sticky or that a thin layer of dust covered everything, because no one alive would ever have to see it. You kept the outside of a crypt clean, sure. You tidied the area around it, you cut the grass. But the inside? The inside existed only for the dead, and no one cared what it looked like.

Except Jade was here. She was sitting on the couch, and there was a canyon between them but he could feel the warmth on her skin, anyway. He could hear her heartbeat, could see the way she shuddered with every breath. Jade was here and Jade was alive and he didn’t know if a crypt was still a crypt when someone living crawled into it to sit. Maybe it was something closer to a shadowbox now, with the two of them seated side by side. There was a layer of glass separating them from those memories, but the memories were on display all the same. They couldn’t reach past the barrier to touch them, but the couches and the bananas and the goddamn worms were still here, still dancing across the walls. He just didn’t know how much any of it was worth anymore.

You should have told me, she said, half an accusation and half a plea. And maybe he should have. Maybe he should have called her, should have ruined her vacation, should have dragged her home, but what would the point of it have been? Maybe avoiding her was cruel, but wouldn’t it have been just as cruel to face her? To pull her into his grave, to make her a witness to his funeral procession, to die while she was away and wake up before she knew it had happened at all? All of it was cruel; none of it was fair. That was how death always was.

He swallowed another mouthful of whiskey, pretending his hands didn’t shake when he lowered the bottle back to his lap. (Would she find that as funny as he did? A corpse with trembling hands. If he’d had the energy to make a joke about it, would she have been able to find the energy to laugh? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Emilio had always been a man who wanted all the answers, but sometimes not knowing was easier.)

“I was…” He trailed off, throat tight. He swallowed, then corrected himself. “I am… I’m… scared.” It was the first time he’d said it aloud, though it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d thought it. He’d been scared in the alley, when he’d realized where that knife was going to end up. He’d been scared in the dumpster, when the world started to fade away. He’d been scared in Eve’s van, when he woke up to darkness and unintentional restraints. He’d been scared every moment afterwards, was still scared now. The fear clung to him as tightly as the death did, constricting his throat and making him forget that he didn’t actually need to breathe. He was scared. Dying was scary. He hadn’t thought it would be.

And fear wasn’t what they were built for, was it? Afraid wasn’t what they were supposed to be. They were the ones who faced the monsters head on, the ones who fought and bled and ached so that others wouldn’t have to. They were the ones who stood between the evil and the good, the ones who protected the innocent from the terrible. Wasn’t that what they’d been taught, all their lives? Wasn’t that what people like Emilio and Jade had been raised on? There were monsters and there were heroes, and it was the latter’s job to ensure the former didn’t hurt anyone. That was what hunters were for. That was what slayers were for.

But Emilio wasn’t a slayer anymore. He’d gone from being the hero to being the monster, and he wasn’t sure that that transition had happened with death. Hadn’t he felt monstrous, even before his claws sliced through the bodybag in Eve’s van? Hadn’t he been a terrible thing, even before his teeth were fangs? He didn’t know now if it was a monster and a hero sitting on this couch or if it was two monsters or if it was neither. Maybe both terms were meaningless, maybe they always had been. Maybe life wasn’t nearly as simple as their parents made it seem when they were young.

She made him an offer, and it burned just as much as the whiskey he kept pouring down his throat. He thought of Eve’s van, of the cool metal of the blade against his throat. He thought of the realization, the sudden truth behind what he was now and what he knew about it. He thought of the way he’d been afraid not for himself, but for the person holding the knife. 

There was something terrible, he thought, about having someone who loved you enough to kill you. There was something awful about having someone who would slice through tendons and muscle and bone and softly sing you to sleep as they did so. He wondered if dying felt different at the hands of someone you loved. He wondered if the fear was less suffocating, wondered if it hurt less, somehow. There was something terrible about having someone who loved you enough to kill you, and maybe there was something worse about loving them too much to let them.

“It’s not that simple,” his voice was hoarse, and he pretended it was the whiskey. He pretended it was the dust in the room, pretended it was the musty air of the crypt that wasn’t a crypt. “It’s not…” He didn’t know if he could say it. He didn’t know if he could give it a name. Jade probably knew as much about furies as he did, but that wasn’t saying much. His uncle used to tell him that some things were too dangerous to kill; he wondered if someone had told her the same. “I can’t let you do it. It would… You’d get hurt, too.” 

And it occurred to him, jarringly, that that would have been true even if he hadn’t come back as something so explosive that killing it was the same as lighting its fuse. If he were a vampire, and Jade stuck a stake into his chest, he would crumble harmlessly into dust and it would kill her all the same. If he were a zombie, or a mare, or some mindless thing that only looked like the man he’d been before, Jade being the one to kill him would be just as explosive to her as it would be now. There was no way to let her make this promise without dooming her alongside him. There was no universe where she could kill him and be okay after. That was the worst part. 

She knew it, too. Why else would she ask him to stay? Jade loved him enough to kill him, but she loved him enough to want him here, too. She loved him enough to climb into the crypt, to hand whiskey to his corpse, to decorate his grave. He wasn’t him anymore. They both knew that, both understood it. The thing on the couch was Emilio the same way a mound of dirt in Mexico was Flora, but Jade wanted it here all the same. Jade wanted him here all the same. She loved him enough to kill him. She loved him enough to want him to stay. He loved her enough not to put the knife in her hands. He loved her enough to listen.

“Sure,” he said, still hoarse and still pretending not to know why. “Yeah. I’ll… For a little longer. Yeah.” This was both of them going against everything they’d ever stood for. This was both of them turning their backs on the way they’d been raised. There were two shapes on the couch — a hero and a monster, or two monsters, or both, or neither. Emilio wasn’t sure how much any of it mattered anymore.

[things-i-hyperfixate-on]

NATALIE SCATORCCIO (yellowjackets s2 SPOILERS)

oh god i’m really sad . Coach and Nat could’ve lived in Javi’s stump!!! literally Nat is still a good fucking person. Misty tackled her down to prevent her from saving Javi but Nat’s FIRST INSTINCT was to save him and to ask the ppl who were literally hellbent on killing her to come over and give her a hand. she’s been running—LITERALLY for her LIFE—from these girls, but she stops and calls them to her side in the hopes that they can help her save Javi: casting her best interest aside for him. but she was stopped from doing so, and Javi dies. and she gets to internalize that as her being “worse” than the rest of them for letting him die in her place.

she wanted to live and she’s not guilty for that! it’s not a crime! she wanted to live and that’s why she ran from the rest of the team after Travis tackles Shauna. she’s already in a state that makes her fearful for her life and susceptible to what Misty says about it being ‘either Javi or her’ (not exact quotes but that was the gist). because she’s not expected to WANT to die! and no one should hold her to that, but Natalie is holding it to herself, and i wish she could still think of herself as a good person.

she’s not “worse” than the rest of them and she’s CERTAINLY not worse than MISTY, who has acted selfishly since the very beginning and not given a genuine enough shit about anyone’s life for it to override her own desires.

Coach Scott was right, Natalie is NOT like the rest of those girls! she actually values their lives and she values EVERY single one of their sacrifices!!! she brought Jackie’s remains to the plane so that they could be properly buried come springtime, and gave her own eulogy out of respect. the ONLY other person who spoke in memory of Jackie was Shauna, her literal BEST FRIEND. the ONLY two people who paid remembrance to Jackie were:

1. her best friend (& toxic codependent relationship, but that’s a whole other rant)

2. the girl who Jackie slutshamed, shittalked, judged, and who’s romantic partner she slept with!!!

NAT still paid respects.

even in her selfish moments or lapses in judgement, Nat is thinking of others. her mistakes were done out of CARE. she planted Javi’s bloody trousers because she cared about Travis! she genuinely had no conceivable reason to believe that Javi lived, and she couldn’t bear seeing Travis risk his health and sanity over it. Obviously she was wrong to deceive Travis, but even Travis forgave her! TRAVIS—the one most deeply and negatively affected by Nat’s action— FORGAVE her!

“you’re a good person. and i’m sorry for ever making you feel otherwise.” !!!!!

He not only forgave her, but affirmed exactly what Coach Scott noticed: she isn’t like the rest of those girls. Natalie is jaded and scathing and mean to people (like Lottie and Misty), but she still cares about each and every one of their lives, and would have honored their deaths.

[thestalkerbunny]

A Prediction for the upcoming campaign-Eulogy meeting his Adoptive Daughter Maggie's long lost sister, 14. (who belongs to @jade-wyton)

I feel like she's gonna be the type to absolutely clock Eulogy for what he is. A middle aged queer man who is green.

[tieronecrush]

the lakes

joel miller x reader

rating: M

word count: 1.9k

summary:

take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / i don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you / those windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry / i'm setting off, but not without my muse

warnings: nudity, skinny dipping, talk about grief, death, family tension, self-doubt, self-deprecation, idk man it’s just sad

a/n: my first song for the folklore anthology!! can’t wait to share others & read all the other great works from my pals <3

The sounds of birds chirping surround you in echoes across the valley, mountainous hills convexing in front of you and dotted with evergreens. Underneath you is sun-warmed sand, interspersed with smoothed rocks from rushing water shaping them over hundreds or thousands of years. The fresh, gentle waves of the lake lick against your bare feet, knees bent up as you sit at the shore, eyes trained ahead on the glassy surface reflecting the late summer sky above. Joel is sitting next to you in the same position, his hands joined together in a circle and forearms resting on his kneecaps.

It’d been a quiet hike to the spot you discovered while on patrol. Lately, Joel has been his own worst enemy — closed off to you, stewing in his thoughts about his strained relationship with Ellie and continuing to adjust to life in Jackson, a world so slow and still that he can’t seem to find a place he fits in after moving for so long. His inertia hasn’t caught up to his lifestyle change; he is constantly picking up patrol shifts, and volunteering to oversee new construction and renovations across the town, but even through his go go go, he can’t find a place to land.

This place was the perfect spot to take him; to abate the anxious energy that vibrates throughout him every day with the halcyon elements of nature. Animals that live their lives with no concept of time, a lesson in living in the present, trees that have been around for hundreds of years, solid and strong like the man himself, and the lake. The lake that provides for everything growing around it, that reflects beauty in sunrises and sunsets, that finds itself full no matter any barriers built in its feeding river, replenished by other means from rain to groundwater.

The silence between the two of you breaks for the first time in hours.

“You know what I first thought of you when I met you?” you question him, eyes trained forward on the view. Joel offers a soft grunt in response, hinting for you to continue.

“I thought: Wow, this guy is an asshole,” he scoffs with the hint of a smirk, shaking his head while your own grin plays at your lips, “But then, I got to know you. Forced proximity really tells you a lot about a person. And I very quickly learned how much you care. This world should have jaded you, should have broken you to the bone with what you have been through, but yet, you still find means to nurture. You protect, and you provide. You love so deeply, so incredibly much. Every day I wake up next to you, I thank the lucky stars that I have Joel Miller in my corner. By my side. Watching my back.”

“I know you are feeling something, thinking about something in that head of yours all the time. And I want you to know that I love you as deeply, that I care as much for you as you do for everyone in your life. You can share with me, whatever you feel like sharing.”

Joel is quiet, squinting in the sun as he tosses a round pebble from the sand between his legs into the shallow waters. The ripple appears and dissipates before he speaks.

“That sounded like a eulogy, darlin’.”

You scoff now, that same type of soft smirk that he held minutes before pulling the corners of your mouth up.

“Is that all you took from all of what I said?”

“No, ‘course not. Just, I don’t know, felt like I was listening to what you would say about me after I’m gone.” At that you turn towards him, hand wrapping around his nearest forearm and squeezing with even, steady pressure that says ‘We are not talking about that, I can’t talk about that.’

“I do wanna share with you, I just—I don’t know how. I’ve kept all this inside, locked down in my chest. Anger, temper, violence, even, as armor to keep me alive. Don’t ever think I’ve been very nurturing since, well, since…” His throat chokes up, head drops to stare at the ground. Another squeeze to his arm, this time to say ‘It’s okay. I know. You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.’

Something that he said sticks out in your head, a means to attempt to combat his walls going up again now that they have crumbled slightly. You stand, glancing around out of habit before you pull your shirt over your head, your jeans following with your undergarments in their wake. Joel looks up, expression puzzled as he watches your naked form wade into the water. You hiss as the still-icy water engulfs you from the shoulders down, treading and turning back to your man on the shore. A gentle smile covers your face, beckoning him in with one nod of your head.

He follows suit with stripping down, clothes mixing in a pile with yours as they do on the floor of your bedroom. His own pained expression from the cold lake makes you giggle quietly, a scolding stare aimed your way. He paddles over to you smoothly, the water hitting his chest where he can continue to touch with his feet at the bottom. Your arms slither around his neck, wet fingers carding through the hair at the back of his head. The leverage against him is used to tug you closer, his large palms settling at your waist under the surface while the two of you bathe in the fresh Adam’s ale of these cliffside pools. Two pairs of eyes communicate without words, the soundtrack of the birds and rustling trees occupying the dead air until you speak again, hushed despite the fact that you are the only humans for miles.

“You can take your armor off around me.”

Joel’s eyes flutter closed, a long sigh exhaled as his hands grip your curves tighter. When his burnt chestnut and amber irises are revealed again, he speaks in the same reserved volume that you had.

“I don’t belong there. In Jackson.”

Silence gently urges him to carry on.

“What I’ve done, to strangers, to myself, to Tess, to you, to Tommy, to Ellie…I don’t deserve any chance at life. With what I have taken from others, I don’t deserve to be given anything. Kindness, respect, care, love. From anyone.”

“I’ve been selfish this whole twenty years. I almost left Tommy alone. I dragged us up north to Boston. I got Tess into smuggling. I kept Ellie at a distance for so long because I couldn’t bear to feel that kind of responsibility, that familial tie. And then I chose for her, in that hospital. I couldn’t lose another kid.”

“It—it feels like I should be over the past, over what I have done now that I have a chance at a fresh start, or as close to a fresh start as I could possibly have here in Jackson. I have a shot to build a life with you, to work for Ellie’s forgiveness, to be an uncle to Maria and Tommy’s baby. But what has been chasing me — what has been over — it feels like it’s burrowed under my skin. And all I can feel when I start to forget is these—these heartstopping waves of hurt.”

“And I don’t know how to move on. I don’t know how to forget when my body, my mind, my soul won’t let me.”

Across his cheeks, salty tears have carved rivers, the dampness still in his eyes shining in the midday sunlight. The water sounds as if it’s rushing in your ear, your pulse racing as you attempt to process his confession. His head has bowed in a prayer position, awaiting your means to reconciliation or absolution.

Hands settled on his broad shoulders, another communicative squeeze, this one to say ‘I don’t know either. But I know how to try.’

“You let your people heal you,” Joel’s eyes meet yours, drops cascading from the damp bits of hair hanging over his forehead, attention completely and utterly on you, “Time can’t fix everything. The past can hold us in its grip even with all the time in the world. But people can help you forget. They can help to lessen the pain in your body until it’s merely a pinch. Their love can pull you up when you fall. Their care can nurture your soul to grow resilient again. Their reassurance can teach your mind to hear those sordid thoughts you have but pay them no attention.”

“I want to do this for you, Joel. I want to help you. To care for you. To love you, completely. Your people want to do it for you. And if you can learn from experience, you can do it for Ellie…” Your hands move from his shoulder, skating across his glistening skin and wrapping around the sides of his neck, thumbs resting against his jaw.

“You made choices you had to. Including for Ellie. She was — she is a child. Your kid, if not by blood. She may not understand now, but I know she will find a means to forgive you, or at least understand you.”

“Maybe when she’s older, if she has a kid of her own, she’ll understand.”

Joel’s mouth quips to one side with a faint smile, tears drying on his cheeks as he thinks of the image.

“Reckon we’d be pretty fun, well, sorta grandparents.”

“I think so, too,” you speak with a grin stretched and thumbs brushing back and forth at his jaw, “I can’t wait to grow old with you. To sit on the porch and watch you still yell across the street to your brother for full conversations instead of the two getting off of your asses —”

“Watch it, darlin’,” he warns playfully.

“Hey, it’s true. I listen to it nearly every day. Now, back to what I was imagining, cowboy.”

He nods for you to continue, a full-blown smile on his face.

“We’ll have Ellie over weekly dinners, and whoever else makes up her family. You’ll play me guitar and sing whenever I ask ‘cause you love me so much. I’ll help to heal you, and we will be happy together. We will take our second chance. And you will enjoy your time with your family. And me, hopefully.”

“Definitely with you. My beautiful girl,” his own hand leaves the water, wetting your hair as he brushes it out of your face with tender eyes, “You’re like—like a red rose that’s grown out of my ice-frozen ground. I am so lucky to have you. That you chose me, and continue to choose me every damn day. My grief sometimes feels insurmountable; like I am going to be stuck here forever with no way out of that feeling. But if I get stuck here, with you in my arms and all my people around me, I’d be fine if I simply grow old and wither away back into the earth.”

“I love you, darlin’. So much it might just end in tragedy, that my heart might just explode from lookin’ at you one day. But I do love you.”

A gentle kiss is shared between the two of you, the bitter water combined with your torrid love stirring up a tornado of tingling nerves.

You pull away, only enough to get the words out that you have told him, Joel, your man, every day and will continue to tell him every day you have him, “I love you.”

taglist: @wannab-urs @atinylittlepain @bearsbeetsbeskar @serenaxpedro @casa-boiardi @rav3n-pascal22 @dinsdjrn @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @johnwatsn @amanitacowboy @leeeesahhh @isitmelookin4u @javiscigarette @mrsyixingunicorn10 @sugarspiceanthrax @orphanbird95 @space-cowboy-like-me @tuquoquebrute @rsquared31 @morning-star-joy @canseethebrushstrokes @atremises @sstarboy777 @undrthelights @butiknewyoudlinger @dayrdreaming @disassociation-daydreams @joelsversion @ginger-swag-rapunzel @mydailyhyperfixations @diamndx @mingiast @kdogreads @blxsphemy7 @marchai @littlevenicebitch69 @ghostofbrock @iwrotethissky @ladynightingale @jksprincess10 @swiftispunk @pr0ximamidnight @beskarandblasters

[wheatfieldspoet]

i don’t know how to write your eulogy

for my Lolo

i’m sorry for thinking we had another tomorrow. i didn’t know that forehead kiss would be the last; didn’t think the cross i traced would be a goodbye.

i never said it— only ‘see you soon.’ we planned to eat at your favorite chinese spot; i was just waiting for you to say when, and i would have called in advance to make sure they stocked up on your machang rice.

we’ll never have coffee again but i’ll still make it how you taught me— a little sugar, just a dollop of milk, the stirrer angled on the saucer like a Q— and remember how your eyes sparkled in pride at how quickly your granddaughter learned.

i thought i’d have more time to send you my poems over text. i love you for countless reasons; one of them is the way you read my words to family around the world on a zoom call.

you were the one who put the pen in my hand, trusting me with the foreword for your book all those years ago. who knew how hard it would hurt to be left in your epilogue.

— Jade A.

escapril day 30: tomorrow

@adventurerswritingguild day 30: i’m sorry

[yuusaris]

@rochelle-echidna showed up in the thief king bakura tag cuz I follow it, doing a "post a couple paragraphs of your WIP" share-a-thon thing and said anyone who sees it could do it and I saw it and I wanna do it, I wanna I wanna I wannaaaaa!!!!!

tagging @millenniumringg, @justapalspal @nightingalejune and @ladymdc and anyone else who just wanna wanna wanna like meeeeeee

I'm obvs gunna do a few of these, obviously. I have too many WIP's not to share. I'm gunna do my lmk ones first, then the ygo's and I'll end on a very delayed WIP for rvb, mmkay? mmkay.

--[Unnamed]--

(Context: My last dump was to make way for this - a whole new plot and direction for a fic whose name doesn't suit it right now and is thus unrtitled - the idea is... well, honestly, this is almost all of the first chapter, so, it'll speak for itself.)

“Like a…bri-- a- a wife?” Macaque’s brow furrows. “You want to get married? You.”

“What’s that tone? I could get married if I want!” Wukong spits. “If I even want a queen - I mean, it’s not like we even need one.”

“Then why are you thinking about it?”

Wukong groans, “Well, everyone else’s got one!” and deflates at his status - the odd-king-out. “Bull’s totally gunna marry Jade Face, Peng and Tusk are saddled up, King of Confusion’s just got that new thing on his arm, even White Snake snagged herself some human to mack on-- Not that it matters!” Wukong defends - no, declares, because it is a fact. “Cuz I don’t need one just cuz everyone else is doing it, just - why’s everyone dipping on party time because of some spouse, what’s so important about them? Am I missing something here?”

“If you have to ask, you’re probably not ready for that kind of relationship--”

“Relationship, shmelationship, what’s that gotta do with anything?!” Wukong, just as he finishes, decides he doesn’t like the look on Macaque’s face either. “Y’know, for my right hand man, you’re not bein’ too helpful right now.”

--[Almost And Enough]---

(Context: My S4 Wukong In The Broken Scroll fic I've been working on sinceeeeee fffffuck, whenever it was S4 came out. I've been working on this all year and Chapter 1 IS done, but I want to finish the fic before I post. Either way, we've got a Wukong - currently not Wukong and therefore Monkey -deciding to share his Secret, that being, he's going to leave to find immortality. And he picks a very particular person to share it with first...) The Macaque looks to the sky, the trees, the fruits - as long as it’s not as his King. “The others should know.” Is his only, halting, response.

Monkey shrugs, shoulders hiking then rolling back in a way he hopes is cool. “I wanted to tell you first.”

“Why?” The Macaque asks with a dismissal that’s purely performative. “We’re not close just because we’re part of the same troop - We’re almost strangers, we’ve never even talked.”

Lies are sort of like secrets--

“You should tell the other mountain troops to merge with ours.” Monkey had suggested. “It makes no sense for us to hoard the cave when there’s others who need the shelter too!”

“I can do that,” replied the monkey, a macaque with three round ears to each side of his head. His face was a wild splatter of red with exciting flares, more extravagant than the smooth curves of Monkey’s peach-pink patch. “You’re King now, so...”

--but much less fun.

“Well, ‘almost’ isn't a stranger, is it?” Monkey grins when he finds a stick in the ground - almost a branch but just shy of earning the title. Absently, he answers as he slings it over one shoulder, “Besiiiides, us not talking is as much on me as it is you so, this is me breaking the ice and you being forgiven for not trying.”

--[My Poltergeist Is Dead And Everything Is Worse Now]--

(Context: a trauma-release fic I've been writing while mourning my cat. Weirdly took on life with sections named after bits of Bojack's eulogy for his mother. It's a funeral, taking place within the Milleniaum...Cube? Cube. Plana Cube, after Ryou got ousted from the movie by the Cube. If Joey went to a place no one remembers him, Ryou went to a surrealist funeral, where he'll be around all the people he lost, with a big focus on the Spirit of the Ring. His family is written in past tense because they have passed away and this cannot be undone or forgotten)

He sits at the pew, next to his mother, with his sister crawling into his lap. The Spirit sits behind him, and toys with Ryou’s hair, drawn back as respectably as a boy with long hair can manage. Ryou shakes his head to shake the hand off, but only succeeds in garnering Amane’s infant hands instead. 

“It doesn’t make sense, him being gone.”

Ryou listens to her speak, his eyes on the casket.

“It doesn’t feel real.”

Ryou looks to his side. His mother’s head was bowed, not looking at the coffin. Her stiff body and closed eyes unnerve him from her seat. In a rhythm, she took one long breath, exhaling, and each after became smaller and smaller. In a moment, she didn’t seem to breathe at all - Ryou checks for her chest to rise wide again, and ends up staring instead.

“Did you love him?” Ryou asks her, a thing that’s haunted him just beneath his foundations.

A glassy eye was open, pointed in Ryou’s direction. The answer took longer than Ryou was comfortable with, and the answer itself had been no sweeter.

“Do you?”

--[Love, The Me That's Killing You]--

(Context: Ryou has discovered Bakura's got Hanahaki disease and it's killing them both as they share a body. So he's trying to figure out who is it Bakura could possibly be in love with. Despite efforts to dissuade him, Bakura eventually concedes to the search, rushing Ryou past pictures of the Battle City finals until--)

“That one!” Bakura points. To a young girl with cinnamon brown hair.

“Jounouchi-kun’s sister?” Ryou asks, dreadingly, as Bakura nods, furiously. “...She’s… thirteen.”

There’s a choking sound. “Not… not that one, then.” Bakura rasps. “The other one, there was another one, still had the hair and the - there! Yes, her!” He points, it’s Isis. Ryou’s confused.

“But you just said-”

“I made a mistake, am I allowed to make mistakes?”

“About someone you love,” Ryou gestures to the petal pile, “this much?”

“It was - dark,” Bakura stutters. He stuttered. “And windy, and there was - we were in a lot of pain, Landlord…” Bakura’s brushing it all off.

“You’re dying over someone you just mistook for someone else?”

“Well, it’s not like I spent a lot of time with her, is it?!” Bakura barks. 

“Then what could you possibly love about her?!”

“That… is…!” Bakura stops, sputtering, “That is exactly it! She doesn’t speak to me unnecessarily, just how I like it! She knows her place, unlike a certain someone!” 

“Seen and not heard, is she?” Ryou gags, of his own reflexes, in disgust at the slime-coated sentiment. With a choke, Bakura balks, mumbling about Ryou understanding when he’s older.

--[3 Reasons Why (I Never Told You I Was Playmaker)]--

(Context: I love VRAINS. I love Chatshipping. I will write the Chatshipping somehow.)

“You don’t gotta tell me all that,” Shima says - as if it’s so simple to say even this! “Just say you don’t wanna talk about it.”

“You would have complained that I was keeping something from you,” Yusaku replies, without looking. “You would have felt hurt, gotten upset and run off.”

“I’m never upset with you!” Shima’s shocked, somehow. Yusaku only glances at him, brows stitched in dulled disbelief. “Well.. not for more than an hour, at least!”

‘Not for more than an hour’. Typical Shima.

“And," he continues, pointedly, "I wasn’t upset you ‘got secrets’,” Shima looks out, as if looking for where Yusaku’s eyes had just been. “You act like I’m too stupid to understand stuff.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Yusaku’s quick to deny. Something about what Shima said twists a knot in his chest. “I think you’re overexcitable and you don’t always think things through, and-”

“Sounds like a stupid guy to me,” Shima interrupts with a frown. 

Yusaku’s mouth is stuck open from that, having no course correction for that comment.

Shima, not Typical Shima, stands up. He’s not looking at Yusaku. His fists go into his pockets.

“Whatever,” He shrugs. “See you at school.”

With too straight a gait, Shima walks with a tremble. It quickly gives way into a bursting sprint once he can’t hold it back. And Yusaku is the coward who doesn’t stop him.

--[Wedding Soup (Chapter 2)]--

(Context: after a sleepless night and wrestless workday, Ryou's sunset afternoon ends with many... many tsuchinoko in the backyard. They are notorious liars, known for their penchant for drinking and a deadly bite.)

“And I didn’t even get a chance to answer, the cashier just went,” Ryou pauses, as another dizzy spell hits him. “ ‘Cash or Card’.” With an offended sniff, he takes another long drink of tea - black and intense and brewed with double the teaspoons to make sure it keeps him awake. Ryou sets the mug down with a huff. “As if I’m doing something burdensome by personally restoring a cultural landmark.” 

“This is a nice trap,” One of the tsuchinoko says from the writhing ball. 

“It was certainly the nicest there,” Ryou says. “Not too painful, is it?”

“Agonizing!”

“Oh good, you wouldn’t believe how awful the others looked.” At the corner of his eye, Ryou spies another one slithering towards a covered trap. If the others are aware, they’re just as keen to warn it as Ryou is. “I even looked some up before I went out -  for every humane trap I found in that place, there were ten more glue traps.”

“Sounds fun!”

“I know. I swear, the heartlessness of some people--”

A snap, a yelp, then the frantic rattling of metal as the tsuchinoko flings itself across the trap cage. Ryou dons his thick gloves again, getting up from his spot on the back porch. “Here, here,” he says softly. One hand holds the snake firmly by the back of its tiny head, the other taking the flat bottom of the small cage. He lifts it from the ground, quickly shifts it to the larger tank, and tilts it before opening the flap. 

“In you go.”

--[Gore Couture]--

“Just last week, residents of rural Blood Gulch reported screaming around 2 AM. Police responded within minutes of the third report, but were only able to narrow down the location an hour after arriving on the scene. When officers arrived, they found no body, but confirmed the presence of human blood and organ tissue.”

“Can this schmuck emphasize any more words?” Isaac leaned against the break room counter, watching up at the screen.

“This isn’t a gossip channel,” Mason Wu’s stressed tone signaled agreement. “Someone’s missing at least a liter of blood.”

The television at the station at least showed part of his work on the news, a brief interior look into the storage cubicle. Without the corpse in the arranged outline, there were only blood splatters, disarrayed furniture and a signature - Gore Couture by Felíx.

Maybe the accent on the ‘i’ was a bit much.

“A liter?” Isaac gaped. “Ho-o-oly shit.”

“You’re a damn sociopath,” Wu whipped back to glare. “You do know you’re on thin ice for being a no-show that night--”

“I told you already,” Isaac shrugged. His coffee sloshed dangerously close to the rim of his mug. “I was with somebody.” It wasn’t a lie - Isaac was with abody.

[einsteinsugly]

2006. A Dead Father, a Living Son.

Mistakes, mistakes.

That's all he sees, etched in red pen. It's a mindless blur, a kaleidoscope of colors, as he lowers his joint.

Oh, crumpled bits of paper

Filled with imperfect thought

Stilted conversations

I'm afraid that's all we've got

Some remnant of a teacher joke remains at the tip of his tongue, but he sputters. "Maybe I should start using a green pen."

"Dad, you aren't editing the eulogy with red pen, are you?" A beam of light firmly breaks his hellish reverie, eying a printed page littered with red marks. Little red flags, dancing on the page. "Come on."

"I don't think I'm ready." Eric mindlessly gazes at the antsy redhead, the youngest of the bunch, with his jaded green eyes. "Do I have to wear a tie?"

Leah shrugs, her eyes a sharp kaleidoscope of green and blue. "Whatever makes you more comfortable."

"Okay." He unravels his tie, flinging it into a seemingly dark abyss. Only for Leah to swoop in and catch it, with a sassy smirk. "I feel a little bit better."

Leah playfully drapes the tie around her neck, like she's Avril Lavigne. An awkward, feeble attempt to lighten the mood, but she sadly sighs. "Only a little bit?"

"...Yeah." He twirls a red pen with one hand, and attempts to twirl a green pen with the other. Only for the green pen to fall to the floor. "I think your mom would be way better at this."

Leah rolls her blue-green eyes, nearly to the back of her head. As a voice of reason, she picks up the pieces, and sets the green pen back on his desk. "You'd be way better at this, if you weren't as high as a kite."

"Hey, I'm only high enough to keep myself from going crazy." Like mother, like daughter. "You should get your mom to yell at me, too."

So say it loud, say it clear (oh say it clear)

You can listen as well as you hear

Because it's too late, it's too late (it's too late)

When we die (oh, when we die)

To admit we don't see eye to eye

"You should turn that damn song off," She amply suggests, "It's kind of a Debbie downer."

"This song speaks to me," He dramatically defends, "It always reminds me of me and Dad. Kind of like how that Robert Munsch book reminds me of me and Mom. But that's way more pleasant."

Leah nods, the story firmly etched into her memory. "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be?"

"See, but she's still living." A new reality is rearing its ugly head, and he tentatively pushes past a sea of denial. While balling his tepid fists. "I tried to talk to Dad during his living years, but...it always got complicated. We didn't really see eye to eye on anything."

"How about a sense of honor and duty?" Leah offers an awkward olive branch, patting her bewildered father on the shoulder. "Even though it was honor and duty for different things."

"He never liked the different things." An angry, nervous haze refuses to clear, as he speaks his heartfelt truth. "I was never enough of a man, even when I stood up for myself, because he didn't like what I stood for. Not for war, but for peace and love. Hippie things."

Bullets and books are very, very different entities. They're both tools, but one ends a life, and the other? Is a stepping stone, to many, many promising things.

"You just chose to fight different battles, and that's totally okay."

A kaleidoscope of memories flood his mind, a sea of valiant attempts and numerous failures, and he's firmly jaded. As the world keeps on churning, with or without him.

I couldn't make a difference, and Dad couldn't, either. "I think I lost them, just like he lost his."

[s0nge-0ff-th33-d4y]

[Verse 1]

The old me is dead

Someone write a fucking eulogy

Hands on your neck

Your favorite jewelry

Don’t need all your insecurities

Before you ruin me

The new me is great

Yeah, I‘m doing all the shit you like (Hate)

Now you‘re double-tapping on my face (Like)

I know you‘re always stalking me, watching me

Fly on the wall, you‘re haunting me

[Pre-Chorus]

And then I see you at the show

Tell everybody how you love me

You miss the old me

You think it‘s crazy how much I change

[Chorus]

You say my deadname

Out loud

I‘m not fucking Emily

Jade

Emma

Rose or Kate

Penelope

Bri

I‘m a legend

I‘m your majesty

The girl you knew is dead to me

[Post-Chorus]

Emily

Jade

Emma

Rose or Kate

Penelope

Bri

I‘m not fucking Emily

Jade

Emma

Rose or Kate

Penelope

Bri

The girl you knew is dead to me

[Verse 2]

The real me is back

Did you have a fucking heart attack?

Bad joke

But I would never take you back

Flaschback

I know you‘re always stalking me, watching me

Fly on the wall, you‘re haunting me

[Verse 3]

Remote view your room

Now she‘s walking in my shoes

Wife and groom

I guess you had to choose life

I know you‘re always wandering, pondering

Where in the world I‘m conjuring

[Pre-Chorus]

And then I see you at the show

Tell everybody how you love me

You miss the old me

You think it‘s crazy how much I change

[Chorus]

You say my deadname out loud

I‘m not fucking Emily

Jade

Emma

Rose or Kate

Penelope

Bri

I‘m a legend

I‘m your majesty

The girl you knew is dead to me

[Post-Chorus]

Emily

Jade

Emma

Rose or Kate

Penelope

Bri

I‘m not fucking Emily

Jade

Emma

Rose or Kate

Penelope

Bri

The girl you knew is dead to me

[Outro]

[vengeancedemon]

TIMING: immediately after part 1. LOCATION: emilio's apartment PARTIES: @highoctanegem & @vengeancedemon. SUMMARY: with the truth undeniable, jade and emilio talk about what happened and what comes next. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

Jade wished she could’ve been pissed at him longer. Cause like, let’s be real… It hadn’t been nice, watching him chat with literally anyone but her online. It hadn’t been nice refereeing all those petty arguments between him and Regan, or watching him start a rotten meat business (?), or trying to get a better read on his situation via those convos while her texts went unanswered. It was super rude of him to pull out the death card now, actually. And okay, mad wasn’t really her style. She was more likely to get back at him in sneaky ways, find a different outlet for all those negative feelings she hated having stuck in her chest. But she probably could’ve made a good case as to why it was totally fair for her to be a little bit miffed about the whole thing. Obviously, the circumstances changed as soon as she entered the apartment and her spidey sense went off. Some pieces were now connected, some puzzles were solved. If she felt any sort of way other than hurt, she could put a pin in it. For now. (The death card kinda was the most powerful card in the deck).

She wasn’t prepared to learn that Emilio had died, obviously. And even less prepared to realize he didn’t stay dead (what were the chances, really?), but something about his admission, something about the emotion he kept restraining in his voice resonated with Jade. It pulled her back right to the couch they were sitting on. As opposed to where her mind had been wandering throughout this, of course. Which was… jumping on the walls, cartwheeling across the floor, trying other athletic feats on the table or something. Being dead then coming back to (un)life was factual, unequivocally true, given the fact that she had eyes and the special hunter sauce. Concrete. But it was his fear that felt the realest thing in the room to Jade. It was his fear that sucked out all of the adrenaline that had been cursing through her body since she set foot in his apartment. His fear was just as real, and that was what made everything even weirder. 

Maybe it was cause she rarely felt scared. For someone who believed herself to be so attuned to her emotions. (Anger wasn’t one, those were just bad vibes that people should just ignore), fear was… novel. For years she’d bypassed it, or maybe she’d simply been unable to identify it. Almost like if one of her siblings had unplugged the wire that was supposed to make that feeling kick in. Like if they’d forgotten to check yes on the trait when they were customizing her personality. Not Ruby, that was totally not her doing, she would’ve said a healthy dose of fear kept hunters sharp, alive for longer. But maybe Jasper. (Mhm, being a daredevil had his seal of approval written all over it). No joke, she could probably count the things she had been scared of in her life with one hand. Her father’s voice. A wasp nest in their tool shed. Going back to Roseville after college. Van getting hurt. Losing Regan. Fear required some kinda perceived danger, didn’t it? Maybe her baseline had been so high growing up, so inhuane, that everything else was… (actual, real) child’s play. Maybe this kinda thing went into the ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’ category, cause… well, she had been worrying about a lot more things recently. And she figured from worrying to fear there was like, a hopscotch of distance. 

Jade looked at him in slight wonder. Emilio was scared, and it took everything in her not to ask, of what? Had he realized, as he bled out (cause given their nightly activities, it was the most likely cause of death, who were they kidding?) that he was actually not up for it? Did he realize he’d wanted an extension on the deadline at the last moment? Was the fact that he’d risen, his own doing in a way? And actually, she had to ask, whether he knew it or not. Whether he could untangle the mess that were his words and feelings to supply an answer or not. If he was scared, then she wouldn’t be. That was one of those simple choices so rarely presented to her, so she made it. “What part is the scariest?” Cause obviously, there was always an easy target to stab, a closer mark to throw a punch at. He wasn’t the big, outward feelings kinda guy, but he was action. He was able to spot the issue even if he couldn’t verbalize how it made him feel. (And they’d already established fear was a big one there, anyway).

Not many things were simple these days, she had to agree with Emilio there. Quietly, not cause she didn’t wanna give him the reason, just cause he was talking and she wanted to be respectful, obviously. (But also, maybe). Jade tried her best not to conflate his negative to let her help, with how she felt about his decision to keep her in the dark about his death. He didn’t imply it was about her qualifications, and she wanted to believe he was being truthful. (But okay, it still did sting a bit) (Based on past experiences or whatever). She looked down at the dagger in her hand, swallowing a knot in her throat. At least she was able to keep some tears at bay for now. Tears she pushed further down when he clarified she would get hurt too, should she honor her intentions of sending him to the farm upstate. She froze in confusion for a beat. She was almost positive he wasn’t talking about her feelings being hurt. (Cause well, that ship had kinda sailed with him as captain). Nuh uh, scratch that, she was positive. He was being literal, wasn’t he? He was expecting her to pick up what he was putting down. 

(She buffered a little).

The what in the puzzle was revealed unexpectedly, as sometimes things were, and it was mostly done by discarding. Mares and zombies…they could hurt, (she sure had a bullet wound scar thanks to that gay cowboy), they had abilities they could use to inflict damage, but she was more or less equipped to deal with them. Their disposal wouldn’t inherently harm her, if she took the right measurements. But Emilio made it sound inevitable. And she could almost see the dim walls in the living room being replaced by pale blue ones from the room she shared with Amber. She remembered as they went over her sister’s flashcards (cause she was a nerd like that) (in hindsight, Jade was always gonna have to carry the mantle of being the cool Bloodworth), learning key facts for each undead species. She was never the one who retained all of it, but of course, the knowledge remained. 

About three things she was absolutely positive: First, he was confirmed not a vampire. Second, he made his final demise sound like an event. And third of course, the common thread of revenge and unfinished business during his lifetime. Yeah, no. That piece of the puzzle was impossible to fit anywhere else. “Oh,” she said dumbly, even though, it was the smartest she’d felt since she figured out which of her plants she was overwatering. (All of them) (And okay, she shouldn’t feel smart simply cause she was actually displaying deductive skills any decent slayer would. But the dubs were so rare these days, let her have this) (And also, her plants were doing a lot better now, by the way, after some trial and error). She winced, realizing just a minute ago she’d been thinking about how it was kind of a silver lining that Emilio got to keep immortality as his skincare? Okay, maybe not. He was… he’d eventually…

Jade held her breath as he contemplated her offering, the revelation of his nature pressing new tears against her throat. They could figure out something, they just needed more time. An unwanted sensation of déjà vu swooping in her belly. She’d been in this position before. This… helpless. She didn’t like thinking about it too much. To the point that they (her earliest memories) had become one of those [redacted] chapters. One of those… episodes banned in 50 countries. She’d pleaded silently and not so silently before, for Onyx to let her off the hook, for him not to hand her a knife, for him to skip this one lesson and this other hunt, for him not to capture vampires for her to stake on “special days”. And he’d listened, he’d delayed her training, he’d assigned her easier tasks (like holding a crossbow far away from the action). His love had made him ‘soft’, his words, not hers. (His biggest mistake, he’d called it recently too, after all those years reassuring her it wasn’t the case). 

But maybe he was right. Maybe if he hadn’t loved her, if he hadn’t hesitated to subject her to the same training all slayers went through, then she wouldn’t be here, questioning how many more times she was gonna keep failing. Questioning if she should make exceptions for undead best friends. Why did he even listen to a kid? He should’ve known better, and then no one would be in this mess. He couldn’t be the hands that cradled her and also the ones handing her the knife, it didn’t make sense. He’d set her up for failure and now had the gall to hate the consequences of his actions. (It was whatever, she was not going on a tangent about him) (anymore).

She’d pleaded for Emilio to stay a little longer, to give it time to figure things out, to give them time to catch up, despite her duty hanging above them, despite her willingness to hurt them both. And so, he loved her enough to let her off the hook, too. Loved her to the point of taking that blade away from her, to the point of enabling her failure, too. Which, based on the scorecard, it seemed like the only way people around her could love her. It used to bother her, how no one seemed to root for her glow up. But now it bothered her that she wasn’t nearly as bothered by it. (Like, maybe people not wanting her to be a murderer wasn’t so offensive, whatever) (She should still care a little, though, right?). What Jade wanted to focus on, was Emilio agreeing to stay a little longer. Agreeing to sit with her on this couch, letting her pour one out for him. Metaphorically. Except, not really. She’d just pour it out of her mouth, too. She set the dagger on the couch first, but then decided to place it on his thigh. And when she let go of it, she looked ahead, at the wall (that was definitely lacking in the nude photography department), before leaning her head on his shoulder. She sighed, blinking a few remnant tears. “I bought it for you. The sheath’s inside the bag,” along with the banana magnet, that sorta didn’t sound nearly as funny now. But well, this was the first time she’d come back from a so-called family vacay only to find her friend had turned into a… fury. She had some experience for the next time that happened.    

She wanted to walk on eggshells, respect his time, but also, was she even the Jade he knew if she didn’t push a little bit? If he didn’t earn at least one eye roll from him? Emilio might have been scared to touch those subjects, but she wasn’t. Couldn’t be. Wouldn’t be. (And somehow, she had allowed Onyx and Ruby to question the kinda person she was with very minimal pushback) (Why?) (She knew why. Hated the why). “Have you fed?” Did he already know… what, um… specific brand of… meal he needed? (Did she want to know? If he was gonna be committing… Actually, she did wanna know. He wasn’t Metzli, he was Emilio. She’d always want to know). 

Emilio, who was dead, and he’d come back as a fury. In case the audience at home hadn’t caught up, by the way. Sorry, Jade was there with the rest of them now. Her heart was still doing laps around the room, threatening to jump out of the window every now and then, her body still seemed to be leaking grief despite her best efforts, but her mind had already created a nice little compartment, added a few cute stickers to the folder with the information, and closed it for later assessment. The show could get back on the road, even at 30 percent capacity. (Her half speed was many people’s full speed, anyway). 

She poked the hole in her black jeans, trying to get her thoughts in order. There was an avalanche of questions she still hadn’t asked. Was he keeping himself away from everybody who loved him, or just the ones who could sense him? Where was Teddy? Did they know? Was Emilio planning on pursuing revenge on the person who killed him? How and when did it happen? And she knew he might want to push the spotlight away from him, ignore all the uncomfortable conversations, just the way he’d ignored her messages. She’d definitely wanted to discuss her California adventures with him, but that was before she showed up to him chilling on the couch, reeking of death. That kinda stuff had a way of rearranging priorities, shockingly. 

Cause there was no way to get back to any normal friends catching up moment, nope, but Jade could offer him her consistency, she could resume her position as the comedic relief. Wrestle him away from the storm in his head, peel a couple layers of severity out of the situation. Had to, cause Emilio was scared. But she wasn’t. (Not yet). “I kinda hate that and I can’t be mad at you for ghosting me, cause… well, that joke is ripe for the picking, isn’t it?” He really did almost ghost her for realsies. “Plus, you beat me at the who had the worst April competition.” And actually, it was the second April in a row where they both seemed to be going through it. Maybe next year, they should invest in some bubble wrap in advance. She was gonna add a note on her phone. “You just…had to go and one up me,” she clicked her tongue, tempted to steal the bottle back from him, but nope… she was gonna have to rinse her mouth later if she did. She wished Emilio liked sugary drinks better. (More importantly, she wished her friend hadn’t died while she was on the other side of the country. She wished she hadn’t left for two weeks, cause then maybe she would’ve been hanging out with him when it happened. She wished he hadn’t returned as a revenge-thirsty creature. She wished he could’ve seen his daughter again. She wished she could offer him relief in a way that didn’t eliminate him from her life) (Alas, only one of those problems had any room for fixing, so… time to start introducing him to cocktails). 

“I missed you,” she said softly, aware of how extraneous to anything they were talking about her words were, but… for the three weeks she’d been unable to talk to him, the three weeks she hadn’t known what was going on, that had been the most frequent thought in her head. She’d missed her friend, and that didn’t change just cause there were more pressing issues to tackle. At least, she was actually able to say it. (A relief that should’ve felt viscerally wrong, but didn’t). Then she bristled, tasting the salt of the tears rolling to the corner of her mouth. “If you didn’t wanna pay me my 70 bucks you could’ve just said so, you know?” Cause that had definitely worked so well for him before. Honestly, the more she thought about how he was sure he was getting rid of her so easily, the funnier it got.

—

What part is the scariest? It was a fair question and, really, was that any surprise? Jade confused him, sometimes. Jade spoke in ways he didn’t understand, made him wonder if he came from a different planet than she had instead of just a different country, made him question just about every aspect of his life because how could they be made of the same history and be so different? How could they both claim the title of slayer and wield it in ways that were nothing alike? Jade was an enigma, was a riddle, was a case he’d never quite been able to solve. She wore her mask in a way that felt different from Eve, different from Teddy, different from Emilio himself, and he didn’t know where the edges of it were. He didn’t know how much of the strangeness was a disguise and how much of it was Jade. He knew her the way you knew a book written in a foreign language. You could turn the pages, you could even translate the words written on them, but they’d never sound quite as they should.

But even when Jade was confusing, even when she made no sense at all and made him want to yank his hair out and roll his eyes and ask questions whose answers wouldn’t make any more sense to him than the questions themselves, she had never treated him in a way that was unfair. She had never asked him to do anything that he’d felt she had no right to ask for, never expected things that weren’t right for her to expect. He didn’t always like the things she asked him — namely, they’d disagreed on their duty and what it entailed more than once — but he’d never been able to deny that she had a right to ask, anyway. This was no different. It was fair to wonder which part of his experience had been the most terrifying. 

The problem, of course, was that Emilio was still wondering the same himself.

He didn’t like to think about his death. He wondered, sometimes, if it would get easier as time went on. A hundred years from now, would it be a dimple instead of a canyon? Would he be able to laugh about the ridiculousness of it all, roll his eyes at how foolish he’d been? It seemed impossible. Right now, thinking of it at all ached. 

He could tell her how he’d felt when that knife went into his chest. He could tell her about the fear, about how unexpected it had been. He could tell her about the way he’d thought, up until the moment the blade twisted, that he was going to find some way out of it. He could recount the cool metal of the dumpster as his limbs were folded inside of it, could recall how the light was the first thing to fade and the sound was the last. 

Or maybe he could tell her about his thoughts instead, about the foolish way he’d thought there might be something waiting for him when it was all over. He could tell her about the moment he registered death as inevitable, when he’d imagined himself forgiven for every wrong he’d ever done, because wasn’t that how it always went? Living people were complicated, messy things. They made mistakes, they faltered and they fell and they let down everyone they cared about and everyone who cared about them. But the dead were simple. The dead were like clay; you could shape them into whatever you’d needed them to be. In life, Emilio and Juliana fought so much and so often that he remembered her voice best in angry tones and screaming insults. But in death, he imagined her softer. In life, his sister had betrayed him, had told his mother things he’d never wanted her to know and signed his death warrant in the process. But in death, he always thought of her as she’d been at sixteen, when Victor’s death united them in their grief. In life, his mother was someone he’d wanted to get away from. In death, she was right. 

There was a reason, he thought, why only the dead were sainted; none of them could object to the title.

He could tell Jade about all of this, but it wouldn’t answer her question. Because hadn’t waking up been just as terrifying? Hadn’t he fought against the bodybag Eve had zipped him into? Hadn’t his chest heaved with breaths he didn’t need to take, hadn’t the world closed in around him when the realization struck? Hadn’t he felt Eve’s blade against his throat and thought, for a moment, that he ought to encourage her to saw through his neck even knowing how afraid he’d been with a knife in his chest, even knowing that forgiveness was a thing he’d imagined and could never truly earn? 

Or maybe, he thought, Jade would want to hear about the darkness. What would she think if he told her that, for the first time, his eyes didn’t automatically adjust to the dark and grant him the ability to see through it as easily as they did daylight? How would she react if he recounted how he’d felt in that bodybag, unable to see anything at all? Children were afraid of the dark. Would Jade think less of him if he admitted that he might be, too? If he listed out every part of the experience that haunted him, what would she say?

Dying was harrowing, but so was coming back after. Feeling his heartbeat fade had been just as scary as feeling its absence now. He’d been afraid in the dumpster, with his blood soaking the metal; he’d been afraid in the bodybag, with the darkness all around him. He couldn’t tell Jade which part was the scariest. He couldn’t even answer the question to himself. 

Fair questions, he thought, were often the hardest ones to form an honest response to.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. It felt like the kind of confession he should have been making to a priest, but he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome in a church anymore. 

(The religion his mother had clung to was about a man who died and got up after, a man who was killed and shook it off because he still had more left to do. Was it hypocritical, then, that she’d also dedicated her life to killing others who did the same? What was the difference between a messiah and a monster? When did one become the other? Emilio knew which he was, knew his mother would have agreed, but he still wished there was a clear line in the sand to distinguish the two.)

He wasn’t looking at her, but he didn’t really need to be. He could feel it, the moment she understood the thing he wasn’t saying. Jade wasn’t Eve, who knew more about fae than she did the undead. A fury was rare enough for most wardens to be in the dark about what they were, but a slayer would know of them intimately. Perhaps only through stories — most slayers Emilio knew never met one at all, and for obvious reasons, few people knew a living slayer who’d successfully dispatched a fury — but it was something they all learned about anyway. There were whole hosts of undead things to worry about, but the best slayers had at least some working knowledge of all of them. 

So Jade knew, now, what he was. She was the second person to have that distinction — the fact that Owen found it out before she had made his skin crawl just a little, even if it was no one’s fault but his own — and the second to know exactly what it meant. Owen wouldn’t kill him because Owen was selfish (or so he claimed), because he wasn’t willing to give his own life for such a cause or because he wanted to watch Emilio suffer through his afterlife firsthand. And Jade wouldn’t kill him because Emilio was selfish, because he wouldn’t let the last act in his life be taking hers. And so there were two slayers who knew what he was, and two slayers who would do nothing about it. Emilio would continue to exist in this miserable, in-between state, and they would continue to let him. 

Part of him wondered, then, if that meant he wasn’t alone in his monstrosity. It was a terrible thing to wonder, but couldn’t that be said of all his thoughts these days? He was a monster, with awful thoughts and unfair questions, but he didn’t know how to stop any of them from swirling around in his head. He would hurt people. It was an inevitable thing, something that could not be avoided. He would hurt people, and Jade and Owen knew it, too. They’d spent years learning about it, having it carved into them the same way it had been carved into him once. He would hurt people, and Jade and Owen knew it, and neither of them was going to do a goddamn thing about it. Did that mean the blame was shared, then? Did that mean Emilio got to slice up that guilt, to cut it into parts and hand pieces to each of them? To Eve, too? To anyone who knew a monster when they saw one, but let it go on with its monstrous life all the same? 

Jade said oh, and all he could do was nod. She knew what she was, and she held the knife in her hand but did not use it. She sat beside him on the couch, and her heart was still beating. And he loved her, and she loved him, and he tried, again, to answer her question: which part was the scariest? Bleeding out in the dumpster, or sitting on a sofa with his best friend after and telling her about it? He weighed the two on invisible scales, put the bloody teeth and the crumpled limbs on one side and the soft cushions and still chest on the other, and he still didn’t know which weighed more. He was dying, and then he was dead. He didn’t know which of those things was worse. Maybe the scales were perpetually even. Maybe both things weighed the same. Maybe the only difference between the fear of the dying man in the dumpster and that of the corpse on the couch was the fact that the latter’s heart was incapable of pounding to show it off.

She shifted beside him, the hand holding the dagger moving, and if she were anyone else, maybe he would have flinched. But this was Jade, and the dagger was not bound for his throat. She placed it on the cushion before thinking better of it and placing it on his thigh instead, and he marveled at the decision for a moment. She was sitting on the couch beside a monster, and she was handing him a blade. He was sitting on the couch beside someone designed to end his life, and he rubbed the handle absently and made no move to grip it. She’d said once that they were both shitty slayers, and she’d been right. And now, they were still bad at the things they were designed to do, even if they were no longer designed for the same purpose. There was a knife between them, but no violence climbing up the blade. There was a knife between them, and it might as well have been a bouquet of flowers. It was love; it wasn’t violence. Emilio wasn’t even sure when the two had stopped sounding synonymous. 

“It’s nice,” he told her, because it was. It was clear she’d taken time picking it out, clear she’d been thinking of him while she did it. “I like it. I would have liked it.” He should do that, shouldn’t he? Talk about himself in the past tense. That was what you did with the dead. That was how you differentiated them from the living. Emilio would have liked the knife Jade had gotten him, but Emilio bled out in a dumpster before she made it home to present him with the gift. Emilio would have laughed at it, would have made a joke, would have tested the weight of it in his hands and nodded in quiet appreciation. Emilio would have done a lot of different things, but the corpse on the sofa could only stare at the blade and absently run its finger across the handle. 

Jade asked him to stay a little longer and he would, even if only for her, but that didn’t change the facts. She wanted him here, but he was still dead. A corpse was still a corpse, even when you loved it. It would still decay, even when you kept it propped up on the sofa and sat beside it. Jade loved him, and he loved her back, but it wouldn’t start his heart back up. They both knew that.

He’d always liked that Jade was to the point, even if he flinched at the bluntness of her question now. It was still fair, and he was still honest, because that was how they were to each other. It didn’t matter if the question she asked him was one he didn’t like — he would answer it. He would tell her the truth, even when they both wished the truth was something different than it was. “Once,” he replied, thinking of the way his blade slid into Siobhan’s gut. His eyes flickered briefly over to the wall she’d stumbled against, to the dark stain he hadn’t bothered to scrub off the floor. “But… only a little.” I didn’t kill anyone, he could say, but what would it matter? They both knew that would change soon. They both knew his track record was going to get bloody sooner rather than later. “I’m still… figuring things out.” Still trying to determine the best way to feed, the right way. He didn’t know if stabbing Siobhan hadn’t satiated his appetite because she’d survived the experience or if she just wasn’t the perfect target for his rage, and he wasn’t sure how to figure it out without getting more blood on the floor.

He let out a hollow laugh at her statement. This probably did bring a whole new definition to ghosting, even if he only barely understood the existing one. “I guess… at least I’m committed.” The joke fell flat, mostly because it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. Everything felt empty in a way it shouldn’t have, because he should have felt relieved. He was sitting next to his best friend on the sofa, and she hadn’t put a knife to his throat. He was sitting next to his best friend on the sofa, and she’d asked him to stay even knowing what it meant. He was sitting next to his best friend on the sofa, and he loved her and she loved him and he felt empty, anyway. The world was still heavy, and his knees were still buckling under the weight of it. Loving and being loved didn’t make anything any less crushing. Somehow, with the most awful parts of him, he thought it almost made it worse instead. “You know me,” he said quietly, still staring blankly at the knife on his thigh, “I like to win.” They both knew that this wasn’t any kind of victory. They both knew that everyone on this couch had lost something they were never going to get back.

The lump in his throat made it hard to swallow, but he took another long swig from the bottle and he swallowed it, anyway. He pretended the way his eyes burned was because of the taste of the whiskey and not the weight of her words, pretended the way they watered was the alcohol burning in his chest. “I missed you, too,” he admitted. He wanted to be angry with her, even if he had no right to be. He wanted to scream at her for not knowing, somehow, that he was in an alley in need of backup, wanted to berate her for leaving town and letting him die in a dumpster with a hole in his chest. But his limbs were heavy and the world was on fire and he thought maybe, for one night, he could be empty instead of angry. Maybe, this one time, it was the better option to be. “I’m sorry. For… all of it.” For dying on her, for coming back when he shouldn’t have, for avoiding her for as long as he had, for the fact that tomorrow, he’d probably go back to being angry. He was sorry that she loved him, and he was sorry that he loved her back. He was sorry that neither of them was very good at loving. He was sorry for everything. He’d never learned how to be much else.

—

‘I don’t know’ had the same ring to it as ‘all of it’, which only sank her heart deeper. And honestly, Jade should’ve seen it coming from a mile away. The guy had died, he’d lost everything for a second time, and then well, how many times could she keep repeating the tiny little detail of him coming back as the thing they were nurtured to hate? Or pity, in her case. (But… some could argue that it was just a nicer way of framing it, wasn’t it? And would they be wrong?) (That remained TBD, the thought sure kept nagging her.) So fine, maybe it was naive of her to hope that it wasn’t all bad. Naive to hope there was any kind of silver lining in death and unlife. Like, even Rose had that door when the Titanic sank! 

Someone back home would’ve said she was too grown for that kinda mentality. (But, she said she wasn’t tangeting about him anymore, so). 

Emilio had never been a man who displayed his fear the way he did his anger. Actually, anger was just the placeholder for the entire wheel of emotions with him. It didn’t fool her, obviously, cause Jade got it, hunters and fear had a weird relationship. (Kinda like hunters and happiness) (Or hunters and non-repressed feelings). So the fact that he was willing to show it now, own up to it under these circumstances, in front of her, broke her a little bit. She couldn’t picture it, couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t feel it. Being terrified of so many things. She didn’t want to either, experiencing crippling fear wasn’t in her bucket list. But she wished there was a way to split the bill, so to speak. That he could Venmo her two or three of his fears, and she could waste them all away. Sadly, there was nothing transactional about this, he could not work out how to do it. He kept footing all of the suck.

Jade watched him gauge the knife, while the notion that he was scared of so many things remained at the forefront of her mind. Had he really feared that she’d put the knife to his throat? That she’d found out about him and she’d stormed into his apartment not to see him, but to finish him? Did he fear other slayers now, in that case? Did he fear his own kind? (Did they still count as his kind?) (But also, would he be wrong? To now walk around with more paranoia drizzled on top of his paranoia that someone might tail him to end him just cause… He was…) (Nope. She kept running into tricky questions she swore not to touch yet. Better swerve on that). 

After a silence, he thanked her for the gift, but the smile about to bloom on her face didn’t prosper. He was speaking in the past tense, like he wasn’t literally sitting right next to her. She frowned at it, felt her lips tremble, but didn’t say anything about it. Was that what he wanted? To be referred to as a dead man? Was he testing things out? She like, kinda understood it. Not in such a dramatic way as being dead and coming back to life, but as in… life had taken her on a little journey too, since she decided to go solo. And whether she liked it or not, she could feel it. He probably felt it too, tenfold: The disconnect. Between who he was before he died and who he’d become after. 

Could a person really change that much? The simple act of flipping a switch, and fully glowing up was actually not simple at all. All those life coaches on Instagram had lied to her. Cause so far, every time she’d tried to go against herself, what she’d been taught, what she’d believed so fervently, she ended up finding out she was being rudely weighed down by several monkeys that didn’t even belong to her circus. She most definitely didn’t remember picking them up on her own. The closest thing she could imagine to Emilio’s predicament was humans going through near-death experiences. Some did come out to completely do a 180 on their life, didn’t they? Maybe they had gotten a little highlight reel of all their greatest hits and realized it was kind of a flop, and it was super embarrassing. So they had no other choice but to actually redo it all with a little more zest. 

She’d normally chime in, get her motivational speaker on, but this was as close to an original experience as one could get. Though maybe…not? There had to be records of previous hunters who’d come back for an encore. She’d never met one. But maybe her siblings had. Maybe Eve had. Maybe she could ask. Keeping it all hush hush, obviously. (Asking for a friend and all) (It wouldn’t even be a lie). What were they talking about? Oh, “you can still like it,” she said gently. Wasn’t that a choice in itself? She’d been learning a lot about choices recently. Like wall paint and tiles, and bedsheets. “Or you can hate it, that’s okay too,” Cause Jade didn’t care if Emilio decided he no longer liked knives, or if he decided he loved knives even more now (that sure would be a feat), or if he decided to pursue his newfound passion of sailing boats, or skydiving, or whatever. (She drew the line at MLMs, though.) She just wanted him to share that with her. And expect appropriate clowning, should his choices be silly. That’s what friends were for, after all. 

In a sense, he had an unmatched opportunity to flip things around. Enter a different era. Jade vibrated with the possibilities for about three seconds before she was brought back to the very painful reality that he was now a creature who needed a new sustenance, who needed to inflict some sort of revenge upon somebody else to keep walking this earth. (Hard to enter a new era with the odds so stacked against, right?) Sustenance he already got a taste of, apparently. Cool, cool, cool. Super chill. It was her own question, there was nothing vague about it (nor did she want to be, considering everything at stake) (sorry, poor wording). And she’d braced for the answer, but still… he had gone and done what was now in his nature. She tried not to have any dramatic reaction to it (and sure that was hard with an expressive face), but she was pretty proud of her clenched jaw and slow breathing. “Uh huh,” good, she could’ve added, would’ve added (except) (except… those monkeys). Good that he’d already taken precautions. That, in a sense, was also a dutiful thing to do. The slayer thing to do. Preventing a more violent outburst. Her brain was still a little scrambled, putting all those thoughts on the table at the same time, though. She nodded, “okay, that’s… You gotta keep figuring things out”.

And he’d hopefully tell her how that went next time. And Jade would… cope with the knowledge that she’s allowing it to happen (it was such a small act, in comparison to the storm he was weathering). Cause… Love made you stupid sometimes. Or all times, really. Sometimes it meant letting the love of your life drag home all the stinky dead things she saw, sometimes it was pleading to the sister who raised you to stop being so freaking narrow-minded, sometimes it meant letting your best friend commit violent acts in order to stay ‘alive’. What an inconsequential little feeling. She loved it. She hated it. She got high on it. Right now, she was a little mad at it. But most of all, she did not want some made up higher calling or anyone who believed in it to dictate and restrict who she could give it to. Not anymore. (But again, just declaring you were turning over a new leaf only made it easier for people to point out when you actually weren’t doing that at all) (But boy did she want to).

His laugh, defeated and miserable as it was, did make her chuckle in turn, though. She wasn’t about to go full Grey’s Anatomy gang laughing at George’s funeral (not that he’d understand the reference) (and you know, with eternity on the horizon… what were 22 seasons of a medical drama?), but it did feel nice. The pressure in her chest loosened a bit. “Committed to the bit, yup,” she tacked on, for old times' sake. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever fully managed to get him to understand what the bit meant but… it didn’t matter. She just wanted things not to be so heavy for him right now. “Sure,” she dragged her vowels in a skeptical tone. He claimed he liked winning the worst April competition, that might be the funniest joke uttered yet. Jade would’ve liked to swap places, maybe. Or, preferably, she would’ve liked both of them to enter the best April competition. If that was a thing that existed. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have met the qualifications or something. She figured that kinda contest had strict zero body count requirements.  

Jade kept her temple against his shoulder, letting another quiet moment pass, (and maybe it wasn’t an unnecessary, dreadful thing) (silence belonged in music sheets too, after all), until she heard his apology. It stirred her back into a sitting position. It was still odd to hear those words. Cause back home, people just did things. A whole lot of wrong things, apparently, she was starting to realize. And when they wronged you and decided they couldn’t stand your pouting anymore, they’d bring you a plate of fruit, or they’d invite you to the movies or… There was never like, acknowledgment of hurt feelings. The train kept moving, and you just had to hop right back in without paying attention to the wreck it’d left behind. (And she did get pretty proficient at both doing the wrecking and jumping into wagons so… the system couldn’t be that bad, right?). If anything, apologies had only become a more normal thing in her life recently. Regan had coaxed words out of her that had felt foreign her entire life. Had created a kinder, gentler space for her to mess up, for her to admit when she felt hurt, too. And as it turned out, she didn’t hate it one bit. Even if, being unapologetic still had its perks from time to time. 

Something about the upbringing of a hunter had Jade wondering if the Cortezes had followed similar strategies. “Yeah, well…” She sighed, and she could feel her tear ducts activate again (a sentence she wasn’t sure she would’ve ever thought about if she hadn’t met Regan). It was nice that Emilio was sorry. Some of what he had done had been pretty dumb, obviously. But there were choices influenced by fear. Fear that Jade couldn’t begin to understand. She was totally out of her depth here. And even if the hurt didn’t vanish with one apology, even if she couldn’t get back all those weeks in the dark, even if she couldn’t unfeel the loneliness and the confusion, she also didn’t plan on holding it over him (not in a mean way, at least). Jade was willing to let the death card stand a little longer. 

“I’m sorry too… sorrier, even.” Sorry for your loss, people liked to say. It was super strange to offer condolences to the person who’d died. But Jade was sorry. Sorry that he’d died scared and alone, that he now existed as a monstrous being, that he had seen himself as monster even before all of this anyway, that she’d asked for him to spend more time as said abomination, that she took too long to come out here and figure out what was wrong, that it wasn’t as simple as mourning a friend for her either, that she dared to think mourning a friend’s death would ever be the simpler scenario, that still despite everything, she thought they could work out a solution. Yeah, Jade was immensely sorry. And she wasn’t sure hope was what Emilio needed from her right now. She wasn’t even sure she needed the Whiskey, or a blade, or a banana magnet. Maybe he just needed someone to sit by his side, and prove to him, despite his inclination to cover his ears and eyes to what was in front of him, that his life had had more impact as a human being than it ever did as the weapon he was brutalized into becoming. 

“I’m gonna assume you’ve done a whole lot of silent contemplation lately, so…” Momentary truce with the concept of silence aside, Jade still believed it was a little bit like torture, and she figured, nay… she knew Emilio could do without it right now. She knew he would get back to it eventually, and his thoughts would be louder than any word he could speak, so for now, Jade would rather keep him right on this couch, with her. “I guess I need to ask for the story,” she tested the waters, for both of them. She felt more drained, but also less on edge. She could take it, she could hear about the man who’d decided to hurt them both, about the blade that sank into him, about the organs it pierced, the life it drained, about the ground he bled on, about what came after. And maybe it was selfish to ask, but Emilio of all people knew what it meant not to have answers.    

—

There was nothing more terrifying than the concept of being understood. It wasn’t something Emilio had realized until later in life because, in the beginning, he had wanted someone to understand him. His siblings never quite had, and none of them had ever really tried to, either. Neither had his mother. Even his uncle, who had perhaps come closest to at least housing the desire of comprehending the youngest Cortez, had fallen short in actual practice. Emilio had been so hungry for that understanding, had chased it so adamantly into adulthood without expecting he’d ever catch it. 

He’d chased it until he was 26 years old and Edgar’s friend from camp needed a place to stay. He’d chased it until his brother volunteered Emilio’s couch, “because it’s not like you use it, anyway.” He chased it until Juliana took one look at him, smiled with sharp teeth, and introduced herself in a way that carved her initials into his heart for the rest of his goddamn life. People said, sometimes, that you ought to be careful what you wished for, lest you might someday get it. Emilio had learned that when a woman with dark, curly hair and sharp brown eyes understood him better than anyone else ever had.

It was terrifying, the way she knew him. It was harrowing. She could trace his silhouette in the shadows, could explain him more thoroughly than he’d ever been able to explain himself. Juliana knew the nooks and crannies that Emilio hadn’t recognized himself, knew him in ways he hadn’t thought possible. There was no hiding from her, no pretending to be anything he wasn’t. Juliana knew him. Sometimes, it felt like she’d known him from the very start, from the first day she’d told him her name.

And then she’d died, and it had felt like all the parts of him she’d touched had died right alongside her. 

She’d died, and no one knew him anymore. She’d died, and Emilio hadn’t even known himself. He’d been as much a ghost as she was, haunting a world where he was unknown and unimportant. He’d come to Wicked’s Rest as a restless spirit, ready to turn to a poltergeist and destroy whatever was left in his path. But this town was one full of ghosts and sometimes, they found each other. This town was full of people who, like Juliana, cared enough to try to understand him. 

He didn’t think anyone did a better job at it than Jade. It wasn’t for lack of trying, of course — Teddy and Wynne and Nora and Xóchitl and so many others put all they had into comprehending him, but Emilio was a puzzle who had so many pieces still missing. No one could understand him without understanding where he’d come from — or, more accurately, what he’d come from. Other people looked at his background, at his family, and they couldn’t make sense of it. They couldn’t comprehend why he’d been raised the way he had. Even those who grew up in the world of monsters didn’t always see why some needed to fight them.

Jade was different, though. Like him, Jade was a slayer. Like him, she’d lived her entire life knowing exactly what went bump in the night. Other people talked about second chances, or third, or fourth. But Jade knew exactly how dangerous that kind of thing could be. A monster on its fifth chance usually meant a pile of bodies who’d had every chance taken away. Other people thought that mentality cruel, he knew. Jade thought it reasonable. 

She wasn’t the only one in this town who understood it, of course. Owen knew Emilio better than either of them would care to admit, comprehended him more thoroughly than some of his closest friends to both of their detriment. Eve, too, had a level of understanding that neither of them could deny, had strengthened it in the back of her van with a knife against his throat. Hunterst understood other hunters, even when the style with which they hunted differed. Jade was here, was on his couch, and he wasn’t kicking her out for the same reason he’d let Eve leave whiskey outside his door, for the same reason Owen hadn’t killed him in that barn: because there was understanding here, and he was afraid of it. Because there was understanding here, and he needed it, too.

You can still like it, she said, and he kept staring at the knife. He remembered Eve’s blade against his throat, remembered Owen’s in his gut. Understanding was messy, sometimes. Especially among people like them. You can still like it. Could he? He would have before, but nothing was the same now. He wasn’t the same now. And he wondered, with a glance in her direction, if Jade understood him still. He wondered if his death had killed that understanding at last, if the knife to his chest had finally succeeded in carving out the pieces of him that could only be comprehended by other hunters. (Hunters. Just hunters. Not other hunters, not anymore. The word no longer applied to him; the title no longer fit. Emilio Cortez was not a hunter. Emilio Cortez was something to be hunted, now.)

“It’s nice,” he said, in lieu of answering the question neither of them was asking aloud. Was he still him? The man she’d bought this knife for was dead. The man whose couch they sat on bled out alone, with only his murderers to hear his final words. There was a body in front of her, and it was moving. It was sentient. But it was not alive, and Emilio didn’t know if it was him. He didn’t know what parts of him made it out of that alley; he wasn’t sure any really had. 

Was Jade? Did she really look at him and see the same man she’d known before, despite the twinge in her gut that reminded her, on a constant basis, that he wasn’t? Was her certainty that he was not the kind of monster she’d been raised to despise built only out of love, constructed from the ruins of the understanding they’d once shared? 

If their roles were reversed, would he think the same of her?

None of these were questions he knew how to answer. He wasn’t sure either of them wanted the answers, wasn’t sure they would have been able to cope with them. Some things, he thought, you were better off not knowing. 

For example, Jade would be better off not knowing when he began feeding in earnest. When he did more than nonfatally stab someone who had wronged him (and Regan, for that matter, which might make Jade approve of the choice just a little), when his hunger sunk its teeth into strangers, into humans, would Jade sit beside him on the couch as she was now? Or would she bring a knife that was meant as something other than a gift instead? She told him to keep figuring things out, but how much of that was the naive hope of holding onto a friend? How much of it would remain when the man gave way to the monster completely? 

He’d never heard her as quiet as she was now. Even when Regan was gone and they’d believed she wouldn’t return, even when she was doubting everything she’d been raised to believe was the truth, Jade was loud. She chattered endlessly, her voice becoming white noise that made the things lurking beneath it a little more bearable. But there was no softening this blow; there was no making this bearable. This was the kind of thing you just had to sit with. And right now, in this moment, Emilio was a little too selfish to sit alone.

She was sorry, and what more was there to say? What more to be? She was sorry, and so was he. They were both sorry, and it didn’t change anything. They were both sorry, and everything was as it was, anyway. 

She asked for the story, and he swallowed. He thought of the Wormhole, of the alley outside of it. He thought of the knife, of the way it twisted in his chest. He thought of the black spots dancing at the edges of his vision and the way they eventually took over entirely. He thought of the bodybag in Eve’s van, the fear that still had him by the throat, the hunger pangs that he couldn’t shake, the rage that was all consuming. “I don’t know if I’m ready to tell it,” he admitted quietly, his fingers twitching around the handle of the knife. “But… I can try to answer your questions.”

In the end, wasn’t that all she’d asked of him? Not to succeed, because there was no success small enough to fit in his hand here. Not to claim victory, because that had died when he had. Jade had only ever asked him to try. 

And how could he say no to the only person left who really understood him?

[asoiafandotherbooks]

TWOIAF/Fire & Blood: The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

Warning, Spoilers Ahead…

The King is dead, long live the King!

Prince Aenys had been in Highgarden at the time of Aegon the Conqueror’s death but returned for the funeral.  Grand Maester Gawen proclaimed the thirty-year old as “Aenys of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm”.

Aenys informed the twenty-five years old Maegor: “Brother, you need never kneel to me again. We shall rule this realm together, you and I.” Aneys bequeathed Blackfyre to Maegor, stating “You are more fit to bear this blade than me. Wield it in my service, and I shall be content.”

Maegor now possesses both Valyrian steel blades belonging to House Targaryen.

King Aenys made a quick stop in King’s Landing to be seen and cheered by the populace of King’s Landing before travelling to Oldtown to receive the blessing of the High Septon. Aenys was accompanied by Queen Alyssa and his three eldest children: Rhaena (14 years old), Aegon (11 years old), and Viserys (8 years old). The family was accompanied by three hundred mounted knights and their retinue.

The family, except for Rhaena, soaked in the adoration of the crowds. Rhaena was overwhelmed by the attention and reverted into her shy self. She remained sullen until Queen Alyssa sent for Lady Melony Piper to join them on their journey.

Aenys was anointed by the High Septon at Oldtown, who presented him with a crown of yellow gold with the faces of the Seven inlaid in jade and pear.

Sadly for Aenys while he’s soaking up the cheers of the masses, the rumblings of discontent for his reign have already begun. “Westeros requires a warrior not a weakling” was a common refrain. And Aenys is rather unimpressive standing next to Maegor.

To rehash their accomplishments up to the crowning:

Maegor –

Knighted at 16 years old

Won tourneys

Battled the Giant of the Trident

Led two expeditions against Lyseni pirates in the Stepstones

Gave the eulogy at Aegon the Conqueror’s funeral

Possesses both Valyrian swords of House Targaryen

Aenys –

Made progresses

Feasted with lords

Loves to sing

Has a dragon

It’s not hard to see why lords would prefer Maegor on the throne. Chief among the dissenters was Dowager Queen Visenya: “The truth is plain enough. Even Aenys sees it. Why else would he have given Blackfyre to my son? He knows that only Maegor has the strength to rule.”

I feel for Aenys. He seems to be a good man, a loving husband, and an excellent father but none of these qualities will help him survive the Game of Thrones. He also seems to have a “people pleaser” streak that won’t work in his favor.

Up next, King Aenys’ mettle is tested but will he pass?

[loverandservantoftheahlulbayt]

🍃🌹🍃 Allah (SWT) Opened The Door Of Eulogy And Praise (Of Allah) Upon The Servant So That He May Make His Favors & Beneficences Great And Plentiful For Them.

🍃🌹 Lady Fatima al-Zahra (sa) 🌹🍃

🍃 Ayan U Shia Ataba al Jadeed 🍃

.

[anxious-alyssia]

Dressed in all black I'm giving the eulogy

R.I.P to the kid that I used to be-

It's such a bummer

-didn't recover

the world made - jaded

turned - perfect summer

stone cold like the rock that sits in my chest

Oh no, yea, I swear I tried my best

Now I'm a cynic

I couldn't prevent it

this life isn't mine

but I'm still livin' in it-

Bring Black Roses

Keep, composed, yea...

Can you do a mood board for the Stoll brothers or Ethan Nakamura from Percy jackson please?

《... Eye for

An eye...》

[pr14nce15]

Jade's Funeral

Jade's Funeral was very special. She had all her friends and family around her.

We knew Jermaine struggled with coming to terms that she was gone but we all comforted him while he spoke. Dad went and stood by him in case he couldn't finish his eulogy. It turns out he did it with the strength of us guys and Jade.

The Burial was always going to be difficult as watching someone who we have known for that long to be set free into the spirit world, it was hard for us to lose her presence.

But somehow, we felt it and would never believe she was there until some of us saw her standing by her headstone.

After everyone left, Jermaine wanted a moment by himself with Jade. At this moment he knew she was there with him because they spent time slow dancing together for the last time before she got released into the spirit world.

This definitely showed how much I want to make sure I take good care of Sierra because I spent years watching over these people being in love with their significant others and you never really know how much you love them until they are gone 😔

I hope Jade is in the clouds being an inspiration to them all like she was to us.

[thestalkerbunny]

I decided to revisit and draw my Gnomblin (Gnome-Goblin) Rouge/Wizard, Eulogy Jones, as a little kid. But more of his parents really.

Eulogy's father is a gnome called Mortuary 'Mort' Jones. He's a part of the infamous Jones family who are not only the biggest family run funeral service business; but also famous undead hunters. Mort is more of a stay at home member of the family. He prefers staying at home, managing the papers, deal with the family's primary source of finances. He's honestly a very doting father and adores Eulogy, saddling him with a slew of pet names from Lambkins to Green Bean.

Eulogy's mother is another thing. She is a sex worker who lives and works at a Brothel. It was only Mort paying her a rather ludicrous sum to not turn unborn Eulogy into a 'Was/Were' after his paid encounter with her resulted in a positive pregnancy. The second he was born, she dumped Eulogy off on Mort and severed connection as soon as the check cleared. It didn't stop Eulogy as a kid from trying to visit her by paying off the bouncer with pitiful allowance just to sit on his Mother's dressing room floor and watch her get ready. She clearly detests Eulogy and doesn't hesitate to tell him so. Even though she's ravishingly beautiful and rather popular and is most likely going to be the next Brothel Madame-her bedside manners when it comes to Eulogy begs improvement.

Bonus: Eulogy's adoptive daughter, Maggie, learns about his goofy childhood nickname.

Maggie belongs to @jade-wyton

[yhlong]

太阳神鸟(Tai yang shen niao)-Sun God Bird gold

Features：The Shang dynasty Taiyangshenniao ornament has an outer diameter of 12.5 cm, an inner diameter of 5.29 cm, a thickness of 0.02 cm, and a weight of 20 grams. The entire vessel is round in shape, with an extremely thin body. The design is hollowed out and divided into two layers: the inner layer is a circle with twelve rotating teeth-shaped rays distributed equidistantly around it; the outer layer is surrounded by the inner pattern, which consists of four identical birds flying counterclockwise. The four birds fly in the same direction with their heads and feet connected back and forth, opposite to the direction of rotation of the inner vortex. The whole design resembles a modern paper-cutting work, with concise and smooth lines, rich in rhythm, full of strong sense of motion, rich in strong symbolic meaning and great imagination space. The four sacred birds fly around the spinning sun, and the cycle of life and motion is incessant, reflecting the strong worship of ancient mankind to the sun and birds, and expressing the ancient people's eulogy to life and movement.

History: In the ancient history and legends of Sichuan, there are many records related to the Yellow Emperor, Zhuan Xu and Dayu. There are at least 70 oracle bone divinations from the Yin ruins that record the relationship between Shu and Shang. The large number of excavated artifacts proves that the pre-Qin archaeological culture of the Sichuan basin was strongly influenced by the cultures of the Central Plains, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Gan and Qing regions.On February 8, 2001, some bronze and stone artifacts were unearthed during pipeline construction in Jinsha Village, a suburb of Chengdu, and archaeologists immediately launched a large-scale scientific excavation, with a large number of gold, jade, bronze and ivory artifacts continuously unearthed in a stunning manner. at about 10 a.m. on February 25, a special gold ornament was unearthed, which had been crumpled into a ball when it was first unearthed, and after archaeologists carefully and scientifically After the archaeologists carefully and scientifically recorded the gold ornament, they carefully unfolded the gold ornament - the "sun" and "bird" patterns carved on the gold ornament clearly appeared, along with a large number of jade and gold artifacts showing the power of the king. The unearthing of the gold artifacts proves that this gold ornament is most likely a treasure left over from the grand rituals held by the ancient king of Shu.

Production techniques: The Shang Dynasty Taiyangshenniao has a gold content of 94.2% and is processed with natural alluvial gold. Because the processing tools were not very sharp, they left traces of repeated incising around the pattern. From the analysis of the residual traces of the Shang and Zhou sun gods and birds gold jewelry, its processing at least used hot forging, hammering, shearing, polishing, hollowing and other processes. The whole figure (including the sun and its rays and the four birds) was drawn on the surface of the round gold foil, and finally the pattern was repeatedly incised and cut according to the drawn pattern to form hollowing.

Artifact Value Editor: On August 16, 2005, the Shang Dynasty Taiyangshenniao decoration pattern was selected from more than 1,600 candidates to become a Chinese cultural heritage symbol, as well as the core pattern of Chengdu's city symbol.

[traitor-boyfriend]

one thing i really like about kyle as a counselor (and presumably, a school counselor for young children) is it highlights his emotional blind spots so well and i think that’s readily apparent throughout the episode in his interactions with stan. kyle would make a perfectly fine counselor for young children; they are in the midst of developing complex emotions so relative to adults and adolescents both their feelings and the language they use to express them are much simpler, and that time is when children begin the ongoing development of understanding their emotions, regulating and expressing them, connecting to the emotions of others etc. 

children at this age also have much more plasticity to their habits and thought processes; a child who may not have parents invested in helping them develop good coping mechanisms for stress, but who has a strong support network of non-familial authority figures in daily life who are and help model what that looks like, will have much better outcomes than a child who has no support system b/c the latter has no frame of reference for a different mode of understanding and thus never learns to act outside of what they know. i think kyle is more than capable of being a good sympathetic ear for a small child and acting in a way that guides them toward making good decisions and how to deal with the source of their problems in a responsible, age-appropriate way. kyle has a very nurturing attitude when it comes to younger children and i think inherently understands them and feels more compassion for them than he has his peers.   

when he first calls stan he's very meek and affable in tone even though stan is a little curt with him, but it's when they first sit down in the restaurant that you see kyle suffer that first blow when stan reveals he wants no part in reconciling with him (or anyone) and is only here for the funeral. kyle switches gears and makes no attempt to talk about their relationship anymore and goes straight into the circumstances of kenny’s death before it’s cut short by stan getting up and storming out. kyle doesn’t know how to deal with someone as emotionally unpredictable and deeply wounded by significant trauma as stan is now. 

later at the house you can see kyle trying to embody this almost clinical, detached affectation in the way he speaks. in order to maintain enough diplomacy for them to work together he needs to completely depersonalize his feelings towards stan; it’s almost as if he’s following a flowchart in his head looking for the most logical, appropriate response until he ultimately says, “obviously we’re never going to agree on certain things, so we shouldn’t talk about them.” he’s straight up regressing in his emotional processes solely to maintain this tenuous connection with stan.

quickly that demeanor completely crumbles at the funeral. when stan gets up and has his outburst accusing kyle of orchestrating scott’s eulogy, kyle wholly dives back into this most comfortable emotion: anger. anger is extremely gratifying for kyle -- anger is an easily understood feeling, it is one of our most primal primary emotions, it is a pressure valve release that imitates catharsis, and kyle has always had a lot of anger. he hasn’t become less angry, he’s simply gotten better at masking it. he is extremely angry with stan and that’s apparent in his tone, but it’s not just anger at the accusation, it’s allll this anger that has been building for decades and anger at stan for -- how i believe kyle sees it -- “letting” himself become a jaded, miserable, selfish person by not confronting what’s happened to his family. 

after that his anger is in the driver’s seat the rest of the episode, when stan gets tired of his and cartman’s bickering in the morgue and declares he will fix it just like he always did. kyle resents the insinuation stan always “fixed” everything. which, rightfully so, stan has made as big of messes as frequently as the rest of them, but what he’s not seeing is that stan *has* very often fixed *kyle’s* messes in a way that kyle has not fully reciprocated; stan is often the person who kept kyle grounded and helped guide his conscience and his impulses in the most harmonious way, and when this fails, stan is most often the person who rescues kyle from his poor decision making and reactivity. i think it’s why kyle is so personally offended by stan declaring he used to fix everything in a way cartman is not fazed by. kyle knows the blanket statement is inaccurate, but as it relates to the two of them specifically, it holds much more weight. this just devolves into mockery between the two of them. stan feels misunderstood b/c kyle is not capable of empathizing with him, empathy in general being something kyle struggles with, and kyle can’t deal with stan’s constant derision and refusal to let him in. 

after kenny’s message, kyle seems to find his footing again in articulating his personal feelings b/c he’s had a third party (kenny) to illustrate their issues in a concise way in which they all bear blame, mitigating the back-and-forth volley stan and kyle are bouncing off each other. he sees clearly and is emboldened in what they should do next, in how to forgive each other, even able to convince stan to let down the walls a little to get on the same page as him. i just love how thoroughly stan alone in his presence is able to override kyle’s logical and emotional impulses by virtue of how strong his feelings toward stan are and truly how dependent they are on each other.