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ftbhedges · 1 year

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[the things we lost in the fire]

liturgy iii

Max ordered her out of the house three days past Lydia’s funeral, with those steady eyes and blunt mouth.

There was some non-combantant Aurors with a face so pretty it made Katie’s head hurt lurking around her people, around Lydia’s department.

Evangeline had called her cell phone. There were several letters unopened on her kitchen table Hogwarts friends. There was a concerned message in her work inbox she’d immediately ignored upon seeing the handwriting. There was a photo of her exiting the Funeral Hall splashed on the front page paper:

CMDR. ASHWORTH’S PROTÉGÉ COMPLETES SECRATIVE AUROR FUNERAL HONORABLY

CMDR. SQUINT ANSWERS BLISTERING QUESTIONS ABOUT DEATH OF BELOVED CMDR. ASHWORTH

CAPT. THORNE ON THE CASE! NEW DETAILS FROM CLOSE SOURCES SAYING THE CAPT. HAS NOT TAKEN A SINGLE DAY OF BEREVEMENT.

All staring at her, morning, noon, and night. Lydia’s profile. Katie’s profile. Max’s profile. A rotating triad splattered through the pages intertwined with images of Seren.

CMDR. REESE’S MOURNING RISE TO DEPARTMENT HEAD.

EXTRA! CMDR. REESE AND CMDR. ASHWORTH’S ENEMITY…AND ILLICIT? AFFAIR?

Katie burned that, watched the Daily Prophet single the edge of her loose white shirt, the cursemark growing daily as Katie expended more magic to continue to comb the forensic scene. Her squad back home running after Killer leaders. Her Majors back on their jobs. Her Max in the office dealing with attacks from all sides that Katie was still split on whether or not she deserved.

All of Katie’s attention was here, on the ground, kicking at literal rocks and shuffling through invisible strands of magic. She reached into her jacket pulling from it a flask that was filled with Wide-Eye potion and took a long glug from it, feeling it fill her brain, as if she’d washed her eyes out with peppermint. Momentarily Katie was sure she could see the spells in the air –

Eyebright, Katie thrust her hand into her coat pocket and opened a pack and began to shuffle through. She had to have at least a gram of it… she hadn’t ever used it in the last year of fieldwork. It was too expensive for the Department to allot in their yearly supplies, too expensive for even most security firms to get a hold of, nearly impossible to find on the street. The ground up bones of a Dhampir, the dried blood of a Changeling, and lastly the most damning ingredient the brain matter of a Hippocampus calf only 30 days old and slaughtered.

The going rate for a gram of Eyebright was 10,000 galleons.

The perks of being a Crime and Forensics Investigator included the raids. Katie was no Roland Sidewinder with his shiny Silver Raider badge, but she had her sleight-of-hand and when a gram of Eyebright popped up in the field two years ago any Auror in her Department would have snatched it up. No question they’d all lifted one or two of the rarer ingredients from their crime scenes once it’d been cleared as not being part of the gruesome murder before her. Katie knew for a fact that LaPlante sported Werewolf Fang blades that she kept straped to her wrists, Jansen had managed to pillage a dozen half-born giants one year (which had lead to internal review but still he managed to keep them), what was a gram of Eyebright?

With a triumphant smirk Katie pulled the clothe-of-gold from her pack, and set the pouch onto a table, carefully undoing the string and letting it come open.

The powder was iridescent, it shimmered over the clothe-of-gold, lighter than air it began to hover above the fabric and Katie hovered her fingers over it.

Eyebright did what nothing else could it made faded magic visible, it make the unseeable noticeable and it caused a type of blinding pain that only someone who desperately wanted it could use. Lydia admitted to using Eyebright during the War in her most desperate time, the ability to see spelled traps, shaded alchemy, the cause of potions, view the true shape of transfiguration – Wix were not supposed to do that. The strain of it had landed it’s prolific users in St. Mungos, and it’s stupider ones being driven made to see the thousands of layers of magic within the community.

Katie pressed her three fingers into the powder smearing it until it stuck to the grooves of her fingerprints, stuck against her sweat and closed her eyebrows.

Ashworth would have never allowed a Hunt to go unfinished.

She smeared the powder over her eyelids, the left, then the right, and waited with baited breath for the world to snap into place. But she greeted only darkness, and for a split second Katie feared opening her eyes.

Lydia would have told her to fight the fear, was she a Gryffindor or not?

When the Captain’s eyes opened the entire house was blinding – the scars of magic left bright traces in the floor, blood magic hanging like stains, Katie stared as she found traces of spells that had never been recorded used that night. Then carefully began to step around a crime scene so carefully plotted that Katie could recite it back to her trainers like a trail.

But instead, she was greeted with Magic she didn’t know existed, at least not in practice.

“Voodoo huh…” Katie leaned down to examine a working table that had been thrown to the ground, finding strange magic she didn’t recognize, the use of blood wards and something most called ‘deity’ magic. A type of magic that worked in dedication to a greater magical being. Salazar had practiced this so-called deity magic to Basilisks it was rumored. The earliest of dragon-tamers had started as worshippers. From every corner of the world Wix had used their magic as power and prayer, though prayer and devotional causes of Magic had fallen aside. Though, Penny recalled, the Hawkins wolves and other Clans referred to the Moon as a God of some kind. It wasn’t often studied, but Katie had seen the laboratories of wizards attempting to call on the Beyond for necromancy, seeking out what muggles would call demons or monsters who existed in the Underworld.

It was all a bit too existential for Katie, even when she studied necromancy and practiced it quietly to herself.

“Now what have you fuckers been up too…” Katie knelt beside the fallen alter and followed the traces of magic, the thicker strands of obviously a powerful Witch… some of those traces exited the property and didn’t double back. In each strand an essence of magic fluttered, whether it was a particular scent or gloss to the thread.

This thread was knotted and gold, it wrapped and snaked through the doors like a great serpent, a cobra striking out and where the magic left the cord it splintered and crackled around like lightning.

Katie’s skin was buzzing, with the interest of a scientist Katie proded the meat of her inner arm and found it bleeding under the lightest of pressure. The skin around her face was growing tight, it felt as if it were melting and when Katie reached to touch her cheekbone she found muscle and bone waiting, skin acting like wax and the Gryffindor let out a hazy sort of giggle.

Too much Eyebright then.

Nothing to do for it now, not when this magic was sprouting like a seed before her, flowering, each layer like the ring of a cut tree. Katie’s head was pounded, the beat of war drums in her head as she followed each strand, her body swaying and sweating blood and viscus. Eyebright always went for the face and arms first, then the back, the stomach, thighs, calves and feet for last. It ate you up, using your body and energy and magic to allow you to do the impossible, acted in sacrifice to the magic you called upon.

Katie could pay Lydia her body a thousand times and still do it again with an apolgy for not being better.

The Gryffindor found the room, where the girl and boy had witnessed Lydia’s death. Where Athena had watched Ashworth fade into a nothingness that no-one knew the true outcome of. The cord was splintered like roots, sinking into the place where they’d staked the form of Lydia’s both, all rigid muscle and a tight spine.

The coffin contained a half-gram of the body, Athena had managed to retrieve a gram and turn it over. The only thing Katie would ever thank her for, even as she promised quietly to bright hell around her ears. The other half-gram was tucked into a vial, and it had hung from Katie’s beltloop for the last week and a half, taken from the mortuary she’d slipped into and been allowed privacy. The last link to her Commander, the last aspect of her body.

The last aspect of magic that could tell them how it happened.

Katie knelt, knees creaking and opened the vial.

It pulsed with the same knotted magic; it was intertwined so deeply in the purple of what Katie knew to be Lydia that it seemed like it was consuming it. Swallowing the essence whole, stealing and storing its power – her power, her magic, her lifeforce.

Katie reached for the clothe-of-gold and took off the last of the Eyebright, clenching the packet her hand as the pain wreaked havoc through her body.

But the golden knotted magic remained in her Mind’s Eye, as if seared, as it burn. Katie flicked her tongue out into the air as a serpent might, tasting it, the muddy clean that belonged to soaked mud and storm air. In that fleeting second as the Eyebright finally faded, Katie knew she’d always have the taste of Lydia’s murderer in her mouth.

The door behind her creaked open, and Katie, a bloodied mess of a woman, half the skin of her face slouching off, eyes shot through with broken blood vessels, blood flowing freely from her nose, ears and the corner of her mouth turned. Her entire left arm, from the tips of her finger to her elbow covered in black, searing deeply into her skin, smoking and consuming her inch by inch.

“Now, what the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”

Out of all the hedges in the FTB safehouse, Rue had spent the most aggregate time in the company of Zombie Ralph.

It took some trial and error, but eventually they figured out that even though Ralph wasn’t an Inferius, he still wouldn’t fuck with fire.

Which made Rue the optimal candidate for little chats with the monster. She’d sit inside the upstairs closet, surrounded by a ring of fire as a barrier, for hours and hours on end—especially after Seth was exiled.

It wasn't that Rue didn't agree with Nate’s decision to kick Seth out of the safehouse, after what they’d done. It’s just that Seth had been Rue’s last tie to their lives before; they’d grounded her, balanced her out.

So with Seth gone, Rue was going rogue.

This Ralph was different, Rue soon discovered, from the one they all knew and loved. He was sarcastic, and bitter, and oftentimes outright aggressive. Most of the time, it was like talking to a monster that was simply wearing Ralph’s face and eyes.

But every now and then, there’d be a flash of the real Ralph hiding inside the monster, just out of reach; a downward tug of his eyebrows, the way one cheek would dimple within the creature's grotesque grimace that made it almost seem to echo Ralph’s dreamy, gentle smile.

Painstakingly, Rue started to gather information. With effort, and patience, she was able to get Zombie Ralph talking more readily. Ralph told Rue that he remembered every minute of being cremated, that he could still feel the flames licking at his skin. After that story, Rue took care to temper the flames that shielded her in his presence.

Ralph told Rue that he remembered being remade—his body, his essence being woven together again, thread by thread.

“What’d you see, while you were gone?” Rue asked, and what she meant was, did you see loved ones again, on the Other Side? Did you meet Yvonne?

But Ralph told her his soul, his shade, his lifeforce—whatever it was, it was no longer with him. Only the barest ghostly trace of it existed within the thing that he was now—remnants of it, like a handprint on fogged glass.

He knew, somehow, that the rest of it had not been destroyed. But he didn’t know where it had gone.

Ralph remembered the Daughter who had lured him in, manipulated him before planting that overdose curse on him like a venomous kiss. Inez, she was called; the one from the Instagram photo.

And most importantly, Ralph told Rue where to go looking for her.

The exterior of the Daughters’ safehouse was a run-down secondhand shop. The front door had been blown clean off, and everything in the front room had been destroyed or looted. Fragments of glass littered the floor, crunching beneath Rue’s boots like sand as she walked through the ravaged, abandoned place.

A curtain of hanging beads clacked together as Rue parted them and was led into a long hallway, with floors made of dated linoleum. To the left was a sitting room—or at least the empty carcass of one, left to rot. Bits of broken ‘70s furniture were toppled and strewn about, bleeding out stuffing, with upholstery bearing the scorch-marks of magic.

To the right were bedrooms, all minimally furnished save for some orange-brown shag carpeting and bare beds. Some of the nightstand drawers had been left ajar, clearly emptied. It was all too eerie to look lived in; someone had made a hasty run for it.

Adjacent to the last bedroom, there was a big open room with a kitchenette and dining table. This room looked to have suffered the worst, with dried blood and gore staining the floor and the walls, the windows all blown out. Rue skipped this room, for the moment, in favor of a tiny sliver of light that was coming from a crease in the wall at the end of the dead-end hallway. Rue held up her palm and summoned a bouncing little flame to hover there, casting light around Rue like a torch. She studied the wall, and then shoved against it; it gave way with a groan, revealing a hidden staircase, made of black iron and spiraling upwards.

She crept up the stairs, cradling her fireball, feeling like someone from Scooby Doo. As if just around the next corner, a demonic beast with slobbering black fangs would jump out to fight her.

But the upstairs room—though clearly nicer, and not demolished as the rest of the house was—was, again, empty. This room stank of magic—thick stuff that stung your nose and scratched at your throat, like a perfumed apothecary perched at the mouth of hell, battered with brimstone gone stale. Yellowed skulls and bones lay on low tables, and vials of all sorts of colors and shapes and sizes lined hexagonal shelves on the walls. Upon closer inspection, Rue gleaned that every vial was full of thick, viscous blood—bright red in some vials, and so dark it was almost black in others.

“Yeugh…” Rue muttered in disgust, before a hissing sound behind her made Rue stumble as she whirled around, dropping the vial in her hand to shatter at her feet and toppling others on the shelf. “What the—”

Stretching down, suspended from the rafters, was an absolutely massive, gargantuan snake, as thick as Rue’s arm. “No, nope. Fuckin’ fuuuuuck that…” she said to the snake, who was still hissing at her menacingly, before scampering back down the stairs.

She’d barely set both feet back on the ground floor when Rue heard another presence in the house.

Immediately, she flattened herself again the wall, disappearing into shadows as she held her breath. There was someone moving into that big room, the one with the kitchen. Rue scaled along the wall of the hallway on silent feet, falling easily back into the muscle memory; in her old life, before she’d joined up with the Free Traders, Rue had commonly been a runner for her old gang, tasked with casing potential houses to steal from and squat in, to route exit strategies and carry out petty theft operations to provide herself a few days’ worth of food and shelter.

She peered around the corner and saw a small-statured woman in uniform, doing—something. The longer she watched, the harder it was for Rue to make sense of what she was seeing. The woman was muttering to herself, ambling around in drunken paths along the stained linoleum, occasionally shuddering and emitting unhinged bursts of laughter like the certified neighborhood crackhead.

And Rue was about to leave the nitty to it—what did she care who doped themselves into insanity in this funhouse of blood and decay?—when the woman stepped into a patch of light, and turned, and Rue recognized her—despite the fact that half her face looked like it was puddling off like some melted gelato.

“Oh Captain my Captain…” Rue acknowledged, striding into the room without a single trace of fear or apprehension. She flashed Katie her hedge witch ranking tattoos, black stars that climbed up Rue’s forearms, merely out of habit, many years ingrained with the particulars of safehouse courtesies and etiquette. “…I got unfinished business with these bitches, we go way back. Seems like they split, though…say, bruv, are you gonna be a’right? Don’t take this the wrong way, but it looks like Satan herself chewed you up and shat you dead out, innit.”

@katiethxrne

#p: katie #the things we lost in the fire #december 2020 #mention of death cw #blood cw

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indulgentdaydream · 8 months

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Can you write something where the reader is badly injured in some way and jason rushes her to the manor for help and everybody is confused on who she is bc they didnt even know he was in a relationship (despite them being together for awhile) but they see how soft and cute he is with her. (I’ve never made a request so sorry if it got kinda rambley)

anon you’ve got me TEEMING with ideas I LOVE the trope of nobody knowing jason has a girlfriend and they find out but it is NOT by Jason’s choice nor reader’s.

Also omg? Your first ask is to lil ol me?? That means this is a special occassion. And you’re doing great I’ve def sent worse asks.

Out of the Bag

Jason Todd x Fem!Reader || Hurt and Comfort.

Word Count: 1,862

Warnings: Injuries, swearing, near death experience, blood, knife mention, stabbing, canon-typical violence, use of pet names (princess, baby), drug (pain med) use

You were sat in an alleyway, vision going in and out.

“Tell me something, princess. Anything.” Jason’s voice rang out in your ear.

That’s right. In your right hand, you held your phone, to your ear. Your other hand was pressing the fabric of your coat to the side of your stomach. The blood had soaked through, becoming sticking on your palm and fingers.

You should’ve listened to Jason. You shouldn’t have walked home alone, at night. Luckily your phone had been in your pocket and not your purse, which had been stolen from you by the same guy who decided to stab you.

“Princess,” he sounded panicked.

Right. “Wish I had kicked him harder.”

You heard a sigh of relief leave him, “That’s my girl.”

The phone slipped from your grip a little as your head swam. The sight of blood coming from your own abdomen made no help in quelling your nausea.

You fixed the phone. You had called Jason the second the guy ran off, leaving you to bleed out. He was driving, you think. Tracking your phone to try and get to you. “How far?”

He said something you didn’t hear. Your vision was swimming, your side was aching, and you couldn’t help but keep this funny understanding out of your mind that you were dying.

That this is something Jason had come back to your apartment with a few times, claiming it was nothing. It was something.

You heard him call your name, “What’s around you?”

“I’m tired,” you mumbled.

It seemed to happen in a blink of an eye. Jason was trying to tell you to stay awake, to look at the alley around you. To look out towards the street and tell him what you saw. Then he was there, standing in front of you, his helmet hiding his face.

“I’m here. I’m here, baby.” He cupped your face, tapping your cheek to get you to open up your eyes. He crouched down, pulling your hand from your side to assess the damage.

You smiled lazily and leaned forward, resting your forehead against his shoulder.

Jason muttered a slew of swears as he pressed something soft yet hard against your agonizing wound. You let out a yelp before Jason was picking you up, placing you on his bike.

He’s talking fast, “Fuck. Okay, listen to me. We’re going to go somewhere new, okay? There’s nowhere around here except there for me to get you safe.”

You passed out nearly as soon as he started the bike.

Jason’s freaking. He had tried to keep you safe from anything like this. From everything less than this. And here you were, bleeding out in his arms as he carried you through the batcave. He beelined for the cots and the medical supplies off to the side. He knows his motorcycle couldn’t have been the smoothest of rides for someone in your condition, but it’s all he had in such a short time span.

He’ll apologize when you wake up.

When. He repeats. When she wakes up and when we can get the hell out of this place again and when I can remind her I love her.

No one was back from patrol yet. He set you down on the cot before tearing off his helmet. He tossed it aside, pulling out a med bag and ripping it open. He pushed up your shirt, examining your side and where he had placed the military-grade gauze pad. He curses at the amount of blood.

His hands are shaking. Jason’s hands don’t shake, but you’ve proven to him a lot of things you could make him do that he hadn’t known he was capable of in the last year and (almost) a half of your relationship.

Jason nearly drops the suture thread before another hand is reaching out from just behind him. It catches the thread and Jason looks back over his shoulder. Alfred’s there, moving up to you.

“Allow me. You keep checking her vitals.”

Jason hadn’t even heard him come up. He’s nodding, stepping back to let Alfred take over the stitching. He moves to the other side of the bed.

That’s when he catches sight of the dark figure moving closer from behind Alfred. Jason immediately fixes him with a deadly glare, pointing at Bruce, “Do not come closer!”

Bruce stills. He’s in his bat suit, his cowl hanging behind his head, exposing his face. He looks down to your body, “Who is she?”

Jason doesn’t want him here. Rather, he doesn’t want to be here. You should’ve been home by now. Getting ready for bed and sending him a goodnight text. He turns his gaze back to you.

There’s some hair across your face that he hadn’t noticed. He moves it out of your way without a second thought, “My girlfriend.”

“Finally feel some remorse for sending someone to their grave, Todd?” Damian’s voice spoke up, walking up and stopping beside Bruce, “He’s probably trying to just reverse what he did.”

Jason ignores him. He wants to yell, scream, and maybe shoot the little bastard, but he was right. In a way, this was his fault. He didn’t look after you. He should’ve offered you a ride. Called you a taxi. An uber. Anything.

Jason grips your hand into his. It’s a way to count your heartbeat, and another way to ground himself. To reassure that you’ll be okay. His other hand stays on your cheek. His thumb gently moves back and forth, stroking your skin.

He barely registers Bruce telling Damian to go wash up. When the brat is gone, Bruce speaks up again, “What happened?”

Jason doesn’t take his eyes off of you, “She was walking home from her friend’s. A mugger got her purse, she fought back. He stabbed her.” Jason takes a deep breath, “She still had her phone. She called me. I brought her here because it was closest.”

A beat of silence. Still stitching you up, Alfred speaks, “How come we’ve never been introduced?”

Jason shakes his head, “I didn’t want her near any of this. She’s bad off enough sticking with me.”

Once you stabilize, Jason brings you up to his room in the manor. He walks past Dick, Tim, Duke, Cass, and Steph without looking at them. They sit around the batcomputer, watching Jason gently carry you out ot the cave.

He changes you out of your dirty clothes once he makes a run back to your apartment to grab you some of your own spare clothes.

Asides from that, he doesn’t leave your side.

He lets you have the bed to yourself. He pulls up a chair beside it, waiting for you to wake up. He didn’t want you to be alone when you did, in a strange place after a traumatic event. It was a recipe for disaster.

The sun’s been up for a long while and Jason hasn’t budged. He sits there, your hand gripped in both of his, held up and pressed against his mouth. His lips brush over your knuckles whenever he speaks up. Uttering a “I’m sorry.” every now and then.

There’s a light knock at the door before it’s cracking open. Jason turns his head to find Dick poking his head in. Jason glares at him.

Dick steps further in, presenting the tray he was holding. There were two glasses of water, some solid foods, and lighter ones, probably for you. Jason looked back down at you, letting his older brother enter.

“Just… figured since you’ve been cooped up in here all day,” Dick begins, setting the tray down on the beside table beside Jason.

Dick moves back around. He stands at the end of the bed, leaning against the tall bed post that was meant to hold up a canopy. “I heard…” he trails off, before nodding and your body in the bed, still unconscious, “Who is she?”

Jason looks up at his brother, not letting go of your hand, “So you haven’t heard.”

Dick rolls his eyes, “You know what I mean.”

Jason raises his brows a little. He looks back down at you. His hand reaches out to brush along your forehead, moving away imaginary stray hairs, “My girl.”

Dick nods in understanding, “How long you two been together.”

Jason pauses in thought, “Over a year. Our anniversary was in December.”

A small, choked sound comes from outside the door, in the hallway. “A year?”

Jason looks up at Dick, who makes a face that shows he’s knows he’s been caught.

“Are they seriously listening right now?”

Steph poked her head in first, an apologetic smile on her face, “We wanted to know!”

Duke pokes his head in next, just above Steph’s, “And we wanted to meet her.”

Tim’s head in next, above Duke’s, “You can’t carry a random bleeding woman into the cave and expect the family of detectives to not be curious.”

Cass’ head appears below Steph’s. She nods in agreement.

Jason let’s one hand go of yours to wave his hand through the air, “What the fuck? She’s not even awake!”

“Well that’s why we sent Dick as bait.”

“For the record,” Dick held up a finger, “They built off of my original, innocent idea of bringing you snacks.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jason stands up, taking a few steps forward. He points them all back towards the door as they start to filter into the room, “Get—“

“What’s going on…?”

Jason’s whole body whipped back around at the sound of your groggy, rough voice. The others watch as he’s back at your side in a millisecond, his whole demeanour changed. “Hey, you’re okay. Everything’s okay. Remember how I said we were going somewhere new? You thirsty, baby? Here, I got you some water.”

“Oh, you certainly did not get the water,” Dick piped up.

Jason glared back over his shoulder as he held the glass of water for you, keeping the straw Dick had added placed in your mouth.

You stopped drinking, your eyes now on the other people in the room. You turned your head, propped up against pillows Jason had put there for you. You weakly raised your left hand to wave, “Hi… oh?” your gaze turned down to your hand. A heart monitor clip sitting on your finger grabbed your attention. You gave a confused pout at it, “I feel funny.”

Jason set the water aside again. His glare was gone. He leaned in, kissing your forehead, “You’re hopped up on pain meds. That’s why, princess.”

“Damn,” Steph spoke up, “I wish I got the literal princess treatment.”

Jason turned back around, pointing out the door, “Get. Out. Leave my girlfriend alone until she’s better.”

You looked at the strangers, pointing at Jason with your left hand, “I’m his girlfriend.” Your head tilted back against the pillows as you stared up at Jason, pursing your lips, "I’m tired.”

“I know,” Jason said softly. The others began to filter out of the room as he leaned down and gave you a soft kiss, this time on the lips.

From the exit, a collective, “Awwww,” sounded out.

“Out!”

Your drugged up voice came after his, once they were all back in the hall, “Nice to meet you!”