#mike's pawn shop

[wickedsrest-rp]

NAME: Mike’s Pawn Shop

LOCATION: Worm Row

Inside Mike’s Pawn Shop, you’ll find your everyday pawn shop that rivals even some of those reality television pawn shops. From jewelry to lawn mowers and electronics, this pawn shop has it all. Mike prides himself on being able to spot fake jewelry and handbags from a mile away. Even with the mineral abnormality directly behind the shop, the inflatable dancing man in the parking lot is what draws the eyes of potential customers. Its dance moves are a mystery even to the owner, Mike. Somehow, the inflatable dancer moves in the opposite direction of the wind and in motions that passersby find enchanting. 

Unbeknownst to the owner, the shop has a good number of cursed items on the shelf. It does make a convenient drop off for cursed items and sellers even stand to make a small profit while getting the cursed item off their hands. 

The owner, Mike, sometimes accidentally starts small fires. Being a smoker, he usually writes these incidents off as nothing more than clumsiness, but those who believe Serpent’s Flat is malevolent think it’s had an effect on him. 

Some of the items that haven’t sold in years have also developed some strange properties due to their proximity to the mineral abnormality. A few swear they can hear the melody from “Careless Whisper” softly echoing in the saxophone. 

Every single TV for sale in the shop plays The Muppets Treasure Island on loop. Mike gets very irritable if anyone tries to change it. 

The vending machines outside have been broken for about 5 years now, and it’s looking unlikely they’ll ever be fixed. Rather than taping a sign over it that says “don’t use,” Mike lets the machine eat peoples’ money then collects it at the end of the week.

Mike has a special fondness of old photos, especially ones of local critters and cryptids, and prices them outrageously to deter people from buying them. He likes keeping them around.

[moonriverrise]

Steve has a secret, well “secret” may not be the correct way to describe it. He has something for himself, thats what. Ever since he stopped playing basketball and doing swim competitions once he graduated he's had way more free time, which at first he filled with shifts at Family Video, or bothering Robin.

Then, when she started school he started doing art more. Which, may come a surprise to many, as he never really talked about his interest in paintings and old art.

Greek sculptures that are able to show life in a still ethereal way, while still being able to twist it at their will. Renaissance oil paintings, capturing tragedy yet still being able to portray it as beautiful, in their own terrible twisted ways.

He likes sketching on paper, painting on canvas. His paintings aren't usually too different from the things he sees around him. Honestly thats the only things he paints, people, his friends, places he goes, things he sees that stick with him, dreams, moments that play on repeat in his head.

Around his Junior year, after the Demogorgon, Steve had turned the sad basement in his sad empty house, into his own space. A place where he can go and do his art, hang it, play music on his walkman, or using the record player he got from a pawn shop a few months prior. Somehow the basement is the only space that actually feels like his in his house, not even his bedroom.

Steve’s art was not very consistent to be honest, mostly the kids and Robin, landscapes that he liked, the Demogorgon/dogs, the Mindflayer (he needs some way of getting those out of his head, and somehow drawing them down feels freeing.) He does have a few paintings of Nancy from when they were together, she’s become less of a model for his work after everything though.

The last time he painted her in a painting alone, was one of that bathroom in a girl he barely knows’ house, a spilled drink on Nancy’s dress, and red solo cups littering the counter.

Steve’s art shifts though, after a moment that will never leave his mind. He knows who Eddie Munson is, obviously. How could he not? Honestly Steve isn't that surprised Henderson and the others befriended the guy, he does run a DnD club.

But then, Henderson needs a ride home after their club meetings because his mom is working late, and then Lucas and Mike’s parents are also asking Steve to pick them up too. Babysitting duty, as per usual.

Steve arrives a bit earlier than he planned. He didn't have any project to consume himself into, hitting an art block begrudgingly. But then, Steve sees Eddie Munson, sitting on a fake throne, watching the kids and other club members argue, he has his chin rested on his fist, and he's wearing a white tank top, showing off his shoulders, given the fact it’s still September.

The lighting of the small theater room captures Steve’s interest like a moth to the flame, and he is regretting having left his sketchbook at home, even though he never draws around the kids or anyone he knows.

Eddie Munson’s face and curly locks fill up the pages of Steve’s journal and some canvases for months after, and Steve rarely genuinely complains about coming to pick the kids up.

Afterwords, months later from that day. Chrissy Cunningham dies, and Eddie Munson almost goes with her. God, or whatever deity that was looking down upon him, was on Steve’s side in that moment, when he was able to revive Eddie and then drag him out of the Upside Down.

Steve gets closer with Eddie after that, they become actual friends. Steve was so used to witnessing his muse from afar, it was so…exciting, to see Eddie in all his glory, just a few feet away, and his smile being directed at him.

“Do you even have any hobbies, Harrington?” Steve blinks. Him, Eddie, Robin, Nancy, and the party, are all hanging out by the pool. Steve is lounging on one of the chairs, sunglasses over his eyes as Eddie talks beside him.

“What?” Steve responds.

“I mean…I like barely ever see you do anything besides sort Movies at Family Video, or boss around the kids. Like, what do you do when we're not all together?” Eddie asks, moving his hand a little as he talks. Steve thinks for a moment.

“Funny,” Steve answers instead. Eddie scoffs.

“I'm being serious, man! What do you do?” Eddie laughs a little, most likely at the ridiculousness of it all. What would Steve know, Eddie is like a puzzle, and Steve has to take every minute slowly, deciphering everything he lays out for him, via tongue or action.

“I don't know, what do you do?” Steve says, almost carefully.

“Band stuff, DnD, Writing,” Eddie lists. “And I guess saving the world now, but thats a bit of a side hussle.” Steve scoffs.

“Whatever, man.” And thats that, they don't talk about it again. But it sticks with Steve, because his friends really do think he doesn't do anything with his life. It's not like he has college classes to study for, so what does he do?

Later, maybe two or three weeks after, Steve decides he wants to show Eddie his space. The two of them are alone, Robin is in Nevada, visiting her grandparents, so the trio’s usual movie night is cut down to a duo’s movie night.

Although Steve finds himself mostly focusing on Eddie and his beautiful hair sitting next to him, than watching ET. The little alien scares him a bit anyway. Eddie notices him staring though, his eyes flickering to meet Steves, then a smirk spreading across his lips.

“We are watching a movie, lover boy.” Eddie says. Steve goes red, his gaze shifting to his lap. Steve furrows his eyebrows then stands and shuts the TV off. “Woah! Hey!”

“I want to show you something.” Steve says, it's a bit quieter than he meant it to be, but his tone indicates something to Eddie, which has him staring at Steve, starstruck.

Steve walks out the room and hears Eddie follow him. He gets to the basement door and opens it, flicks on the stair light.

“Basement- woah- okay, guess I'm getting murdered. Thought I’d go out in a more metal way than this.” Eddie says as they walk down. Steve laughs a little and shakes his head.

“I just think you should see this.” Steve says. “Nothing life threatening, I promise.”

“Alright, I trust you, Stevie.”

“Good.”

Steve turns and flicks on the light as they step onto the concrete. The lights flicker on, revealing the paintings on the walls and art supplies on the tables and counters.

“Woah-” Eddie says. “Is this, all your stuff?” Steve sighs, he folds his arms and faces Eddie. He looks shellshocked.

“Yeah.” Steve says. “You said I don't have any hobbies, I do, actually.” Eddie looks around, walking slowly.

“Is that Henderson? Why is he wearing yellow gloves?” Eddie asks. Steve walks over to a painting of Dustin from Steve’s angle while they were walking on the train tracks, a bucket of raw meat is in one hand and he's wearing the headphones for his radio.

“D’Art,” Steve says. “That was when we were leading him away. I made that one after everything happened. I was trying not to think about the Demogorgon stuff and everything, so I just drew him. I have one of Max from that day I never finished painting in a stack I think too.” Eddie doesn't say anything for a minute after Steve is done explaining.

“You can paint.” Eddie says, though not like a question. “These are beautiful…” Eddie looks around and walks to another one he sees. It's one of the Byers and Hopper’s, all hugging while laughing. El looks the happiest. Steve had painted that after they had all gotten together after everything. “Why…didn't you tell anyone?”

“About what?” Steve asks, folding his arms as Eddie brings up a hand to touch the painting.

“This- Steve, you're amazing at this. These are…” Eddie trails off as something catches his eye, he slowly starts to walk towards a big painting propped up behind one of the tables laid out in the middle of the room. Steve walks to him to see which one he's looking at.

An angel, knelt over a puddle, crying as it stares at his reflection, which is blurred and dark. He stands in a forest, his wings are long and huge, sprawling out above him.

It’s one of Steve’s bigger ones, the inspiration came from a dream he had after they had read about Icarus in his english class back in Highschool.

“It’s… magnificent.” Eddie whispers. Steve smiles gently at Eddie’s reaction. Eddie backs up a bit and looks away from the painting. “Is that me?” Steve follows his eye, to the painting. Eddie walks towards it, Steve stays behind him. It’s the first one Steve ever made of Eddie, the one of him on the throne.

“Yeah, it is.” Steve says. “I made that the first night I came to pick up the kids.” He says. “The first time I met you, actually met you.” They share a look.

“You are incredible, Steve Harrington.”

[writerofsorts]

A Chance Encounter

(image creds: to the owner)

pairing: jason dilaurentis x female reader.

summary: 2x04 "blind dates" episode imagine/rewrite.

warnings: none.

*read previous part here!

—————

Almost a week had passed since [Y/N] checked up on Toby at Spencer's request to make sure he was alright while working for Jason. Spencer had also made rather a dangerous move by pawning her sister's wedding ring in order to buy Toby the truck he wanted so that he didn't have to work for Jason. Although Spencer was successful in keeping Toby away from Jason, now, she, herself, was in trouble as Melissa's ring was gone from the pawn shop and she had to replace it soon.

Overall, life had not gotten better for [Y/N] and friends, thanks to A.

The school day had ended and [Y/N] was at her locker, grabbing her things when she was called by Ella Montgomery.

"You're not in trouble, honey," Ella said with a chuckle when she saw [Y/N]'s wide and confused eyes.

"Uh, okay," [Y/N] tried to smile back and shut her locker door before following Ella into her classroom.

"I wanted to ask you for a favor," Ella spoke, grabbing a set of keys from her desk. "Mike forgot his keys at home today and I didn't get a chance to give it to him. Aria's already left for the day and I didn't know who else to ask. Would you be able to give this to Mike on your way home? He's usually at the basketball court at the park around this time."

"Sure, Mrs. Montgomery," [Y/N] answered, taking the keys from Ella's hand.

Her parents had been friends with Aria's for a long time now as her parents both taught at Hollis along with Byron Montgomery. Although she wasn't close to Mike, she enjoyed being around him at get-togethers as he was like the little brother she wished she had. So, she didn't mind this little task.

"Thank you," Ella smiled appreciatively. "I would do it, myself, but I've got a faculty meeting to run to."

"It's okay," replied [Y/N]. "Have a good rest of your day, Mrs. Montgomery."

"You too, [Y/N]," Ella said back and [Y/N] waved goodbye, walking out of the classroom.

The school hallways were empty as [Y/N] walked out of the building. She reached the parking lot and noticed some students still hanging around by their cars, laughing and chatting. She made her way towards her car and got in the driver's seat, placing her backpack on the empty seat next to her. She put Mike's keys in one of the cupholders before starting the vehicle and pulling out of the school parking lot.

It didn't take too long before she reached the Rosewood park and found a nice spot in the shade to park her car. She grabbed her backpack and Mike's keys before going in search of him towards the basketball court.

It was a bright and sunny day, and the park was a little crowded for her liking. Ignoring the occasional, curious gazes thrown her way, [Y/N] looked around for Mike. She tried calling his cellphone a few times, but it kept going to voicemail.

A few seconds later, she spotted a young boy sitting on a bench with his back facing her. It looked a lot like Aria's brother and she walked towards him, calling out Mike's name.

When the boy turned around, however, [Y/N] paused in her steps as he was definitely not Mike.

"Sorry, I thought you were someone else," she apologized, feeling awkward, and the stranger shrugged before turning to face forward again.

[Y/N] sighed and turned in the opposite direction to go on the hunt for Mike again when she spotted a familiar face. And, this time, there was no mistake.

Not too far from her stood Jason DiLaurentis. He was wearing grey basketball shorts and his upper body was bare, and [Y/N] tried really hard to not let her eyes wander down to his toned chest and abs. He was holding a basketball in his hands and the frown between his brows disappeared when her eyes met his. He gave her a small smile and a wave. She returned the gesture and slowly walked towards him. He met her halfway and the two stopped in front of each other.

"Hey, [Y/N], I thought it was you," Jason spoke first.

"Yeah, it's me," she chuckled, mentally face-palming at how awkward she sounded. "I'm looking for Aria's brother, Mike. Have you seen him here today?"

"No, sorry," he shook his head. "He give Aria the slip?"

"Something like that," [Y/N] replied. "Mrs. Montgomery asked me to give Mike his keys but I can't find him."

"Why did Aria's mom ask you?" Jason asked, confused.

"She meant to ask Aria but she already left," [Y/N] answered, receiving a nod in response.

"I was always lying about where I was when I was his age," Jason commented with a small smile.

"Yeah?" [Y/N] asked with a smile of her own.

"Yeah," he nodded. "I don't remember a lot about that time actually. Most of what I do remember, I wish I could forget, you know?"

Both of their smiles dropped by the end of Jason's sentence and [Y/N] dropped her gaze to the ground. She remembered all too well about the party boy Jason used to be.

"Do you know what I do remember?" Jason asked and [Y/N] looked at him again. "Your smile."

[Y/N] stared at him for what seemed like a full minute before letting out a short, surprised laugh, "My smile?"

"Yes, your smile," he repeated. "Whenever we came across each other in the past and even now, your smile and greetings have always been genuine. That meant- means a lot to me."

"I- I'm glad," she answered, feeling a little flattered by his words and Jason cleared his throat, praying he didn't make her uncomfortable.

"Do you want me to find Mike and give him the keys?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Oh, it's okay," she replied. "I'll just drop it with Aria. But, thanks."

"Yeah. And, uh, I should get back," he stated hesitantly, tilting his head in the direction where his buddies were waiting for him.

"Of course," [Y/N] nodded in understanding. "Enjoy your evening."

"You too," he said and was about to turn around when he remembered something else that concerned [Y/N].

Just as [Y/N] turned to leave, he called her name and she faced him.

"What's wrong?" she asked in concern when she noticed his reluctant posture.

"Uh, it's about the other day when you stopped by," he spoke quietly, fiddling with the basketball in his hand.

"Oh, what about it?" she asked curiously. She had an idea of what he wanted to talk to her about.

"The gauzes that you saw," he said, finally meeting her eyes. "They really were mine; renovating the house comes with little accidents."

"I- I figured," she replied. She felt a bit guilty, because initially her mind did entertain the thought that Jason was helping Ian, thanks to Spencer's suspicions. Then, she had pushed that idea out of her mind, because she didn't believe that Jason would want to help a man, who was accused of murdering his sister. "And, you don't have to explain yourself to me, Jason."

"I- I don't want you to be afraid of me," he said and her eyes softened at his words.

"I'm not afraid of you," she said back and saw relief fill his green eyes.

"You mean it?" he still asked and she said reassuringly, "of course."

"Alright... so, I'll see you around?" she asked, smiling.

"See you around," he confirmed and the two shared smiles one more time that conveyed more than words could at the moment.

Later that night as [Y/N] lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling, a permanent smile was etched on her face. Her mind continued to replay her conversation with Jason and she felt a little overwhelmed with how much she liked him.

Initially, she didn't think Jason looked at her as anything other than his little sister's best friend. But, the more she interacted with him, the more she felt that her feelings were reciprocated.

She hoped that she was not wrong as she slowly succumbed to sleep.

—————

[joeyesposito]

IT’S HAPPENING!

The passion project @seanvongormanart and I started during quarantine is finally coming, courtesy of the fine folks at Magma Comix.

Behold… THE PEDESTRIAN! 🚦

Issue #1 launches in August with incredible covers by Sean, Dean Haspiel, and Mike Allred!!!

This book means a lot to me. It’s true collaboration between the two of us. It’s something we can only make together. It’s deeply personal. It’s offbeat and weird. It’s everything I love about making comics.

It’s got the DNA of things like SUPER, TWIN PEAKS, THE STAND, POWER RANGERS, and our very own PAWN SHOP.

I’m very proud of it, I hope you’ll join us. Comics like this live and die on pre-orders at your local retailer, so please please PLEASE let them know how badly you want them to order this!!

Here’s the full announcement at AIPT!

[starfirewildheart]

Chapter 9

Scars and Souvenirs 

Summary: Sy and his lady both retire from the army but not before tragedy befalls Sy. He slowly tries to adjust to life again on their ranch.

Pairing: Sy / OFC

Word count: 1784

Rating: mentions of war; being a POW, death and animal abuse. Nothing graphic I promise but if the fic continues (if y'all like it) I'll add warnings for each chapter.

Sy walked over to where the kid was still giving the cop hell and struggling against Debbie's help. He forced the boy down in a chair then got in this face. He spoke in a calm but commanding tone. “Stop struggling before you hurt yourself worse than you already are.”

“You new here? This ain't over by a long shot,” he huffed but stopped his struggle.  

“I'm not a cop,” Sy explained.  “What's your name?”

“Screw you,” the kid snapped.

“Little prick never changes,” the officer rolled his eyes. When Sy cut him a menacing look he walked out of the squad room.

Deb opened the first aid kit and approached him again. “My name is Debbie and this is Sy. What's your name?”

“Screw you.” 

Sy popped the boy in the back of the head. “You will be respectful to her. You understand?” He growled. 

“Owe, yea ok,” he squirmed, wanting to rub the back of his head but unable to because of the cuffs.

“She asked you your name.”

“Mike, my name is Mike.”

“Well Mike, I'm going to clean you up a bit, alright?” Deb asked. 

“Whatever,” Mike huffed.

Debbie cleaned him up and put a bandage on the cut on his head before popping an instant ice pack and holding it to his eye.

Walt stomped back into the room still pissed off. “Are you ok Mike?” 

“Peachy,” he snarked. “Sweet cheeks here fixed me up. See?”

“Sweet cheeks?” Deb asked, arching her brow at him.

Walt sighed before taking Mike to a holding cell. “I don't get it kid. I gave you a chance last time and you're back here again for theft.”

“I just can't get enough of you, Marshall.” He pretended to swoon, falling back on the cot in his cell.

“Fuckin smartass,” Walt growled before leaving him to go back to the squad room.

“What's with the kid?” Sy asked Walt as he was walking them out of the station. 

“Petty theft, B & E, public intox, truancy, fighting, terroristic threatening, smart assed kid.” Walt explained.  “I've tried to give him a chance but he just keeps blowing it.”

“What about his parents?” Sy inquired.

“I've met his old man once. He's a piece of work for sure. Runs a pawn shop here in town when he's not passed out from drinkin.”

“What's going to happen to Mike now?” Deb asked.

“Normally I would say he'd go to juvi but after Gains roughed him up I don't know. He's still got charges against him for robbing Samuelson's Market a couple weeks ago,” Walt told her. 

Sy opened the truck door for her and shook his head. “I know that look. What are you thinkin darlin' ?”

“Maybe he needs some time working on a farm. Sort of like community service but with safety and food and a good role model,” She bit her lip. “Maybe he needs someone to care about him?”

“Or maybe he's just a little prick who's old man doesn't care enough to rein him in?” Walt crossed his arms over his chest. He'd lost faith in people years ago. The world was bad and so were most of its people.

Sy looked between the two of them. One’s face was hopeful, the other disbelieving and he was somewhere in the middle. He could understand Mike acting out with an alcoholic, possibly abusive father and no one to care for him. He looked at Deb. “So you think he's robbing places because he's hungry?”

“And needs things, yea,” She nodded.

Sy crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. Deb looked at both of the big, intimidating men standing side by side staring her down and started to fidget. She felt like a kid who was in trouble. When Sy reached out and took her hand she gasped. He would never hurt her, she knew that but the moment had been so intense it startled her. Neither man said anything as she was pulled along back into the station. “What are we doing “

“Rescuing a new colt for you to rehabilitate,” Sy smirked.

~~~~~~♡~~~~~~

Nearly three months had passed since they had convinced the chief to let them take on a work probation for Mike, then they had to go to court with him so the attorney could convince the judge it was a good idea. Once everyone was in agreement they had to get Mike's dad to agree.

Mitch Holmes, Mike's father, was a real piece of work. He didn't give a damn about his son but he would spend hours gushing about how they were distant relatives of ‘The’ Sherlock Holmes.  Walter went with a counselor to talk to him about Mike and he said the living conditions were horrible. Very little food in the house, roaches everywhere and there were bars on the windows to Mike's room and a lock on the outside of his door. 

Walt unleashed on the police that had been on Mike's case before he had gotten to town. Demanded to know why no one had investigated before now. No one ever even made an effort to check on the kid.

While all of that was going on Sy, Walter and Debbie had been setting up video surveillance and listening devices on the S17. Once they started getting data Deb spent a lot of time pouring over it for pertinent information then handing it over to Sy and Walter so they could track shipments and buyers.

Sy yawned and scrubbed his hands over his face. Between work, court and the ranch they were all exhausted. He stood up from his desk in the shared office the department had given them for the investigation and walked over behind Deb. She was sitting with one foot up in the chair and the other on the floor as she read over endless transcripts. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “We need a break, sugar. Let's go get some food. I'm craving steak,” he rumbled against her neck. 

She reached up and lightly ran her nails over his head grinning when he almost  purred. “Steak sounds wonderful and French fries.”

He kissed her neck and rubbed his short, scruffy beard against her skin loving the way it made her squeak and squirm. “God I love you.”

Deb smiled as she stood up in front of him pressing her body against his. “Love you too baby. More than anything in this world.” Tilting her head up she pressed a kiss to his lips which he quickly deepened. His tounge sought entry into her mouth while his hands slid down her back to grip her ass and press her even tighter to him.

The office door opened and Walter walked in looking down at some papers in his hand. “talked to th…” he stopped when he saw them kissing and blushed. “Sorry I..” he started backing out the door. 

Sy smirked and Deb chuckled at him. He was a big, tough cop but so shy and reserved about a lot of things. He and Sy fell right back into that close brother relationship almost instantly. Walt had a shitty childhood and Sy did all he could back then to protect him. They had a bond closer than any blood family had ever been. They were battle buddies. Deb and Walt had gotten close as a result as well and the three of them spent a lot of time bonding too.

Deb gave Sy another soft kiss before pushing away from him and waking toward the door and Walter. “We're going to dinner.”

“Ok. I'll see you tomorrow ,” Walt nodded.

Deb stopped in front of him and shook her head. “Clock out detective grumpy.”

~~~~~~♡~~~~~~

Sy, Walt and Deb were all sitting at their table drinking a beer and waiting on their food at the local bar and grill when someone tripped into Debbie's chair causing her beer to slosh all over her. She jumped to her feet trying to brush it off as she eyed the blonde woman.

“Oh, I'm so sorry!” She gasped. 

Debbie looked at her but just forced a smile. “It's OK. It was an accident. No harm done.” She excused herself to go clean up.

“I'm sorry again,” the blonde smirked, winking conspitorily at a woman sitting at the bar before leaving.

When Deb came back from the restroom she saw a woman rubbing up against Sy. He was telling her to leave him alone and that he wasn't interested but she reached down and pawed at his cock grinding her hand against him almost painfully.  Deb snatched her by the hair pulling her away from Sy. “What the fuck do you think your doing? Lindi?” She growled. 

“Let me go you bitch!” She struggled in Debbie's tight grip. 

“He said no and you didn’t listen. Now you'll deal with me,” She growled as she dragged her outside to the parking lot.

“Oh fuck,” Sy and Walt said at the same time quickly following them. 

“You will keep your hands off what belongs to me,” Debbie warned her.

“He doesn't belong to you! He's not married to you,” Lindi sneered. “You've been together for five years and he's never committed. He's just fuckin you until he finds the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with!”

The words stung more than she cared to admit and it pissed her off even more. “Maybe, but I know one thing for sure. It's not you!”

Lindi lashed out at Debbie which she quickly realized was a mistake. Deb tackled her to the ground and started wailing on her. Lindy was screaming and begging for her to stop, apologizing and swearing she'll never touch Sy again. Deb didn't slow down; she just kept swinging.

“Ok, enough,” Sy bent down and wrapped his arms around Debbie's waist and pulled her off of Lindi. “Alright sweetheart, enough,” he soothed.  She struggled against him and he wrapped her up tighter. “Enough,” he growled in her ear. She stilled for a moment before shoving away from him and trying to walk away. He pulled her back and pinned her against a nearby truck. “Calm down sugar,” he rumbled.

Walter knelt down and checked on Lindi. Her nose was busted, lip bleeding and her eye was already swelling. “You learn to keep your hands to yourself? “

“I want to press charges!” Lindi demanded. 

“You have that right but you started this and there are witnesses to this. So she will press charges as well and this will go to a judge. Are you sure that's what you want to do?”

She got to her feet and glared at Walter before storming off.

@shellyshellshell

@enchantedbytomandhenry

@mrsevans90

@summersong69

@mollymal

@warriormirkwood

@bloodyinspiredme

@kneelforloki

[squiddokiddo]

Thinking about the idea of some ghosts being attached to objects.

Imagine the ghosts finding out that some of them may not be confined to Button House and as long as someone is carrying their object, they can leave. Imagine them going on adventures with Alison and Mike one by one and they're so happy that they're not stuck in that old house and they're able to go out into the world and explore. They may even consider moving out since now they actually can.

Over time the ghosts that can travel realise that they value the familiarity and comfort of returning to the house after their adventures, returning to the people that they were originally begrudgingly stuck with but now miss when they are away. They learn to value their place at the house even more and ultimately decide that they want their object kept there. It's their home.

Episode idea for this:

Mike takes a bunch of trinkets to a pawn shop in town including the musket ball he found.

Thomas goes missing, the ghosts and Alison are absolutely clueless as to where he went and become very worried. It's only when Mike comes home and talks about his trip to the pawn shop that they realise what's happened. Alison and Mike must set out to find the musket ball and bring Thomas home.

Bonus: A scene where Thomas' musket ball is put up for auction and Mike and Alison have to bid to get him back, all the while Thomas is complaining about the bidding amounts "£50?! Hardly sir!! Surely to own such a piece of history comes at a greater price, what's more the poet it tragically killed comes included with the item!!"

[yamada-ryo]

Thoughts on Disco Elysium:

Went into the game completely blind other than the obvious "inner speech characterisation" thing and the following

The game calls you a centerist if you don't pick a political stance

Our lucky racist will grant you 3 wishes

Lamby

There's something with this Cuno kid

Drove his own car into the sea

Kim Kimball Kitsuragi

And that's it

Thoughts:

Grabbed the horrific necktie so quick I didn't even do the skill check and was wondering why the tie wasn't speaking to me

I thought the inner monolouge voice was his actual voice. Until the karaoke part.

Loved how the game lets you call yourself Raphael as an option at every point in the game despite multiple characters calling him Harry. I never once made him call himself Harry.

I didn't believe the ex wife thing one bit. Still don't. Genuinely think it's just part of his mind acting up. After all if he forgot everything how can I trust that this one supposed memory of his is real

Didn't drink or use speed at all. Bought one pack of smokes just to set the paint on fire.

Didn't go after any women because I thought he was homosexual by default and was wondering when I could romance Kim (didn't know homosexuality had to be unlocked first)

^also why I didn't buy the ex wife thing one bit. That and half light insisting that I don't pursue the thought

"A major part of being a communist is arguing with other communists"

The part about the game developer being fired from his own company

Died in the chair about 5 times because I didn't know the number above the health bars was the number of heals I had at the time (2) and not an indicator of my maximum health (also 2). Also didn't know how to heal

Bought about 20-25 health pills just to tank the ruby encounter only for her to run away before I used most of it

Lady who bought the pawned gun straight up didn't spawn. Like I could hear the police sirens at the spot where she was supposed to be but there was no one there

I thought Kim would get shot no matter what but apparently not. Raphael got shot in the leg and Kim was hit on the head

Softlocked myself from the ice cream maker machine and had to forget a skill to retry it

Didn't buy any dice or sneakers or speakers

Didn't know it at the time but I learnt indirect modes of taxation and had the +1 shoes on so I was getting 2 real every time I talked to someone and had more money than I ever needed

Gym guy (sunday friend's friend) actually noticed I was wearing the hat I knicked from his room which was cool

There is no way Cunoesse's last name is actually "vittu"

Royalty free alternate universe Karl Marx

Measurehead finally got off the gangway and it turns out you can't even press the button. And the box behind him there all this time only had 1.10 real in it. SAD!

The fact that there even is an option to shoot Cunoesse

Was hoping Kim would wear the matching PISSFAGGOT jacket (he didn't)

Ran about shoeless on the first day. Found the balcony shoe just before debreifing with Kim. Then found the shoe in the starting room.

Thought there would be more to Contact Mike but no Raphael just confuses one poor girl about it

Didn't buy the map until day 3 and didn't figure out how fast travel worked until day 5

Is the expression rigor mortis? Did he have The Expression during all that? Even the gunfight?

The pawn shop owner is the only character that responds to you having a torch in your hand. Also cool detail where if the cursor is in front of Raphael the torch will shine in the direction of the cursor

Paid 20 real for the motel room first thing in the morning before I realised I had free accomodation for the night at the pier

Not much to say about the harbour since my screen fucking died

[sadpurpleblood]

not exactly art ideas but stuff that you can try to draw concepts from; any characters who are shopkeeps? what would be your concepts for a weird route? does anne know about the other dark worlds/have any ties to existing characters?

Thank you! Those are a lot of great stimuli!

I'm not sure which one i'm gonna bring to paper first so first i'd like to give you a written answer for a general idea beforehand.

1: I'm not too sure who the actual shopkeepers are gonna be, but I have at least two shop locations planned so far! One would be a saloon in the desert town of Ye Olde Home, and the other would be located in the Tenna Studio headquaters. One of the shopkeeps would probably be Michael "Mike" Wave, though I'm not too sure where to put him! Thematically I have it so that most physical objects in the Dreemurr's house become Ye Olde Home characters, while Neo Home characters are generally TV show/industry based. Then again, from what we know about Mike from Spamton, he does seem to be involved in TV show business. I really wouldn't want him to be a copy of Rattel M Bones' interpretation though, don't wanna copy from the big boys. I guess i'll figure something out.

2: ooo the weird route. That's probably one of my favourite things I've been thinking about. Unsurprisingly, it'll be another party-member-corruption-killfest, this time using Toriel as our lethal magic user. Though she isn't as easy to convice to attack the enemies as Noelle! She'd actually function a bit like how Susie did in the first half of chapter 1, except that instead of always attacking, Toriel would either defend, perform a T-Action (which never really progresses the battle) or use baked-goods-based healing magic. After all, she's Kris' mother, she wouldn't take commands from her child, especially not if they're violent. There is a way to convince her though. If you go out of your way to repeatedly mock Lil' Pardner in the first battle against Sheriff Garby, they will become so enraged that they will put you in a similar instant death bullet barrage like Flowey did at the start of Undertale, and just like there, Toriel sees herself to have no choice other than attack to save her child, though this time in a much more extreme way. After that, she realizes she should've trusted Kris to follow their commands, and you'll be able to control her from then on. I'm not gonna spoil much more since this is getting long, but just like in chapter 2, you WILL have a secret boss fight at the end of the dark world, though this time it'd be a little different.

3: Kinda! She isn't related to any of the royals, but she is aware that there have been other dark worlds before hers, and also that hers wasn't created by the one who brought the previous ones to life. My theory is that only Knight-made dark worlds follow Chess Theory, and that this chapter would sort of be an intermission in that sense, going from the evidence that there are only 5 unique non-pawn chess pieces, but 7 chapters.

I hope that answers your questions! I'll definitely make some drawings based on these ideas in the future! Thank you!

[connectionterminated13]

(Agony au) have Jeremy Charlie and Mike ever got into some shenanigans? Feel like they’d be the bunch to do so lol. Agony creature Mike, robot Charlie, and their normal human friend Jeremy

All of the shenanigans...

There's a lot of smaller more mundane shenanigans like Charlie and Jeremy coming up with reasons they desperately need to go to the hospital with Michael after some like horrible car crashed was broadcasted on the news, Charlie trying to tinker With her arm's again and like accidentally making it fall off so Mike has to spend the whole day trying to figure out how to reattach charlie's arm's as she's sitting there impatiently, All of them even Michael being in the middle of college And at least for Michael and Jerry having to hide the fact that they're not human.

There's a lot of bigger shenanigans like Mikey finding Ella at a garage sale who is the first other agony creature he's ever met that isn't his family. Charlie feels weird about it since that's like her doll (Or one that looks exactly like it) Jeremy just thinks that Michael should do his freaky absorption thing on the creature since according to Michael it isn't really sentient. Michael tries to talk to it, But after a while just gives up and instead of consuming it, he just sells it to a pawn shop. He doesn't tell Jeremy or Charlie about this he just makes it a lie about her running away. They wouldn't understand why he'd let something that could hurt people go. This little creature thing is the same as him. If the world was slightly different this thing could have became his sibling... And who knows maybe if he lets it out it can develop sentence and a life like he did doesn't it deserve that?

There's a lot of shenanigans trying to get Jeremy into College despite him being very very dead. Which they are able to do through a lot of forgery. Which means he gets to go to college with them which is awesome but he also has to use a fake name an illusion disk... Either way it's a very happy moment for everyone and There's lots of crying and hugging :3

Charlie likes to take Michael and Jeremy on trips with the rest of her friends a lot. Michael doesn't like doing that A lot but he knows Jeremy enjoys it so he goes for Jeremy. They have to plan out the routes in advance so they'll be close to a Hospital just in case Michael needs something to eat. Jeremy and Michael also always get a separate room which charlie's friends thinks is for gay reasons but it's actually because as soon as Michael gets in the room he just collapses into a pile of goo because it's really hard to keep up his physical form on like a beach day, And Jeremy's illusion disks can only last for so long before beginning to hurt people's ears.

One of the biggest shenanigans was Jeremy's "death". You see in the hospital when Mikey accidentally started absorbing Jeremy's agony he absorbed a bit too much and accidentally "killed" jeremy Jeremy had produced too much agony in response to Mike's consumption of it which killed him.. Mike felt like a monster after that..... He spent days at home just in a bundle unresponsive to Charlie telling him it wasn't his fault. He felt like that until Charlie came back excited with a newspaper saying that the ghost of Jeremy Fitzgerald has been spotted in the local cemetery. Michael hoping that at least he could say sorry to Jeremy goes with Charlie to the local cemetery where they find Jeremy freaking the fuck out having climbed out of his own coffin.. Jeremy was terrified of what he's too definitely totally human friends would think of him now that he was some kind of weird Creature but both Charlie and Michael were overjoyed that he was okay. They took him home cleaned him up and explained the situation, Which Jeremy quickly forgave Michael understanding it wasn't his fault and he would have died either way probably. He's still at first hates his new body, And is over Joyed when Charlie gives him the illusion disks that make him look Human Again. Even years later in the 90s Jeremy can barely stand to look at his real face. He finds it disgusting and disturbing and generally Something of the devil. So most of the time around the house Jeremy uses a mask and gloves and lots of clothing to cover up all of his corpse parts.

And there's a lot more little shenanigans they get into

[morgueyouknow]

what’s the dynamics like between mike, minevra and patrick (and any other ocs in your universe i haven’t mentioned). do they get along well? do they hate each other? first impressions? aaaa i wanna know everything about them

Mike and Minerva have your typical dysfunctional southern sibling bond , they may argue and fight. but at the end of the day they deeply care about each other. Mike would go through absolute HELL for his sister and he has done it before. The Dougherty siblings had a very hard upbringing due to their father’s abuse. Their father , Norman Dougherty was your typical alcoholic blue collar husband and father. He’d work hours on end , go out to drink and come home to argue with his wife to the point where Michael had to defend his mother physically. Minerva grew up watching her brother take blows to the face , belts across his back and spit being slung across his face from his father’s incoherent drunk babbling. Minerva always viewed Mike as her protector and her real father figure since he practically raised her himself. After the loss of Mike’s actual daughter , Leia. Minerva and Mike grew closer, since in reality. She would always be his first kid he raised.

Now , originally patrick was going to be Minerva’s boyfriend but from some feedback from a friend. I fancied the idea of “ex’s who can’t move on” trope. Minerva was the first girl trick had ever dated that showed him genuine love. Even whenever he was an active drug addict ( and still kind of is ) she never viewed him as someone to shun and despise. Minerva was very understanding and knew how addiction ruined people’s minds. they dated throughout their early twenties but found themselves falling apart whenever trick found himself relapsing more than ever , knowing she’d forgive him. It caused arguments , but the two broke it off whenever he had gotten arrested for trying to steal off the Dougherty’s property to go sell whatever it was to a pawn shop for drug money. Even after that incident, they were hung up on each other regardless. Minerva tries her best to not take him back , but it’s hard being around him whenever she’s best friends with his sister Autumn. In all honesty , Minerva wished he kept his promise on being sober. she genuinely loved that boy with her whole heart and as did he. perhaps they’re nothing more than the good old saying “right person, wrong time”. meanwhile Mike hates him with a deep burning passion because he’s very protective over his sister and hates to see her be treated so wrong by men who have no respect for her or her family. He genuinely hates the boy’s guts.

Autumn and Minerva have been friends since elementary school, if anything. they’re the sisters they dreamed of but got stuck with annoying dysfunctional older brothers instead. They are always around each other , almost inseparable if I must say so myself.

Wade and Autumn are ex’s , yet they don’t get a sweet ending like Minerva and Trick. Wade , cheated on Autumn as what he said was an attempt to “ see if she actually loved him “ in his mind this was a good idea. yet in reality. he left the poor girl in shambles. Minerva and Autumn still talk to him, but the one thing Mike and Trick can agree on is hating Wade with a deep burning passion.

There are new characters coming soon so hopefully I can add them to this list and post later on!

[audio-luddite]

You cant fix a recording in your system.

It is obvious that once a recording is published it is fixed. Analog or digital makes no difference once it reaches your system it is what it is. If it is flawed there is little to do. Oh you can use a multiband equalizer (shudder) or a dynamic range expander (for some recordings) but that is a bandage on a broken thing. It will not fix the stereo image if it is not there.

I tripped over a nugget of information at the online TAS blog. My attention was snagged by yet another half million dollar speaker then diverted by this other thing.

I played the two tracks, A & B, as instructed and quickly chose B as preferred. It was recorded with a single stereo microphone. If you read all the blah blah on either side of the demo you get the idea.

I listened with cheap earbuds plugged into my computer. It was a very noticeable effect.

Single mike recordings are rare as it is easier to do multi mikes into huge mixing boards so things can be tracked and mixed. Faster, easier to fix mistakes and all that.

Audiophiles will spend big money and judge the quality of their system on its ability to produce a good image. This small nugget shows the basic image quality is not in the playing, but in the recording.

As an aside the funky speaker in the photo is a Linkwitz open baffle behemoth that sprays sound all over the room front and back to artificially create ambience and presumably image. I think the concept is deeply flawed.

So what does this mean? Two very good examples of single mike recordings are Trinity Sessions by Cowboy Junkies, and Jazz at the Pawn Shop (sort of). Pawnshop was recorded with several mikes but they were arrayed as ORTF pairs which are two close set angled outward and each pair is lets say a quasi-single mike. Trinity was recorded with an Ambisonic mike that has 4 cartridges arrayed in a tetrahedron. The example B was done with a Blumlein stereo mike with two cartridges at 90 degrees to each other in one case. The main thing is the actual space and phase information that captures the "image" are preserved with a singe mike. That is why they sound so good.

One is a legendary pure analog recording the other is pure digital.

The brilliant Mercury Living Presence recordings are not single mike, but otherwise minimalist with just three mikes, L, R, and Center.

It is possible in the mix and processing to fake image. Those Supertramp albums have cool effects like a saxophone moving from the back to front and left and right. But that is all studio magic.

Qsound and Dolby Atmos create effects to mimic a sound stage. There are other methods that in your system feed out of phase information through each stereo speaker to cancel out some sounds from the other side and create a virtual headphone effect. These are all fake and frankly work only for a limited listening position. Headphones work too.

This resolves down to getting recordings that are done certain ways to get a good honest image. You may like a given musical performance but the image can be real or fake. An example of a good fake recording is "Diana Krall in Paris." Listen to how the image is portrayed in the mix then look at the photo of the band on stage.

Oh another anti-example is Getz / Gilberto. Very Naive recording some studio ambiance, but Astrud's vocal is hard to one side. Weird, but that is the way it was made. Actually not stereo. I think the original release was monophonic and Stereo was so new.

Fool me once shame on me.

[joslincox]

Punk Rock 101

Preformed by: Chris Rock and Phil LaMarr

Phil: She works at hot topic

His heart microscopic

She thinks that its love but to him its sex

Chris: He listens to emo but fat mike's his hero

His bank account's zero

What comes next?

Same song different chorus

Both: It's stupid, contagious

To be broke and famous

Can someone please save us from punk rock 101

My Dickies your sweatbands

My spiked hair, your new vans

Let's throw up our rock hands for punk rock 101

Chris: She bought him a skateboard, a rail slide, his knee tore

He traded it for drums at the local pawn shop

Phil: She left him for staring at girls and not caring

When she cried because she thought Bon Jovi broke up

Same song second chorus

Both: It's stupid, contagious

To be broke and famous

Can someone please save us from punk rock 101

My Dickies your sweatbands

My spiked hair, your new vans

Let's throw up our rock hands for punk rock 101

Phil: Don't forget to delay...on the very last word

Seven years later he works as a waiter

Chris: She married a trucker and he's never there

The story never changes, just the names and faces

Phil: Like Tommy and Gina they're living on a prayer

Did you just say that?

I just said

Both: It's stupid, contagious (same song different chorus)

To be broke and famous (same song different chorus)

Can someone please save us from punk rock 101

My Dickies your sweatbands

My spiked hair, your new Vans

Let's shoplift some sweatbands for punk rock 101

[thenavysealkie]

Very sad to hear the news about Pawn Shop Mike. While we may have had our differences, I hope he's safe and sound, wherever he is.

Anyway, does anyone think the shrimp will be a little more reasonable with their prices? Surely shellfish have a loose concept of money at best

[cebcode]

Mike's Pawn shop then and now, this has really changed. We Could Be Heroes - Wishlist Now https://store.steampowered.com/app/2563030?utm_source=Tumblr

[recoveringdreamer]

TIMING: pre-goo PARTIES:  @fox--tales & @recoveringdreamer LOCATION: mike's pawn shop SUMMARY: felix is once again showcasing the haunting vending machine that stole inge's mom's stuff, this time to miyeon! CONTENT WARNINGS: none

The second Miyeon heard that there was a guitar coming out of a vending machine at the pawn shop, she started running. Only she had to turn around halfway there because she totally forgot that she had to pick up chips for the guy waiting there. She had no idea why he wasn’t as excited about the whole thing as she was. Come on, what’s more interesting to find in a vending machine, a chair or a bag of jalapeño chips? She knew her answer but this dude was apparently different. That probably made him boring, but she really did not care just then as she burst into the door of the grocery store. “Sorry, sorry, excuse me!” she yelled as she darted between shoppers, narrowly avoiding being run over by carts and almost slamming into a few people. Her shoes squeaked as she turned down the snacks aisle. “jalapeño, jalapeño, jalapeño…” she muttered as she glanced up and down the aisle. Of course, right where some teenage dude was standing.

“Hi, I need you to move,” she said as she shoved him out of the way, wrapping her arms around as many bags as she could carry. The guy shouted and started grumbling but she was already yelling, “sorry, bye!” and darting back down the aisle to the checkout counter. Where she may or may not have jumped in front of someone to throw the chips on the self-checkout table before they could mosey on over. “It’s an emergency, sorry!” She wasn’t even sure who she had cut in front of or what sort of dirty look they were probably giving her, she was too busy dragging bags of chips across the scanner and throwing them into bags. Miyeon tapped her card, hit the buttons, and didn’t even wait for the receipt to print. She was out the door and headed to the pawn shop. 

‘I’m here, I’m here!” she shouted when she turned the corner to the block that the store was on. She had in fact been running the whole time. And she was realizing she needed to work on her cardio. Oh god, it was so much easier to run as a fox. Why was it so hard when she was on feet instead of paws? Ugh! Miyeon tried to keep her pace up, but it was slowing little by little as she approached the dude at the vending machine outside the store. “Did anything… else… happen?” she said between gasps for air. As soon as she was at the machine, she threw down the grocery bags stuffed full of jalapeño chips. “Chips… I got them. Now what… Tell me.. Or show.” She tried to stay upright and not collapse on the floor from exhaustion, gesturing to the vending machine, hoping that was enough explanation.

“No, wait!” She held up a finger before he could say a word, digging into her purse for her phone and quickly flipping through to open up the audio recording app. “On the record? If you don’t mind?” She batted her eyelashes and gave a small smile, hoping that she looked way too cute to say no to. She may be a fox girl, sure, but she was a star student of the ‘puss in boots school of how to get what you want.’

The vending machine was… weird. Of course, in Wicked’s Rest, ‘weird’ was a pretty common thing. Felix was learning that the funny little quirks he thought he’d misremembered about their hometown were actually very real supernatural phenomena. They just… weren’t really sure what was causing this one in particular. In all honesty, their parents had never really focused on teaching them about anything other than balam and things that were dangerous to balam. Hunters, mediums, and exorcists were all at the top of that list. Magic vending machines? Not so much.

So Felix was a little out of their depth here.

The girl he’d been speaking to online seemed… interested, at least. They weren’t sure if she had any ideas on how to ‘resolve’ the problem or not — they weren’t even sure if it was actually a problem — but she wanted to know more. And she was bringing him chips, which did solve the problem of the balam’s rumbling stomach, at least. Most people would have probably given up and gone off in search of a snack someplace else after the third unsuccessful attempt at liberating chips from the vending machine, but not Felix. Felix was determined. And… maybe not the best at applying the logic of trial and error. 

A voice rose up, and Felix glanced over as she approached. She was younger — maybe about Van’s age. But the girl wasn’t really what they were focused on here. It was the grocery bag in her hands that had the balam’s full attention. Their stomach rumbled again, almost as if it was asking a question. We can eat that, right? And yeah, they could. They could definitely eat that.

Just… after their demonstration, probably. They had agreed to these terms, after all.

“I was waiting on you. Um, are you okay? Do you need to rest? We can do it in a second.” But she was determined, too, wasn’t she? She pulled out her phone, she batted her eyes, and really, she didn’t have to lay it on so thick. Felix had no reason to say no. Nodding, they turned back to the vending machine. “Sure, yeah, on the record. Uh, give me… Give me fifty cents? I’m out of quarters.” They’d used up every coin they had trying to get these coveted chips.

Miyeon might have been out of breath still, but she was just about ready to jump in excitement when the guy turned to the vending machine. Her phone was on, full battery, ready to record, button hit and…

He had to be freaking kidding. “Are you serious?” Miyeon gave an exaggerated sigh, stopped the recording, put her phone in her other hand, and started digging through her purse for change. “I don’t even carry cash anymore, let alone change, ugh!” Sheer desperation kept her rummaging, but it was so hard to see anything in there, it was so full. 

“Hold this,” she said, handing this dude the contents of her purse. First up was a small travel pack of tissues, then the lip gloss, mascara, lotion, hand sanitizer, then the pens and pencils. She didn’t really look up to see if he was managing all this. And why should she, anyway? It was his dumb fault that they were out of change and his hands looked big enough to hold a lot of things at once. Bigger than hers, at least. 

Miyeon was one second away from dumping the whole thing upside down and shaking her purse to see if anything came out but she knew better. There was no use, she wasn’t going to find any ch– “Ouh! Ouh! Something shiny! Hold this,” she said, handing him a small notebook and a small bottle of ibuprofen. She dug further in and grabbed the coin in question. It was silver. It was bigger than a dime. Maybe it was a– 

“Are you freaking kidding me?!!” she shouted up to the sky, stomping her foot. A nickel. A freaking nickel. This was plain evil. She screamed a little again before pausing to think. There had to be a solution. She glanced around and hoped something would jump out at her.

Oh. They were in front of a store. They could make change! “Do you have any cash?” she asked, finally looking back at the guy who was trying and failing to hold all the contents of her purse. “Oh. Sorry,” she said, holding her purse open in front of him, “you can put all that back now.” 

She seemed disappointed, and Felix offered her a small, apologetic smile. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent all his quarters trying to get chips from a vending machine that very clearly did not contain chips regardless of how it looked through the glass.

Nodding, they held out a hand to hold whatever it was she needed to be held… but there was a lot of it. Tissues, lip gloss, hand sanitizer, mascara, lotion, pens and pencils. How did all of this fit inside her purse? Was it magically enhanced somehow? Bigger on the inside, like the spaceship on that show with the weird accents? It had to be. Maybe that was why she was so interested in the vending machine — because it was like her purse. 

Still, Felix stood dutifully, accepting each new item thrust into their arms. It was a little hard to balance all of them, but he could manage. After all, jaguars and balance went together pretty easily. They craned their head as she seemed to find something she needed, hope rising up in their chest…

…and falling right back down again when he saw what was in her hand. A nickel. That wouldn’t get them anywhere, would it? Shrugging, Felix looked down at their pockets, but couldn’t reach them with his hands full. It wasn’t until she gave the okay that they began carefully placing things back in her bag, doing their best to put them back in reverse order that they’d been handed. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be hard for her to find them? The bag was apparently bottomless.

With their hands free, Felix dug around in their pocket, tongue sticking out the side of their mouth. Receipt, paperclip, car wash coupon… aha! Grinning, they pulled out a crumpled, soggy five dollar bill and held it out to her. “Here. Um, we can get some quarters for that. Right?” Yes. That was how currency exchange worked.

Miyeon stood there, blinking, looking at the sad, pathetic bill they were holding up and she tried to put a smile on her face but it was shaky at best. Her facial expression was probably about as rough as that five-dollar bill. “Yeah, that’s…. perfect.” She had to force the word out as much as she was forcing the smile.

Her hand hovered in front of her, reaching for the money. It looked disgusting. How long had it been in his pocket? She was just about to take it from his hand when she hesitated. “Oh my god, is that… is it wet?” She couldn’t help herself. The look she gave him was a mix of disgust and shock. 

Miyeon swallowed back a gulp and reached back into her back to grab a tissue and her bottle of hand sanitizer. With the tissue wrapped around her hand, she took the cash, holding it by the corner and keeping her hand held out far from herself. “Use this,” she said, handing him the hand sanitizer while she cringed. “You clearly need it. I’ll be right back.”

She trotted to the door of the shop and practically jogged to the counter, dropping the dollar bill on the counter like a grenade. Now that it was no longer her problem, she shook out her hands and her whole body to rid herself of that gross feeling. “Hi, I don’t know if this is still worth anything but can you exchange this for quarters, please? We need it for the vending machine outside.”

The cashier raised a brow but took the money and started ringing her up to get change from the register all the same. “Cash is cash,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t know why you’re bothering. That thing doesn’t work anymore.” 

Now it was Miyeon’s turn to look confused. She opened her mouth and was about to tell him that he was super wrong, but immediately thought better of it. This was her story after all. “Thanks so much!’ she said with a saccharine smile, heading off now that the coins were in hand.

“No problem. Not my business how you want to waste your money,” he said before lumbering back to work.

Miyeon ran back through the door and to the vending machine and her current partner in journalism (and definitely not crime), holding out the coins with one hand and reaching for the hand sanitizer with her other. “Here you go. I’m surprised they took it.” Once she had wiped her hands down and shoved the bottle back in her purse, she grabbed her phone and got ready to record. For real this time. “Okay, ready!”

She didn’t look entirely thrilled with their offering, and Felix wasn’t sure whether to be offended or apologetic. She took the cash either way, though she didn’t seem entirely thrilled with it. Felix shrugged sheepishly, looking down at his shoes. “I got rained on. And maybe it went in the washer, too? And — And I fell in a lake the other day, but I don’t know if these were the pants I was wearing.” They probably were. He didn’t own a whole lot of pants.

Reaching out, they took the hand sanitizer and squirted some onto their palms, busying themself with rubbing their hands together as the girl made off with their money. For a moment, they wondered if this whole thing was a ploy to rob them, but it wouldn’t be a very successful mugging, would it? All that work just to make off with a very soggy five dollars? She’d be a bad robber. And besides, she’d seemed genuinely excited about the vending machine.

Felix looked back to the aforementioned vending machine now, inspecting it carefully. It still looked just as normal and unassuming as it had the first time he’d shoved a quarter in it. A normal vending machine, except for the part where it gave them chairs and bicycle wheels instead of the chips he really wanted. At least this deal with the girl and her bottomless purse had solved that particular problem.

Speaking of the girl… she was back now, hands full of quarters. Felix traded the hand sanitizer for the coins, shrugging again when she expressed surprise that the five had still been acceptable. “I’ve spent way worse looking ones than that. They, um, they’ll accept half a bill as long as it’s the bigger half. They’re supposed to.” They’d done a lot of reading about damaged currency… largely due to the fact that their general luck tended to leave them with a lot of it.

Turning to the vending machine, he flashed the camera a shy smile before beginning to drop quarters in the slot. Fifty cents for a bag of chips. It was a trade they’d been trying to make all day long. The quarters fell with twin plops, though it sounded… a little different than vending machines usually sounded. Felix scanned the number pad. “Okay. B4. That’s the chips. Ready?” They mashed the buttons in turn. B. 4. 

The machine whirred, a strange not-quite-mechanical noise coming from inside. Strangely, through the glass, nothing seemed to be moving. But then — plop. Something hit the bottom of the compartment. Felix lifted the door, stuck a hand inside…

And pulled out a lampshade. Large, gaudy, and beaded. They turned, showing it to their new friend. “Not chips,” they announced. “See? I pressed for chips.” 

Miyeon was trying not to bounce with excitement while holding the camera. Steady. She had to keep it steady. This was the money shot. This was going to be her– Well, okay, sure she didn’t know what this would do for her journalistic reputation at the end of the day, but that didn’t matter right then. All that mattered was being there on the scene, on the ground floor, getting the story, breaking it live! Alight, okay, she had to calm down, still had to hold the camera steady and at the end of the day, it was just a weird vending machine, not exactly solving a cold case or something like that. 

She inhaled and tried to hold her breath as he pressed the button, watching intently as the machine whirled and gurgled. Some part of her was worried that it would in fact just be chips. But it was so much better than that. Her jaw dropped to the floor and it took everything she had not to scream and start jumping up and down. Camera. She had to hold the camera and get the shot. But as soon as she had the shot of him pulling the lampshade out, it was all over.

“OH MY GOD!” she shouted, surely making the audio on the video absolutely cap out. “That’s so cool!” She ran over to the lampshade, camera still in her left hand, and reached out to touch it. It was real alright. No trickery, very solid, didn’t have any weird seams or fold lines. “This is way cooler than chips! And like, I got you chips. Who cares about chips? There could be anything in there!”

Miyeon darted over to the actual machine, still filming a very terrible and shaky video, and ran her hands across the buttons. “I wonder how it determines what to spit out. Like you pressed the same button multiple times, right? And got different things.” She bent over and looked inside the door where the things came out. It looked ordinary. And way too small to fit a whole lampshade. But she’d seen it come out of there with her own eyes. Sticking her hand in didn’t reveal anything new, either. “I mean we know it doesn’t just give you what you want the most or anything like that,” she said, crouching down even further all the way to the ground to try and look underneath it. “Because if that was the case you’d have like so many chips.” Nothing was out of the ordinary with the machine visibly. It had to be some kind of magic. The whys and the whos and the whats all swirled around in her head but she knew that this dude had even less answers than she did despite spending more time with the machine than she had. 

“Do you like need a lampshade at all? Or a guitar? Like are these things you thought about buying absent mindedly or something? Or is it just random?” She hopped up and turned to face him, grabbing his arms, camera still rolling but utterly forgotten by this point. “We should run experiments! We have enough change, right? This is so awesome, what if we get, I don’t know, like a canoe out of it or something! Or a one of a kind collectible! Maybe there’s a creepy doll, oh my god, do you think there’s a creepy doll? Don’t pull out a creepy doll please.” She was babbling but she couldn’t stop herself. Miyeon walked around to the back of the vending machine and there was a clear gap between the frame and the wall. There was no way it was just feeding though. She stuck her hand behind it and sure enough, it was just dead air. She squealed and turned back to the chips guy. “I could make such a good story with this! Do you think we can buy it? What if we sold tickets to people to come try it out! Do you think it would run out ever?”

While Felix found the vending machine odd and perhaps a little unsettling, their new friend seemed to find it exhilarating. The way she cheered when they pulled the lampshade from the slot was enough to bring a small, shy smile to the balam’s face. It was nice to see someone happy; they liked that. They liked it a lot more than they liked buying chips from a vending machine, so the sacrifice was probably worth it.

They held the lampshade still as she touched it, as if it mattered if it moved. The beads hanging down jingled with her touch, though the noise was fairly muted compared to her excitable yelling and loud voice. Felix got the feeling that even if the vending machine spat out one of those large, booming speakers that people put in their cars, it wouldn’t be loud enough to drown out the sound of Miyeon’s excitement. And they kind of liked that. People should be allowed to be loud with their joy, even if Felix felt anxious at the idea of allowing themself such a thing.

“Uh, yeah,” they confirmed. “Same button every time, but it never spat out the same thing twice. Some lady said that one of the chairs it spat out was her mom’s, so I took it back to her. But I don’t — Maybe she was lying.” They felt guilty for even suggesting it, but they’d never actually seen the ‘mother’ that they’d delivered the chair to. And it didn’t make a lot of sense, did it? For one thing in the machine to belong to a specific person when everything else seemed random. “A lampshade definitely isn’t what I wanted most, though. I wanted chips. Which I have now, because you brought them! Thanks again for that, by the way. I, um, I really appreciate the chips.” 

They were glad, at least, that she seemed to recognize that there was something going on. “What kind of magic? And, um… Why?” That was what really bothered them. Magic they could understand, but what was the intention behind it? What did someone gain by making a vending machine spit out random household objects rather than chips or snacks? Surely no one would go through this kind of trouble without reason.

Carefully, Felix considered her question. They tried to determine whether or not any part of them might have been thinking of the objects they’d gained when they’d used the vending machine in the past. “I play guitar,” they said, “but I don’t even think I have a lamp that would fit this. I mean, I don’t really even use lamps. My apartment has overhead lighting. Do you need a lampshade?” Maybe the vending machine had read her intentions instead of Felix’s, if that theory had any weight. “We can try more if you want, yeah. Uh, do you want to try?” They offered her the quarters in their hands. Maybe there would be a different result if she did it? It wouldn’t make any sense, but it would be some kind of a clue. Right?

“There could be a creepy doll. I don’t think a creepy doll would be any weirder than a chair or a pasta strainer.” Both of which were included in the list of things Felix had pulled from the vending machine. “But I don’t… have enough money to buy a vending machine. I’m pretty sure.” They didn’t know how much the machine would cost, but they were running pretty low on cash after all the quarters they’d sunk into it.

“Never the same thing twice?” Miyeon repeated, looking at the visible contents of the vending machine. She wondered if the items corresponded to something, had some sort of meaning tied up in whatever was going on there. No that didn't make any sense, they just said they pressed the same button every time. 

“Oh my god, it was her mother's chair?” she said, turning to face them, eyes growing even wider. Miyeon paused. Yeah, looking at them, she was pretty sure that they were easy to fool and pick on. Poor guy. He seemed nice. She hoped they didn't get picked on too often but something about them gave her the impression that wasn't the case. Maybe they didn't notice and that's why they were able to stay so chill about things. 

“Me?!” Miyeon's jaw dropped to the floor. How in the heck had she not considered trying it? How had she not already begged to try it out herself? She was slacking on her investigative journalism, clearly. She was so used to being a third party observer that the possibility of participating felt like a foreign concept. “Ye! You're right, yes, oh my god — take my phone. Record the whole thing!” she said as she grabbed the quarters from their hand, practically squealing at the thought of trying this for herself, and shoving her phone into the chip guy's hands. She was at the machine and about to slot the quarters inside when Miyeon paused and turned back to face them. “I mean, please record it. If you could?” she asked with a sheepish smile. She couldn't believe she had been so rude as a result of her sheer enthusiasm.

She watched and waited for her new friend to figure out how to work her phone. “It's the red one the— No, now you stopped it, you have to hit it ag— Yeah, perfect!” she instructed from the other side of the camera. She took a deep breath and turned back to face the vending machine. ”Okay. Here goes nothing.“ 

Click. Clank. She pushed the quarters into the slot and heard them rattle down into their new homes. She pressed the same buttons that the guy had in the same order, careful to select the right ones. One. Two. Enter. 

The machine started whirring and stirred to life. The kitsune was on the edge of her toes, leaning down to watch whatever was going on, wondering if she would get something new or just receive the long awaited bag of chips in question. She heard something thump in the bottom of the drawer and glanced at the camera quickly to make sure it was still rolling and that everything was in clear view. Miyeon pushed it open and slowly reached her hand in. No matter how hard she tried to look into the darkness to see what it was she was grabbing, everything was obscured beyond the view of the flap. Her hands wrapped around something solid, though, so there was  nothing left to do but pull it out and reveal her prize.

Please don't let it be a creepy doll.

With a tug, a large wooden object spilled from the machine. It was strangely shaped, it was hard to tell what it was at first. Was it another chair? Or—   “Oh my god, is this a rocking horse??!” she shouted as she got a better look at it. Poking it, it was clear it was solid wood, the real deal, no illusion to be seen. She set it down and began admiring her haul. “How the hell did this,” she said, pointing at the horse, “come out of that!” She finished by pointing at the machine.

“This doesn't get old. but I just, I have to know why it's like this. Like what's going on, why is there a whole garage sale coming out of this thing? Is it pulling from another dimension? What happens if we break it? Or tip it over? Or shake it?” By now, she hoped her companion knew that she was asking these questions of the universe, not of them specifically. “You stumbled onto something so interesting. I don't know what to do about it but I'm so glad you shared it with me.”

—

“Not since I’ve been doing it.” Which was, admittedly, longer than what most people would have given the machine. Felix had always been more than a little gullible; as a kid, their siblings would take advantage of it, playing pranks that they’d all laugh at together even if the laughter from Felix’s lips had been a little less genuine. It had come from a good place back then, at least. None of his siblings had meant him any harm, and none of the pranks had ever been meant to hurt anyone. These days, though…

It was hard not to think about Leo. Felix tried not to, tried never to, but it was so hard to keep him out of their mind. He’d preyed on that gullible nature in a way so much more sinister than anything anyone had done before or since. What would he have said if he’d seen Felix at this vending machine? With Inge before, with Miyeon now? The balam tried to distract themself, letting Miyeon’s voice tug them back to the conversation. “And her pasta strainer. And a vacuum, too. Uh, I think — a lot of the stuff in there was her mom’s. So maybe it, I don’t know, maybe it has to do with the person?”

Which could be proven or disproven by Miyeon taking her turn. Felix held her phone in their hands, squinting at the screen. Working someone else’s phone was hard, even for people who hadn’t spent their prime phone-wielding years living off the grid in the middle of the Maine wilderness. With Miyeon’s instructions, they managed to get it working. Only the first few seconds of the video would feature their thumb in front of the lens, which was a win in Felix’s book. They flashed Miyeon a thumbs up as she inserted the coins.

She pressed the button, and Felix leaned in close, belatedly remembering that phone cameras had zoom and utilizing it. She leaned into the machine. She reached in. She pulled out… a rocking horse. Felix stared at it, nodding. Yeah. All right. Checked out.

It made no sense, from a physics standpoint. The horse shouldn’t have fit in the machine at all, but they’d just seen it come out. “Is it yours?” Felix whispered, still holding the camera. “Or — Maybe it’s your mom’s?” Maybe the machine retrieved things from people’s mothers. Maybe Felix had only come back with a random assortment of items that evidently belonged to other mothers because theirs was —

No. Not a fun thought process to dive into. There was a rocking horse to admire. Felix took a step closer, panning the camera over it. “It looks, um. Well made?” Not mass produced. Was that anything? Was that a clue? “I don’t think we should break the machine. What if they ask us to pay for it? I spent all my money trying to get chips.” But they offered her a small smile at her gratitude, shrugging. “I don’t mind. I, uh… I’m just glad you believed me.”

—

Miyeon knocked on the wood. She wasn’t sure why, it just seemed like the thing to do. It made a nice little sound when she knocked and she guessed it was solid but honestly, she didn't know how to tell one way or another. She then pushed it to demonstrate the rock and it looked like really sturdy and solid to her. The kitsune didn’t know what to expect out of a quality rocking horse versus a non-quality one but like if she had to guess, this was quality. The story this guy told about the person’s mom’s items totally didn’t make any of this make any more sense, though. She pursed her lips and looked back up at them. “There was more than one thing of her mom’s? That’s odd. Who was she? It sounds like someone worth following up with. I mean, if this is a story. I don’t know. I think it is. Do you think it is?” She reached out and took back her phone, thanking him for taking the video again. 

She couldn’t hold back a laugh at the thought of her mom having a rocking horse. “I don’t think my mom ever had one of these.” The thought of her fully grown mother riding it sent her into a fit of giggles. “These so weren’t even invented when she was young enough to use that.” Her hand flew to her mouth to cover it, like she could swallow back the words. Ugh, maybe he didn’t catch her slip up. Or maybe he would just think she was making fun of her mom like a normal person might, calling their parents older than dinosaurs or whatever. Usually, that was what people assumed. Which like totally made sense, there was no reason to believe her parents were legit ancient, no hyperbole. 

“Anyway, good point. Breaking it would be a bad idea.” Even if she could probably afford to buy it. “Um, do you mind if I mention you in this story? If I write it? Or share it on the air, I mean?” She should really get this in writing but she ran her so fast she left her standard waiver forms at home. She always had a few in her work bag but that bag was not here. “Oh, uh, I guess I should mention that I host a radio show. And, like, introduce myself.” She was so caught up in this whole thing it had slipped her mind. Her manners really went out the window when she could feel a story right there for the taking. “I’m Miyeon,” she said, holding her hand out to shake, “I host Good Wicked Morning. Nice to meet you.” Afterwards, she gave a little shrug. “Of course I believed you, silly. This is like so not the weirdest thing I’ve covered this week. It is probably one of the coolest, though. And definitely the least depressing.” This was some weird town fodder that didn’t involve death or someone getting maimed. All in all, this was wholesome. She always needed more of those kinds of stories on the daily. 

—

“Maybe. I can give you her contact info if you want to talk to her.” Inge wouldn’t mind, would she? She wanted to get to the bottom of why her mom’s things were in a vending machine, too. She had to. Otherwise, what was to stop all her mother’s things from being stolen and put in vending machines again? “Maybe there’s a story, I don’t know.” Felix wasn’t the best at determining what was noteworthy, what ‘stories’ people might find of interest, but plenty of people had seemed intrigued by the vending machine and Inge’s mother was another piece of that puzzle, wasn’t she? Maybe there was something to be done there, something to be gained. The woman with him now was nice; they thought she might deserve to gain whatever she wanted from the experience.

Felix furrowed their brow as she spoke of her own mother, eyes darting to the horse. “Weren’t… invented?” When were rocking horses invented? Should they google it? They’d assumed they were an old invention — it wasn’t like there was much to them, after all — but maybe they were a newer thing. Not for the first time, Felix wished he could ask his father about it. There was so much they wanted to ask him, and they were so afraid they’d never get the chance to. It was terrifying.

“Oh, yeah. You can mention me if you want to.” There was a beat, and then she was introducing herself and Felix realized that they’d neglected to do the same. “Uh, Felix. Mendoza. Is my name. For, you know, you to mention me.” They let out a little laugh, kind of relieved to hear that she had covered stranger things than this. It made them feel a little less paranoid, a little less afraid of being called a liar. “It’s nice to meet you, Miyeon. I, uh, I look forward to checking out the show.”

[letsbenditlikebennett]

TIMING: Pre-Goo Current-ish PARTIES: @mortemoppetere & @letsbenditlikebennett SUMMARY: Alex wanders into an alley and finds herself stuck in a square... Emilio happens upon her and of course does not fuck off. The worst game of Get Along Or Else Candyland ensues. CONTENT: Domestic abuse, emotional abuse, parental death, child death, sibling death.

While Worm Row was considered the “bad” part of town, Alex always thought that was being way too generous to the rest of the town. You were just as likely to get eaten by a random monster on a block in Worm Row as you were over in Harborside. The only real difference was the tax bracket which meant the latter was decidedly not where one went to check out pawn shops for a potential new guitar. 

Mike's hadn't been the score she thought it would be based on their instagram posts from earlier, but she had gotten a pretty sweet hand mixer from the vending machine instead of the Hot Cheetos she'd wanted, so Alex would still call it a win even if she was still craving hot chips. 

It was that line of thinking that had her absentmindedly walking toward the smell of something sweet. Given how cooped up Alex had been in the cabin following her injury and the fact she could actually walk a little bit on it now without a lot of a pain, she was enjoying just wondering the streets even if the buildings were all run down. It was kind of more her style anyway. Lived in. 

Her nose led her straight to the edge of an alley that she almost wouldn't have noticed as she hummed to herself if it was for the fact the ground under her feet turned a bright shade of green. 

“What the,” Alex muttered as she stopped in her tracks and actually looked up. It was the same shitty buildings to the left and right of her with rusted signs hanging from the windows, but the alley looked like that one board game she always saw the normal kids in their neighborhood playing. 

Ahead was a curving path of colored squares lined with candy... which while it smelled delicious, seemed a little bit ominous. ”Not today, Satan, not today,” Alex said to hereself. She moved to leave the spot she stood in only to find she couldn't. She lifted her boot off the ground but when she tried to move it out of the barrier of the green square, it was like it hit an invisible wall.

”Greaaaaaaaat,” Alex grumbled to herself. She looked around for some kind of clue for how to get out of this weird game only to see a certain slayer approaching her. This really wasn't her day. “Don't you dare take another step closer,” she spat at Emilio. 

—

It was a detective night instead of a slayer night, and Emilio always liked those less. Detective nights tended to contain a lot less violence and a lot more sitting still, and he was so bad at that. His hands trembled, his leg bounced, his head spun. He could never manage to maintain the stakeout for as long as he could keep up a patrol, always came home feeling more restless and less at ease, somehow. Like the paranoia of being watched fit just as well into the head of the person doing the watching as it did the target of it. He was wired; he still wanted something to fight.

Usually, walking home in Worm Row would provide him with that. If you took the right route and moved slow enough, someone or something would show up sooner rather than later to give you something to hit. Emilio ached for it, longed for something to bruise his knuckles against the same way he longed for a swig of whiskey from the flask in his pocket. The latter was easy enough to obtain, but he’d had no luck with the former just yet. It only made the paranoia worse.

But maybe his luck was about to turn around. There was a noise from an alley as he passed it, something… strange. Like a bell dinging, but warped and unnatural. Not his usual fare, but Emilio was desperate enough for something that he was drawn to it with just as much eagerness as a man alone in the desert might have moved towards a cold glass of water.

As he entered the alley, he caught sight of a flash of red hair. For a moment, he thought it might have been Andy. She’d been in and out at his apartment for a while now, fixing things and crashing on his couch or using his shower occasionally, but not as much in recent days. His brow furrowed as he moved closer, only to see that it wasn’t Andy at all.

To Emilio, the alley still looked normal. Alex stood in place, seemingly unable to move in a way that looked almost comical from the outside looking in. Like some invisible force held her still. He might have thought she was messing with him, but he didn’t think Alex liked him enough to do that, especially not after their last conversation. 

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t listen to her order not to come closer. He took a lazy step towards her, then another, bad leg dragging behind him a little more than usual. “What exactly are you —” He cut off as he stepped down just next to the spot where she stood, and the alley transformed for him, too. The concrete beneath his feet became a board game, stretching further than should have been possible in the small alley. He stood on the same green square as Alex, and a step back found him hitting against the invisible barrier. 

Immediately, a surge of panic cut in. Emilio shoved his shoulder forward like he was trying to barge through a locked door, but whatever force was there didn’t budge. He kicked it hard, first with his bad leg in a way that elicited a long string of Spanish curses, then with his good leg in a way that delivered the same result, but with less pain. A fist slammed into the barrier, stopped by that same invisible force. Emilio was bad with tight spaces, and Emilio was bad with things he couldn’t see. This felt an awful lot like both.

“What — What the fuck is this?” He turned to Alex, trying to smooth his expression into something neutral. He wasn’t sure how successful he was.

Above their heads, that bell dinged again. Inside the game, it sounded less warped, but not pleasant. It was unsettling, to say the least.

A disembodied female voice rose up around them, robotic in its inflections: “Welcome, Player One. Welcome, Player Two. Prepare for the game to commence.” 

“I don’t want to play a game,” Emilio yelled back, looking up. 

“Prepare for the game to commence,” the voice repeated. Fucking great.

—

If it had been anyone else, they might have actually listened when Alex said to stay away. Of course, this wasn't anyone else, it was Emilio who she was pretty sure was actually physically incapable of fucking off. Hell, she didn't even give him the usual 'fuck off' in a different language greeting to really drive the point home. She was pretty sure that he actually just enjoyed being a pain in the ass. Not that she could fault anyone for enjoying that but she really wished she wasn't on the receiving end of it. The last person she wanted to be stuck in a small square of space with was Mr. Irish Spring himself. 

“No, stop,” she demanded desperately before he was beside her in the green square and equally as perplexed as she was. Alex crossed her arms over her chest in annoyance and watched him with a scowl on her face as he cursed in Spanish and kicked at the invisible barrier that was keeping them trapped in the square. If she wasn't stuck with him, she probably would have found the display hilarious. Seeing as she was stuck with him and already felt like the space was entirely too small, she was pissed. “I swear I could fucking stab you for not listening for once in your god damn life right now,” she spat. 

Almost immediately, the strange dinging in the air  put Alex on edge. The sound of bells was a little too high pitched for her when she wasn't agitated which meant at that moment it was practically grating against her ears. It was like nails against a chalkboard right on her ear drums and it made her want to punch Emilio or the barrier... or both. Definitely a little bit of both. 

Then there was some eerie sounding autonomous voice calling them Player 1 and Player 2 like this was one of those video games that Cass and Van talked about. Except, this looked like that one kid's game Alex had all but begged her mother to buy for her to no avail. It seemed almost cruel that this was the version of the game that she finally got and it wasn't even her choice... because god forbid anything in her life ever be some choice of her own. “Game,” she spat out, “This isn't funny.” 

Emilio expressed not wanting to play the game and the voice told them prepare to commence. Well, Alex did not like this one bit. In fact, she was pretty sure she hated it and she hated Emilio a tiny bit for not listening and getting sucked into this with her. Hell, she thought she might actually prefer to have Thea along for this ride than Emilio because at least Thea knew how to game. 

“Doesn't look like it's giving us a choice,” she grumbled, “You know, if you listened to me I could be stuck playing this with someone who's less of a pain in the ass.” 

Almost immediately, she felt an electric shock jolt her and she jumped in place, hitting the edge of the barrier as she moved. “Ow,” Alex shouted, “What the fuck was that? Who gave Private Asshat over here a taser?”

Another shock hit her and she was getting even angrier. What kind of game was this? It definitely wasn't the cool version of Candyland that Alex had begged her maman for, that much was clear. She turned to Emilio, arms still crossed over her chest and brows still knit together in annoyance. “Are you any good at games? Doesn't look like we have much of a choice.” 

—

Blood was rushing in his ears, half rage and half panic. Emilio had never been particularly good at accepting situations he couldn’t control, but he’d become so much worse at it since the massacre. Things slipped from his carefully curated command, and it felt like the world was on fire, like he was back in the midst of a massacre watching everyone he loved bleed out. Alex was speaking, but he barely heard her. He was six years old, locked in a shed with something that was both dead and alive. He was thirty-two, and his family’s blood was staining the soles of his shoes. 

Then, Alex jumped beside him, and Emilio flinched violently despite the fact that he wasn’t the one who’d been shocked. He turned to look at her with wild eyes, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. She was insulting him. That wasn’t entirely surprising. There was a strange comfort in the familiarity of it, and he let himself cling to that. He could ground himself through the familiar back and forth he’d accidentally built up with a kid who reminded him a little too much of himself and hated him just as much as he hated himself, too. 

“You think I want to be here? I would like to be trapped with someone who smells less like my dog when it rains,” he snapped. Immediately, a jolt went through him, sending him scrambling so quickly that his bad leg screamed in protest. He let out another long string of curses, kicking at the invisible barrier again. “¿Qué chingados está pasando? Did you do this? Is this — Is this your idea of a fucking joke?” 

He didn’t recognize the ‘game board’ stretched out in front of them, barely understood what a board game was at all. The Cortezes had done everything in their power to ensure that their children knew nothing of the world outside of hunting, had made a very active effort to raise weapons rather than children. They’d done a good job at it — Emilio had very little capability to function as a person in society, and this was proof of it. But while the specifics of a board game were unknown to him, he did know at least the basics of what games in general were. He knew that there were goals, that there were winners and losers.

He knew that there were rules.

He looked over at Alex with a scowl. “No,” he replied flatly. Then, feeling ridiculous, he looked up at the empty sky. “What are the fucking rules? What are we supposed to do? How do we win?” The questions were in quick succession, one after another. 

Another ding sounded. “Players 1 and 2 may only win the game together,” the voice said. “You will be presented with a number of riddles. Answer each riddle with an associated memory to move across the board. If both players offer a memory, you may move multiple spaces. If only one complies, you may only move one space forward. If neither complies, you must move back. The game is cooperation. You cannot win without giving something.” 

Emilio stared blankly at the sky, heart still pounding in his chest. He turned to Alex, expression deadpan. “We are going to die,” he said simply.

—

Okay, the whole electric shock thing was way more amusing when it was happening to Emilio and not to her. Alex only barely stifled a laugh as the slayer let out yet another string of Spanish curses. She was pretty sure they had to be breaking some kind of record for the most swear words said in the most languages in a 5 minutes timespan. It was really a trilingual trifecta of curse words going on in the green 5 by 5 square they found themselves trapped in. 

“I just need you to know that I have a really good comeback for that one,” Alex declared with an air of smugness, ”But clearly this shitty game is trying to Pavlov us into being nice to each other.” There was some satisfaction in knowing that Emilio would not know who the hell Pavlov was, which was maybe a little bit mean, but she doubted the game knew enough about science and their dynamic to know that. 

“No, I didn't do this,” she chided with an eyeroll, “If I was gonna trap myself in a small space with someone it'd be a pretty girl and not a stinky man.” Zap. She flinched as the shock hit her, but decided it was worth it. Emilio needed to know he was stinky and it probably pained her more physically to hold that in anyway. At least she'd say as much for dramatic effect anyway. 

At least Emilio had the smarts to ask for the rules of the game. Alex just assumed it was gonna be like Candyland... which she'd never gotten to play, but she imagined how it was supposed to go in her head. Actually, Ariadne probably would have been the perfect partner for IRL Candyland, but then the game announcer spoke and this wasn't that. 

They had to cooperate. That was already a tall order for Alex and Emilio. From the moment she'd met him, she'd been trying to irritate him into leaving her the fuck alone and he seemed to take joy in irritating her right back. Then sharing memories? Ok, yeah, he was right. They were doomed, but she wasn't going to tell him that. 

“Buck up, grandpa,” Alex said, giving him a sportly smack on the back, “I'm not dying in a 5 by 5 game square with a man. That goes against my entire brand as the gayest cousin.” 

The bravado was decidedly false. Alex was nervous as hell about going through some sort of bonding experience with the slayer. He already had an annoying habit of saving her life and she didn't know if the memories shared would exuberate or squash that feeling. A girl could hope for the latter, but that seemed like... the opposite of what the stupid game wanted. 

“Come on,” she gestured as she reached for the card that was now floating in front of them. Alex turned it over in her hands and looked over the words. Bubblegum goes in hard and comes out... Before she read them aloud, she knew the answer and felt her stomach lurch. No. Not that word and those memories. This game was a bitch, she decided, but read aloud all the same. “Bubblegum goes in hard and comes out....” 

She couldn't bring herself to say the last word. It always tasted like acid on her tongue much like the tone her father took when he spat the word in her face. Alex really didn't want to go there and not with another hunter at that. He'd already seen firsthand that she was too soft and couldn't fight for shit, why'd she have to tell him about it to get out of this hell loop. “You're the grownup, you go first,” she murmured with her shoulders already hunching in on themselves to protect her from the rejection that seemed inevitable. 

—

“What the fuck is a Pavlov,” Emilio raised his voice an octave at the word, mimicking Alex’s accent poorly. Apparently, it was enough of an insult to earn him another zap, which seemed incredibly unfair. She wasn’t zapped for the implications she’d been making in announcing that she had a ‘great comeback,’ even though that great comeback doubtlessly would have involved calling him stinky or something equally childish. Why did he get zapped just for changing the tone of his voice? He shot a glare back up at the empty sky to voice his displeasure, but he wasn’t sure how effective it was. If there was someone or something watching them, he couldn’t see it anywhere.

In any case, Alex got a zap of her own shortly after, and there was some childish satisfaction in that. Emilio didn’t dislike the kid. He didn’t want her hurt, didn’t want to see anything happen to her. If anything, the opposite was true. He wanted Alex to be safe because of what she represented to Andy, because of the way Andy had given her all for her the way Emilio would have given his to Flora if anyone had ever given him half a chance. But he wasn’t the type to take bickering sitting down, either. If someone picked at him, he tended to pick back. Even if it meant an electric shock.

Alex wasn’t responsible for this; he’d known that even as he’d asked it. Since they met, Alex had made it clear that she wanted to spend as little time with Emilio as possible, even if doing so meant risking death. There was no way she would have intentionally trapped herself in a tight spot with him, game or no game. Normally, he might have found some dull satisfaction in the fact that, at the very least, she wasn’t having any fun, either. As it was, though, he was far too on edge to find enjoyment in any of this. He wanted out. 

And it seemed there was only one way to do that.

The idea of sharing memories with anyone made bile rise up in the back of his throat. There were so few memories that Emilio was okay with other people knowing about, and he doubted that this ‘game’ intended to aim only for the easy ones. If it had, it probably wouldn’t have trapped them here, after all. Sharing with Alex seemed especially daunting. He knew she disliked him, and she knew that plenty of the memories in his head would prove her right for that.

But what other options did he have? He could stay here forever, until whoever was holding them in place either grew tired and freed them or until he doomed them both to starvation with his stubbornness, or he could play the stupid game. Alex would hate him by the end of it, but how was that different than how she felt about him now? 

Still, he felt sick. It was as if there were bugs crawling over his skin — or maybe beneath it. Emilio wasn’t much of a talker. There were so many things he’d never said aloud, and he had such little desire to change that. He scowled as Alex picked up the card, heart in his throat as she read it aloud. The answer was obvious, but he thought it was probably supposed to be. The riddles weren’t really what the game was about. It was the memories.

And it had started with a hardball. 

There were so many to choose from. The word had defined so much of his life growing up, had become a knife sharpened on the belt of everyone responsible for shaping him. He could have plucked a thousand different memories from the arsenal, but none were ones he wanted to share. Closing his eyes, Emilio inhaled a trembling breath, exhaled just as shakily. 

“I was twelve,” he said hoarsely, the words sticking to the back of his throat. “And there was — We didn’t do funerals. When someone died. Funerals are for people, and we weren’t meant to do that. But my… We lost someone. And I was fucking twelve, and stupid, so I buried his fucking knife in the yard. His favorite one, you know, the one he always kept with him. Stuck a stick in the ground. That’s how my mom found it. And when she was done… with the real — paliza, she said…” He trailed off, pushing his tongue against his teeth until he tasted blood in his mouth. “I was always too soft. That’s what she used to tell me. And the family would have been stronger if it were me instead of him, because he was better. I knew that, she knew that. Everybody knew that. I was soft. Guess I still am.” 

There was a ding from the sky above them, and the spot in front of them turned the same shade of green as the one they were standing on. Emilio scrambled forward, but the barrier wasn’t gone — it had only moved a few feet. He slammed into the new boundary, cursing again before turning back to Alex. “You — It said it’d go faster if we both say something. I want to get the fuck out of here. You want to get the fuck out of here. So it’s your fucking turn, kid. Answer the pinche riddle so I can go home.”

—

How painfully easy the riddle was almost seemed mocking. Alex was good at actual riddles, but it was evident the point of this game had little to do with the actual riddles. It was all about cooperation with a person she decidedly didn't like to cooperate with. What a weird and miserable turn of events. She wasn't sure if the word soft held the same acidity for Emilio as it did for her. It'd been spat in her direction more times she could count in the short time she had with her parents while they were alive. It was the word that repeated like a broken record in her mind every time she felt even a shred of inadqueacy. 

She'd seen Emilio fight. Even with his shitty knee, he still knew how to move and deliver the hard blows in a way that Alex never could. She couldn't imagine the word being spewed at him with the same vitrol. But then he spoke and her eyes widened in surprise. Even though he fought like the weapon he was born to be, the word had been hurled at him all the same. 

The memory made her frown. It was hard to imagine Emilio as a little kid, not that she had ever tried. Not surprisingly, it was easier to keep someone at a distance when you didn't know them too well because really, Alex knew she didn't actually dislike Emilio. He'd saved her friends on more than one occasion, he was there for Andy, he saved her— it wasn't as if she had some real grudge or sleight to cling to besides the fact he could bicker with the worst of them. Something in him seemed smaller as he spoke and she could imagine a sad kid just missing someone they loved and lost. Then there was something so familiar in the way he called it stupid. Fucking game. She didn't want to give the game the satisfaction of it actually working, but she did want out of the square. 

“It's not stupid,” she murmured quietly as she followed him into the square ahead. Alex knew what came next. It was either another riddle or she shared a memory too to get them the extra spot. Emilio was already prompting her to share her memory to make this whole game from hell experience move faster. 

Alex's eyes found the pink square below her feet. She really wished she was with someone who would get a Barbie reference so she could cut through the tension a little bit. She was pretty sure saying 'Hi Barbie!' would only warrant a very blank stare from Emilio which would be a lot funnier if they weren't essentially trapped. At least the space felt a little bigger now that they moved forward though that didn't stop the way sweat was pooling in the palm of her hands. It still felt like she had no space and he was rushing her to share her memory. 

“I didn't rush you,” Alex huffed as she snapped her eyelids closed. It was hard to think of a memory with her father that didn't have the word being thrown at her like it was an insult because it was. Knives and bullets weren't meant to be soft. They lived in a world of monsters and she was meant to be the blade. Turns out she was a pretty shitty knife. She chewed at her bottom lip and settled on the one she remembered best. 

“Elle est trop douce,” Alex finally said in barely a whisper. The words burned in her throat and made it feel impossibly tight, but the game was waiting. “I was 4 the first time I heard papa say that to maman. She's too soft. I guess Andy had been better at throwing knives by four years old than I had... Probably because she wasn't just human.” Now Alex found it hard not to wish that she was just human. “I kept cutting myself on the knives I was trying to throw... I was 4. It hurt, I cried.” 

She shrugged it off like it didn't matter, but Alex hated how the same still held true. The sight of blood was still enough to make her sick and pain did make tears well up in her eyes despite how hard she tried to fight it. She wasn't even human, she was a monster and she was still too soft. This game was really fucking rude for pointing it out like that. 

The square rudely did not light up again yet. “Really,” she pestered the sky, “That was the memory.” It didn't light up still. “Ugh, fine,” she spat, still refusing to look at Emilio, “He punished me after. Smacked me to get back up and I wasn't allowed to sit back down until I got a knife in the fucking bullseye. You happy?” 

The square lit up. “Yeah, fuck you too.” Zap. She cursed again. “Hey, I meant you the game, not you Emilio.“ 

The next card hovered in front of Emilio and she wasn't particularly keen on having him read it. If the rest of the riddles were this hard hitting, Alex really didn't want them, but like most things, what choice did she actually have? 

—

He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. Not when he told his story, and not when she told hers. He didn’t want to see the way her expression shifted at the revelation that he was more of a failure than he let on, didn’t want to see her eyes soften with… pity for a kid who was never meant to be a kid at all. This, this tightness in his stomach and this sharp pain in his chest, this was exactly the kind of thing that had earned him the punishments his mother doled out to begin with. This feeling of being too small, it was why the word soft cut through him like the blade he was never much good at being.

So he was surprised, a little, when Alex said it wasn’t stupid. He’d known she wouldn’t judge him for it — he might not know her, but he knew the woman who’d raised her, and Andy wasn’t capable of bringing up someone who would judge a child for mourning the dead even when that child became a man who was still so much softer than he should have been. But he hadn’t expected… comfort, either. It felt wrong. She’d said it, hadn’t she? He was the grown up. He ought to be the one doing the comforting.

“You called me grandpa,” he mumbled, but there was no heat to it. She was right — she hadn’t rushed him, and it wasn’t fair for him to rush her even if his heart was pounding, even if he wanted so badly for this to be over. When she started speaking, he found he wished he hadn’t asked her to share at all.

Her story was as familiar to him as he suspected his might have been to her. He’d been four years old once, too, holding a knife too big for his hand and trying not to cry when it cut him. He tasted ashes on his tongue, thoughts moving inevitably to Flora, who’d died at four with hands that never held a knife at all, and he wondered if one option was better than the other. Had it been kinder for her to die just four short years into her life with no scars from nicks and cuts littering her fingers? Or should he have wrapped her small hands around the hilt of a blade, showing her how to thrust it forward just so?

In any case, he couldn’t imagine doing to his daughter what Alex was describing her father doing to her. He’d never been able to wrap his mind around the concept. And hadn’t that always been another mark against him? Another piece of evidence his mother could point to when saying how soft he was, how disappointing? Maybe he could have done it without cruelty. Maybe he could have shown those small hands a way to hold a knife that might have protected her without hurting her. He’d never know now.

He swallowed, unsure what to say. What was there to say? I’m sorry your father hit you. My mother hit me, too. I probably deserved it more than you did. Or I’m sorry it hurt. I tried to find a way to make it not hurt, and it ended bad anyway, so maybe there’s no answer that doesn’t end in blood. Or maybe there was a question he wanted to ask, an answer he was afraid to hear. Would you have loved your father more if he’d never put the knife in your hand? If you’d died for it, would you have forgiven him in the end? Have you forgiven him now? 

Alex wasn’t Flora, because no one was. Alex wasn’t Flora, because someone had loved her and had gotten her out, and Emilio hadn’t done that for his daughter. Alex wasn’t Flora, but for a moment, she was, and he wanted to ask her everything his daughter would never be able to tell him and pretend her answers meant something.

Another space lit up with a ding, and Emilio felt like a coward for finding relief in the fact that he didn’t have to say anything at all. He didn’t want another riddle, but he didn’t want to talk about the last one, either. He moved forward, picking up the new card and staring at it for a moment.

“It can not be seen whenever it's there. It fills up a room, it's much like the air. It can not be touched, there's nothing to hear. It is quite harmless, there's nothing to fear.” He read it carefully, slowly. His accent wrapped around each word, his brow furrowed. A little less straightforward than the last one, but still not particularly difficult. Looking up at Alex, he held out the card. “I went first,” he said quietly, “last time. You can go first this time. And then me.” There couldn’t be too many of these, could there? If they both answered each one, they’d be done in no time. He told himself this, repeated it like a mantra. He needed it to be true.

—

Nerves twisted in her stomach as she waited for Emilio to read what was on the card. He never said anything about her own story, but he didn't have to. Alex had the feeling these riddles weren't going to get any lighter as far as the memories they were linked to went. Almost as if to mock the very thought, the words that Emilio read aloud all pointed to 'darkness' being the answer. It felt as if the square they were standing on was somehow shrinking as he read the words and her throat felt impossibly dry. It felt too tight as the obvious memory tried to scratch its way to the surface. 

Alex didn't even feel her nails digging into her own palms until she drew blood that she did not dare look down at. Emilio was saying something again, but she couldn't hear it. The rush of pressure in her head made his voice sound distorted. 

The game dinged impatiently and she was back in that room with the yellow door that had grayed over from years of wear. The last rays of sunlight from the day flickered on the door from the small window above. It was the only source of light in the room and it was quickly fading. Her tiny hands desperately threw the knife towards the target only for it to clatter against the floor again. Clumsy fingers picked the blade back up and blood spilled from them in the process. She could still feel that desperation as the night fell and the room turned to black. 

Another ding. Alex was pretty sure she was going to be sick. ”There was a room,“ she finally said, her voice as hoarse and small as it was when she'd cry for her father to let her out. She didn't dare look up at Emilio. A harsh glare from an older man when she was thinking about her father was the last thing she needed, but even looking down at her own shaking hands didn't help her find the words. 

“It was where,” her voice trembled and she hated the sound of it— wished she could rip it from her own throat. The space felt even smaller and her breath couldn't seem to find her lungs. “I don't think— I'm sorry,“ she gasped. She slowly backed away only to hit the barrier which only made it more difficult to breathe. There were no walls, not in the physical sense, but she was trapped and the animal in her wanted to rip her way out. Not do... whatever this was. 

Alex had to fight the feeling of claws trying to break from her skin and push the memory back down. “I'm sorry, I don't think I can... We're gonna die in a fucking alley,“ she heaved. 

—

He could see it. The way she shifted, the way she squirmed. The discomfort there, the way it was similar to the one building in his own gut. Did this game know them, somehow? Was it designed, specifically, with the two of them in mind? Or was it all an impossible coincidence, the way each riddle seemed so pointed. Emilio looked down at the card so that he wouldn’t have to look at Alex, traced the curve of the letters with his eyes over and over again like maybe he could change the answer if only he tried hard enough. But it was what it was. There was no getting around it, and he doubted another card would appear until this one had been satisfied.

A room, Alex said. He didn’t know what kind, but he did. He could feel it tugging at the edge of his own memory, pulling him back in time. Time travel, he thought, was a useless thing when it operated like this. His mind had a way of pulling him back, sending him sprawling into events that had ended years ago without the ability to change them. He relived them a thousand times over. Awake, asleep, everything in between. Alex, he thought, must have been a time traveler, too. It was the only way to account for the quivering of her voice.

“It was a shed,” he said, so quiet that his voice could barely be heard at all. The dinging — which had grown insistent and impatient in Alex’s refusal to answer — stopped abruptly, as if the alley wanted to let him speak. “For me. I was… She’d stick us in there sometimes by ourselves, but I was six the first time she put something in there with me. A ghoul.” He didn’t say who she was. He didn’t think he had to. Based on the last memory he’d shared, Alex would probably be able to guess. “Locked it from the outside. Chain, padlock. Gave me the basics. Knife, stake, holy water. Left me in there overnight.”

The memory was more than a memory. He could see that ghoul, dead for almost thirty years now, lurking at the edge of his vision. He still thought about what his mother said to him, sometimes, just before she shut the door. When I open this in the morning, either the ghoul will be dead or you will. Either way, this family is stronger for it. Killing the ghoul proved he was allowed to keep living, just as dying to it would have proven he wasn’t. It was the same for Victor, for Rosa, for Edgar. It had been the same for Jaime, just a week before that massacre. Had the massacre never happened and had Emilio not made good on his plan to take her away, Flora would have been placed in the same shed this year. 

“Slayers see in the dark,” he said, glancing up to the sky as the riddle was ‘answered.’ “So that didn’t bother me much. But it was… small. The shed. Couldn’t take more than a few steps, even then. Ghoul was close, but it was clumsy. Still… took me hours to kill it. Nearly killed me before I did. Next day, she comes and she lets me out. And I’m — I’m bleeding, yeah. Barely on my feet. Pretty much fall into her when the door opens. Was leaning against it, you know, trying to put space there between me and the body. So she opens the door, and I fall. And it’s — She’s pissed.” 

It was funny — he didn’t notice the way he slipped when he spoke about it. The event was nearly thirty years past now, but his words fell into present tense as if he was six years old still, as if he was still leaning against that shed door. Maybe part of him was still in that shed the same way part of him died in that living room floor, the same way part of Alex was still in that room. Maybe they’d both left pieces of themselves behind every time they time traveled. Maybe that was a part of it.

Clearing his throat, Emilio continued, leaning against the invisible barrier now. “She’s pissed,” he said again. “Because I let it get as bad as it did or — or because I’m still there, and she doesn’t think I should be. So she tosses me back in the shed, and she shuts the door again. Sun goes down, comes up. It’s dark, it’s light, but it’s all the same, you know? Slayers see in the dark, so it’s all the same. I’m thirsty, I’m fucking dying for a drink of water, but I know I’m not allowed to say anything, so I’m quiet. By the time my uncle opens the door again, it’s been a day. Yeah. Maybe two. Nobody ever tells me. He opens the door, and I’m not leaning against it anymore. And he lets me out, and I think — I figure it’s because of that. Because I’m not leaning on the door, not falling out into the grass. So he lets me out. And it’s still dark, you know? Dark when I went in, dark when I come out. But I don’t know, I don’t know how long it was.” He paused for a moment, chewing at the inside of his cheek, biting down on it even though it hurt. “Next week,” he said quietly, “she puts me in there again. Guess I didn’t learn the lesson.”

—

It was hard to find relief in the fact that Emilio had taken over with sharing his memory, not when Alex still couldn't bring herself to look up at him. Something akin to guilt twisted in her gut as it became obvious that he was stepping in to save her yet again—- that she still couldn't save herself and relied on a hunter she was trying to keep at a distance. It wasn't murder this time. She had to remind herself of as much. Emilio was just sharing a memory, one he probably didn't want to share, but neither of them were given a choice in the matter. 

The same theme seemed to be present in his story. They'd both been kids without a choice once. While Alex couldn't look at him, couldn't bring herself to see the strain in the slayer's face as he tried to hide his own pain, but she felt his words as if they were her own. In a way, they practically were. Replace shed with small basement training room and ghoul with random small beast and it was her story. Lock a kid with a room with a monster or in a room until they get their movements right... his mom and her dad must have read the same parenting book. She wasn't so sure anymore that it was a good one. 

Because Emilio's voice was just as strained as hers had felt. 

Because it was so easy for his words to slip from past to present tense, as if Emilio was transported back to that moment like she always was. 

Because Emilio had what it took to fight but there was still something so broken in the way he recounted the memory. 

How could breaking your kid be good? There'd never been much hope for Alex to be the weapon her parents had wanted her to be, but Emilio had that. She'd watched him fight, watched him save her because she fell short in a fight... but he sounded just as broken as she was. He was still too soft by those standards... and Alex wasn't sure she thought being the opposite of that was better, not if it meant he'd hurt Ariadne or Mack without a second thought. 

Emilio shared the memory and it was like looking through a clouded mirror. She could see him, smaller almost—- small as she had been— and some part of her wanted to comfort the kid who never had a chance to just be a kid. Because even all these years later, the memory still had a hold on him and he still didn't know what the lesson was. 

And that was the root of it, wasn't it? How Alex found herself endlessly frustrated with the slayer despite the fact he saved her ass on more than one occasion— saved her friends' asses on more than one occasion even. Being around Emilio was like holding up a mirror and she didn't like herself... but she didn't hate Emilio and that was too big a contradiction for her to wrap her head around. 

She wasn't sure at what point during Emilio's story that her hands uncurled from the fists they'd been clenched in. Alex looked down at her fingernails and grimaced at the blood caked underneath them. She couldn't find anything to say as the next square, a sunny shade of yellow that was almost mocking, lit up so they could advance. 

”Thank you,“ she murmured, unable to find the usual vitriol she threw in the slayer's direction. 

He shared his memory. It was only fair she shared hers so they got to move forward two squares. Cooperation. Alex laughed bitterly at the thought. ”This game fucking sucks,“ she finally said, finding her voice again. It still sounded small, frustratingly so, but she wasn't going to fail this time. 

”It was a basement for me,“ she said after a moment, staring ahead at what looked like a face in a puddle of melted chocolate. Somehow the ridiculous aspect was something to hold onto and keep her grounded. She sure as hell wasn't about to cling to 5-in-1 soap guy for comfort. Even in her thoughts, the insult was starting to lose its zing. “It was small too,” she breathed out finally, ”Felt smaller the longer I was locked in there. Sometimes with small beasts like agropelters, sometimes just with my knifes and targets I wasn't very good at hitting.“  She looked down at her left index finger and the small chunk that was missing. It had scarred over a long time ago, but she still traced over it sometimes. 

“The only light was from a small window... and we lived in the sticks,” she explained, “Uh... English American talk for out in the middle of nowhere.” She wasn't sure why she felt the need to clarify. Confusing Emilio was usually more fun, but this wasn't random science terminology. It was something they shared that some part of her wished they didn't. 

“When the sun would go down, it'd get really dark in there,” she almost whispered, “I don't mind the dark, but in there it felt suffocating. Made the room feel smaller.“

She looked blankly at the purple square ahead, willing it to light up, but it simply wouldn't. ”I don't think I learned the lesson either... He'd come in and wouldn't even look at me. Like I—-“ 

Her voice cracked and caught in her throat. 

”It'd be like I wasn't even there. He'd walk into the room and look at the knives on the ground like they were a couch cushion out of place and I didn't even exist. I used to think he wished I didn't.“ 

Now Alex knew as much, especially considering she existed as a werewolf of all things. The square ahead of her glowed purple, but it didn't feel like a victory. She took the step ahead, still eager to feel like she had more space. She didn't and neither did Emilio, but she grabbed the card anyway. 

“If your uncle's sister is not your aunt, what relation is she to you,” Alex read aloud and then answered, “Your mother.” 

What was with this fucking game? Had it been curated specifically for those with family trauma or was this personal to them. Alex didn't like the answer either way. 

“Not sure if it wants us to talk about our mom or uncle... or dad and aunt,” she shrugged, “Pretty sure my aunt tried to kill me. Don't remember much on account of being 7 and my first full moon.” 

—

He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to go. He’d said his piece, and they were another step closer to freedom, whatever that looked like. They didn’t have to take two steps every time, didn’t have to cover the most possible ground with each riddle. They could take one step, and it would be fine. He could fall on the sword, and it would be better. He wanted to tell Alex that she could be quiet, that she could just listen, but his throat was dry and his limbs felt heavy and the air in the alley felt like it was going to suffocate him with the way his words still clung to it, the way his story still seemed to echo long after he’d stopped telling it.

The truth was, Emilio wanted her to say something. He wanted her to add her words in with his, wanted something to cleanse his honesty from the air. And it was a selfish fucking desire, wasn’t it? He’d been raised as both sword and shield, designed to deliver blows just as well as he was meant to take them. His uncle told him once, not long after that first incident in the shed, that his job was to bleed. We bleed for others, he’d said, gripping the back of Emilio’s small neck in his hands. He still couldn’t decide, sometimes, if that grip was a threat or a comfort. Even now, he had trouble telling the difference between the two. We bleed so that they don’t have to. We fight, we die so that they live. 

But here, in this alley, Emilio wanted desperately not to be the only person bleeding. 

So it was a selfish, unforgivable relief when she spoke. She talked about her basement the same way he talked about his shed. And he understood what she meant by it, understood how it was to feel the space grow smaller the longer you spent trapped within it. The shed seemed to shrink with each hour he spent there. By the time Lucio freed him that first time, it had seemed as though the walls were so close that his chest couldn’t expand to take a full breath. Like it was crushing him, somehow, crumpling himself up like paper in its hand and tossing him into the mouth of a wastebasket. 

He hadn’t been good at it. At the shed, at whatever it was he was supposed to learn in between those walls that seemed so intent on swallowing him whole. Between Emilio and his siblings, he was doubtlessly the one who spent the most time there, was the one who was pushed inside most often. Victor grew out of the shed by the time he was ten, Edgar stopped being locked inside at twelve. Rosa was eight the last time their mother wrapped that chain around the door with her on the wrong side of it. There was never any fanfare to it — one day, Elena just stopped putting them inside.

But not Emilio. For Emilio, the shed was a constant. At six, at ten, at seventeen. At thirty-two, he’d still been afraid of it, still spent every day wondering when the next time he’d be locked away might be. He was as slow as he was soft, apparently.

He wondered if it would have been the same for Alex, had her life gone differently. If not for that night, with the werewolf’s bite and her parents’ deaths, would her father be putting her in that basement even now? He had to imagine that Andy would have stepped in regardless, would have saved her even without the wolf forcing her hand. And he didn’t have to wonder why no one had stepped in for him, because he knew. Some people were worth saving, but some people weren’t. Alex’s basement had been cruel, but Elena’s shed had been a lesson. Emilio just hadn’t been smart enough to learn it.

“I was always like that, too,” he offered, unsure why he was saying it without a riddle to force his hand. “The… decepción de la familia. I wasn’t what they wanted me to be. I think…” He trailed off, thinking back to the first memory he’d shared. “They all wished it was me. When I was twelve, when my… I think they thought it would have been better if it were me.” Saying I think felt like a lie, because in reality? He knew it. Rosa had said as much, just a week before the massacre. But saying that felt too heavy, and the alley felt cramped enough as it was. They didn’t need to go filling it with any more ghosts than necessary.

Especially not when the game seemed intent on opening up a seance full of them.

The words Alex read from the card seemed to echo, ringing in his ear. She didn’t know what the game wanted them to talk about here, but Emilio had a pretty good idea. “Everything it’s given us so far has been to make us talk about things we don’t — Things that we didn’t want to say. Maybe your aunt. Maybe…” He trailed off, swallowing. His heart was in his throat, and he didn’t want to say anything, but he had to, didn’t he? This game wouldn’t let them move forward until they’d ripped their fucking hearts out and laid them on the brightly colored sidewalk. 

“My uncle didn’t try to kill me,” he said quietly, “but I killed him. Stuck a knife in his gut and left him to bleed out in the streets. And I thought — I thought I would feel better. Or worse. You know? One or the other, I figured. It would either help, or it would hurt. But it just — It did nothing. I killed him, and it did nothing. I didn’t feel better, and I didn’t feel worse. I put a knife in the man who raised me and I left it there, and I felt nothing.” He thought of the cursed necklace that had nearly driven him mad, of the murderers’ choir in his head, the chorus of terrible voices all coming together. He thought of his voice among them, of the thought that echoed and the way he could have pinpointed the exact second he’d first thought it. I should have killed him sooner. 

“I never knew my dad. Died when I was a baby, you know, on a hunt nobody ever talked about. But I knew my uncle. He stepped up. Never had his own kids. Said he was too busy with us. Loved us like we were his, and we loved him back. And when I killed him, when I did that, all I could think was… I should have done it earlier. When it might have mattered more. That’s all I could think.” He looked at Alex for the first time in a while, though it was a fleeting thing. His eyes landed on her for a moment before darting away. “That’s why I helped Andy when she did what she did. Because when I did it, when I put that knife in my uncle’s gut, I was too late. But she wasn’t.”

The ding filled the alley again. To Emilio’s surprise, two spaces lit up. He eyed them suspiciously. “Maybe your story was good enough,” he offered. “Or… I don’t know. I don’t know the rules.”

—

Something about the way he spoke made the words feel all wrong. When it was Alex locked in that room or being the child her parents wished they never had, the pieces seemed to fit into place. After all, even if she had never been bitten, part of her had always known she never had what it took. It was why she hid the cuts and bruises that took too long to heal— she was a broken thing. Not a single part of her was what it was supposed to be and even now it felt so evident, but she couldn't imagine Emilio not fitting. The fact he'd survived to see his 30s was a testament enough to that, especially when she knew the slayer wasn't one to run from a fight. Maybe that wasn't always true when he was a literal child, but he had what it took in him without the shed, without anyone wishing he had been the one who died. 

It highlighted a certain cruelty that she couldn't see so clearly when it was only applied to her. Alex hated how clear it seemed now. Emilio's mother wasn't a good person. Emilio had been a kid who was born with what it took to fight and raised him into a shell of a person. She knew because wasn't that what she felt like? Couldn't she slip into the past just as easily and feel that same tightness in her throat that she could hear in his words? And if Emilio had never deserved to be treated that way somehow that made her father worse. Alex had never had heightened senses or strength to rely, she didn't heal quickly from the blows that seemed to be delivered day after day. She had been just human. No bells, no whistles— simply a kid. And weren't simple kids and humans who didn't know better the ones who were supposed to be protected? Isn't that what her family's code had stressed? At what point had legacy become more important than that? 

Alex decided in that moment that she hated both of them. His mother and her father weren't good people. It made her stomach turn to think ill of the dead, but she'd spent her whole life hating herself for everything she was and wasn't. The dead could deal with a little bit of hatred lobbied at them. 

“I don't think it would have been better if it was you,” Alex finally spoke, only barely managing to direct an understanding glance in his direction. It felt strange to admit when she'd spent so much time fighting the man at every turn, but it was true. 

He was there for Andy and something about that ate Alex because she hadn't been there for her sister. Maybe she didn't understand what either of them were supposed to be, but she knew Andy deserved better. She deserved friends who would look out for her and have her back like Emilio had. 

“Something tells me whoever it was that isn't here anymore.... wouldn't have been so quick to save a werewolf,” she murmured, “Or be a good friend to Andy. Or look out for Nora because god knows nothing is scaring her enough to not walk right towards it.” Nothing scared Nora... which was a little bit scary when you were someone that gave a shit about Nora's wellbeing. 

Her next memory had been easy to share, so Alex wasn't too sure it counted. Hell, she barely remembered it. She just remembered being far away from Lyon when she woke up, with Andy looking over her shoulder constantly. Even then, she'd been able to put the pieces together. Maybe even before when the bite never really healed like it was supposed to. 

Emilio's was decidedly not. It wasn't that his uncle tried to kill him, but that he had killed his uncle? Alex found her eyes trained on the candy cane ahead because the words made her feel sick. Not because she wasn't sure that Emilio had a good reason, but because there had been a reason in the first place. It was one thing to be a trained blade and know you were a weapon against evil--- but to have those lines blurred so intimately.

And he spoke of being too late. Andy hadn't been because they were both still alive. While Emilio didn't say as much, she couldn't help but wonder who wasn't there anymore because of his uncle. It had to have been someone Emilio really loved to have killed the man who raised him and the thought didn't sit well. 

Because Emilio had been soft once and maybe that wasn't a bad thing, but whatever led to him sticking a knife in his own uncle took that away from him. The candy cane was starting to look sickeningly sweet in contrast. The whole colorful and happy atmosphere seemed like some twisted joke as they were both forced to bear their souls to each other. It was mocking and Alex didn't like it one bit. 

But two squares lit up in front of them and it seemed generous to count her memory, so Alex took it for what it was. She wouldn't say anything about his story because she didn't know what to say. She wasn't going to press for more details, not when they had both been forced to share more than they ever would have. And maybe helping Andy hadn't been a bad thing even if some small part of Alex wished she'd been brave enough to fight for herself so that her sister never had to. 

“I don't either,” she shrugged, “But I'll take the two squares forward as win.” 

She stepped forward and took the next card in her hand. Alex found herself looking ahead--- they were so close to the end. Four more squares, two more memories if they both kept sharing like they had been. Pink, green, yellow, blue. They could do this. 

She turned the card over and read. “Some try to hide, some try to cheat; but time will show, we always will meet. What am I?“

She wanted to answer 'weirdly cryptic' but directing sarcasm at the game was starting to feel weaker as it went on anyway. 

”So it obviously wants us to talk about death,“ she huffed with a bitter snort, ”Really think this game needs to come with like a bottle of antidepressants or something.“ 

She wasn't sure if that was actually how antidepressants worked. It wasn't like she'd ever been to therapy and she avoided even the entry-level psychology courses. That would call for far more reflection on her past than Alex really wanted to give it... but that was kind of the name of this game. 

Real Candyland had to be better. 

”Gonna guess that the fact I killed a moose on the full moon doesn't count,“ she seemingly asked the sky. She didn't bother to look to see if Emilio found her joke amusing. He probably didn't... or maybe he did appreciate the deflection from how serious this whole exchange was. It was hard to tell.

“I guess it probably wants me to talk about my parents,” she finally breathed, looking down at her feet, ”We were on a camping trip. I think it was around my 7th birthday. It was supposed to be a survival excursion sort of thing.“ 

The one aspect of training she didn't fucking suck at. 

”Guess there was a local pack of werewolves my parents pissed off,“ she explained, finding it odd that she didn't feel the same anger towards the pack that she used to, ”I remember being in the tent. I'd gotten sent in there for time out for something I don't remember. I was crying... I wasn't supposed to cry.“ Then her father would yell like that did anything to get a child to stop crying. ”Andy snuck in there with me at one point... she'd do that sometimes when I was upset. I don't think he liked it.“ The he of course did not need to be specified at this point. Emilio knew. ”The next thing I remember is hearing snarls and growls... I think my own scream? I couldn't move. I just... watched as they got ripped apart, as they ran towards me.” 

Not being able to look up to meet Emilio's eyes seemed to be the theme of this stupid fucking game. “I don't remember at what point Andy grabbed me and got us the hell out of there... The next thing I remember is being on a plane and squeezing her hand tighter than I've ever held anything.” 

Alex found she wanted her sister's hand to squeeze right now more than anything else. If she was honest, she'd been wanting as much from the moment she pushed her sister away and this whole fucked up game of Overshare Candyland only seemed to highlight that absence. Listening to how closely Emilio's past mirrored her own despite the fact he wasn't defective... made it harder for her to grasp the frayed threads of memory that said she was the problem. 

She didn't bother telling Emilio it was his turn and instead simply whispered, ”That's all I got on death... unless the game really does want to hear about the moose. It was pretty tasty.“

—

Alex said it like it was easy. I don’t think it would have been better if it was you. The words seemed heavy and light at the same time, like their mere existence was some impossible contradiction, and Emilio found himself startling just a little as they settled. It wasn’t just because Alex had fought him tooth and nail at every opportunity since the first moment he found her facing off against that lapir on her own, though that did add to it. No, there was more to it than that — Alex was the first person who’d ever expressed this particular sentiment.

It had been an unspoken thing when he was a child that Emilio was wrong. Not in the same way he’d learned Alex had been considered wrong, of course; he had all the makings of a slayer, and that made it seem worse, somehow. He’d been born to do something, been made for it, and he still managed to fuck it up more often than he didn’t. He had eyes designed to help him see in the dark, but he still shivered when the sun went down sometimes. He had strength that made it easy to drive a stake through a chest and into an unbeating heart, but there were days where his hands shook where they gripped the wood. He was a weapon, but he’d never been a very good one.

He’d spent years of his life trying to figure out what it was that made him different, made him wrong. Was it the father who’d died before Emilio had ever known him? Edgar had had at least vague memories of Hendrik Visser, and Rosa and Victor had had entire stories of a man Emilio had never even seen a photograph of. From what Emilio knew of his father, he’d been of the same thinking as his mother, of the same school of hunter. Perhaps without two pairs of hands shaping him in those formative years, some development had been lost. Or maybe it was something else. Some broken thing within him, shattered when he was young in a way that forced him to grow around the pieces. Biological instead of situational, some defect that had been present in Santiago Cortez a century before Emilio was born, when he’d let Monty go and sealed his own fate. That thought scared him a little, made his palms sweat and his throat itch. 

He wondered if Alex felt the same. 

She’d been born broken, too, hadn’t she? In a family of hunters, but without the gene that made her one of them. Maybe there was another part to that gene, too — some inherited behavior that made it easier to abandon your humanity and allow yourself to be nothing more than a blade with a beating heart. Was that what Emilio was missing, he wondered? Was that the part of him that was wrong?

He shrugged, either in response to his own silent question or as an answer to Alex’s foreign statement. Even he wasn’t sure which. Both, maybe, because both seemed equally unknowable. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He didn’t know if it was better for him to have survived instead of Victor. He didn’t know why he didn’t know. And, as Alex went on, he realized he didn’t even know if she was right about Victor not being the type to save a werewolf.

It was funny — Victor had been dead longer than he’d been alive now. Alive for eighteen years, gone for twenty-two. He was more a ghost than he’d ever been a person. Emilio had idolized him as a kid, the way twelve year old boys always idolized their oldest brothers. He’d been larger than life, a superstar. And then he’d been dead, and no one wanted to talk about him much at all. He’d gone from a superhero to a monument in an instant, from a tangible person with thoughts and opinions to a story that was half cautionary tale and half a vision to aspire towards. 

Victor had never been much of a person the same way Emilio wasn’t much of a person, but he’d become less of one over time. When a person was dead for as long as he had been, so much of them was lost. They became clay, their memory shaped into whatever it needed to be in the moment. Victor did what he was supposed to do, his mother had said once when Emilio was trying not to show her his grief. Victor was foolish, and he got himself killed, she said on another occasion, when he tried to use his brother as an excuse to do things she didn’t want him doing. 

Victor had been a good blade in life, capable of slicing through whatever was put in front of him without thought or emotion, but he was a far more effective weapon in death. Nothing was sharper than memory. Nothing cut deeper than grief.

So would Victor have done what Emilio did? Would he have saved Alex, even after she’d confessed to being a werewolf? Would he have helped Andy bury that corpse? Would he have stepped up for Nora and had her back? Maybe he would have done a better job at saving Flora, or been smart enough to help Teddy in the mines, or been fast enough to keep the blood from spilling down Wynne’s throat. But Emilio realized with something of a jolt that he didn’t know. He’d mourned his brother longer than he’d known him and, for the first time, it had him wondering how well he’d ever truly known Victor at all. How much of who he was had been replaced by the memory of him? 

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, even though it hurt. That was what this was about, wasn’t it? That was what this game wanted from them — to hurt. Emilio found himself wishing, with a hint of vitriol, that whoever had done this had chosen a more straightforward method of torture. Give him blades dragging across his skin, give him broken bones, give him his own guts resting in the palms of his dirty hands. He understood that so much better than he understood this. He would have been able to carry it so much easier. 

Something told him Alex would have agreed with the sentiment, too. If nothing else, the game was doing a good job at showing him how painfully similar they were. If Andy was what Emilio wanted to be — the hunter who had gotten out before it was too late, the person who’d saved the child in their care and spared her from the wrong end of someone else’s blade — then maybe Alex was a lot closer to what he actually was. A scared kid who couldn’t figure out how to carry the parts of herself that no one had ever liked. A child locked in a small space with the darkness closing in, someone’s angry voice ringing in her ears. She was soft the way he was soft. She was still in that basement the way he was still in that shed. Her aunt tried to kill her the way he’d killed his uncle. Two sides, one very pissed off coin.

So he found himself agreeing with her more than he normally would have. Two squares was a win, and he wouldn’t be looking any gift horses in the mouth when wins seemed hard to come by in this game. He thought it might be nearly over now — the end was in sight, even if he didn’t like the things they’d have to do and say in order to get there. Already, his chest felt tight. He’d said too much, revealed too much. But there was some selfish comfort in knowing that Alex had revealed just as many terrible secrets. Maybe she’d still judge him, but at least she’d have less room to do so. And she was like him — she didn’t like hanging out in places where she didn’t have a lot of room.

He followed her forward, letting her take the card again. He listened to the words as she said them, let them spin around for a moment before the answer popped out like a revelation he didn’t particularly want to have. Death. 

What a fucking doozy. 

There were so many he could have talked about, so few he wanted to say. Alex spoke about her parents, and Emilio listened. It was a story he’d heard before, but not from this point of view. It was funny — it was the same course of events, but Alex and Andy told it differently. They remembered different parts of it, different pieces. Age was probably a factor there — seven was still pretty young, and Alex’s memories were bound to be far hazier than Andy’s had been at fourteen — but Emilio suspected point of view had something to do with it, too. He thought Andy would be relieved that what Alex seemed to remember the most was being protected. Not just when the wolves came, but before, too. How much of a difference had it made, having someone in that tent with her? How much was it worth, having another hand in hers? Emilio thought the answer was something far larger than what anyone might have guessed.

He’d been alone, for most of his shit. Victor had been a dutiful soldier, playing his part as the eldest no matter what it meant. Rosa had taken over the role with just as much vigor when he’d died, adding in the desperation that must have come with being a daughter in a family full of sons. Edgar had been afraid, even if he never would have said so. None of them had ever stepped up for Emilio, but Emilio had never stepped up for any of them, either. He had just as many scars from his siblings as he had from his mother or the undead things he fought.

Even Rhett, when he’d come into the picture, had been a separate entity. Never cruel, not to Emilio, but not a savior, either. And why would he have been? The Cortezes did what every hunter family did, what hunters were supposed to do. Rhett would have seen no more reason to argue against it than Emilio had. 

But Andy had fought back. Andy had held Alex’s hand in that tent, had carried her away from danger. Andy had looked into the face of a monster that she’d been taught to hate her entire life, had looked into eyes and teeth that must have looked so much like the ones that had torn her parents to pieces, and she’d seen only her baby sister staring back at her. She’d seen someone to protect, and she’d done that. She’d kept holding that small hand. None of his siblings would have done it for him. He wasn’t even sure Rhett would have. But Andy did.

And Emilio thought that Alex deserved that, but with that thought came a question he’d never asked before. This cruel game had pointed out similarities between him and her, had unwoven threads he never would have picked at on his own. If Alex had deserved that… what was there to be said about him? If Alex had earned that protection just by being, was there a chance that, maybe, Emilio might have deserved something a little more as well? It seemed blasphemous to even think it, like the concept alone would be enough to pull his mother from her grave and send her dragging him back to that shed or carving his mistakes into his skin.

He huffed a quiet half-laugh at mention of the moose, though it was a hollow thing. Alex was done, and he knew the rules well enough to know that that meant it was his turn. Death was a thing Emilio had so much experience with — but what could he say? He’d made it this far without mentioning the massacre, and he didn’t particularly want to bring it up now. If he could finish the game without saying his daughter’s name, he wanted to do that. And it was cowardly and it was stupid and Flora deserved so much more, but he clung to the desire all the same. So he swallowed, fiddled absently with his ring, and went in another direction.

“It was my brother,” he said quietly. “Who died when I was twelve. He, uh… His name was Victor. There were four of us, but he was the oldest. He was… It was a hunt.” As if that needed saying. It was always a hunt, wasn’t it? When you lived the way they’d lived, there was only one event that would ever kill you. 

“He and my uncle went out together, some town near ours. Normally, we all would have gone, but… My sister had taken a bad hit on a hunt the night before, and I’d let her, so I was…” He shook his head, swallowing again. He was suffering the effects of his punishment, Edgar was tending to Rosa, his mother was doing the punishing. He’d always figured that made it his fault, just a little. “It was a small job. My tío was sure they could handle it alone. But they were gone too long. I think… We all knew, yeah. Before he came back, we all knew something was wrong. Should have been gone a few hours, didn’t come back for days. But I was…” He sighed. “I hoped.” He muttered it like a confession, like he was begging someone to tell him how many Hail Marys he needed to do to wash away the sin. “I hoped it was nothing. But when my uncle came back, he came back alone. There was no body, you know? Never found out what happened to it. Nobody wanted to talk about it at all. Victor died, and it was like he stopped existing. Like dead was the only thing left for him to be. Not even a thing to be buried, or a person to be remembered. Just… gone.” 

Another ding. Two squares lit up, and Emilio ducked his head as he crossed them robotically. He didn’t look at Alex, but he didn’t look away, either. They were here, they were miserable, but they were more a team than they had been when the barrier first closed around them. 

There was one card, and two spaces. If they both answered this one, and the rules didn’t change, they’d be free. There was a sense of relief as Emilio wrapped his hand around the paper, a sense of that same treacherous hope he’d just confessed to holding too tightly at twelve rising in his chest as he unfolded it. 

And, just like it had at twelve when his hope was crushed by news of Victor’s death, that foolish optimism strangled him now.

“I sleep all the time,” he whispered, “but keep everyone else awake.”

A baby. 

—

They were both able to take the crutch of humor for what it was. The hollow lilt in Emilio's laugh felt so similar to her own. It was harder to cling to the threads of hate for herself when she was looking at a man who held all the parts of herself that she hated, but Alex couldn't hate him. She could put on a good show, to be certain, but the vitriol she spewed never really had much behind it. It just felt safer to keep him at a distance. Emilio couldn't ever become someone he hated because of her if she never put him in that position. It was the same small fear she always held onto with Andy, too— one that had only been forced to the surface when Andy had killed someone, a human someone, to keep her safe. 

The hatred that Emilio clearly already possessed for himself contradicted that fear in a way Alex wasn't quite sure how to swallow. With or without doing anything to help her, Emilio was already someone he hated. It wasn't a comfort so much as a jolt, a reminder that she wasn't that big. She didn't have the power to make him hate himself... and something in that was freeing. 

She held onto the hollow crutch of a bitter chortle and the dose of clarity as Emilio readied himself to speak. Alex knew it'd be heavy. Did anyone really have a memory with death at the forefront that wasn't heavy? No matter how many years had passed, the memory of death could still wield a raw power that could bring someone to their knees. Both of them still stood, but she could see the slump in Emilio's shoulders become a little heavier as he spoke. 

The lit up rainbow path in the alley really was taunting, but somehow almost thematic. Something about crossing a rainbow bridge and all of that. It was a kind way to refer to death, one that had been unfamiliar to Alex until she'd begun volunteering at the community center and saw the way normal people spoke to children. As Emilio spoke of his brother, she knew no one used such kind words to describe Victor's death. She doubted anyone showed that kid back in Mexico any kindness at all and she felt a deep sadness for him. 

Because maybe their parents wanted them both to be unfeeling weapons, but they had just been kids. Emilio didn't need to say that he felt he was the one to blame because his voice was thick with that same guilt, that same disgust he seemed to carry for himself. Alex knew how it felt to hate everything you were, every shortcoming in training, but she had something he didn't. No matter how much she hated herself, Andy always found a way to hold her hand and soften that anger that threatened to consume. 

Nowhere in any of his stories was there anyone looking out for the kid that Emilio used to be. Alex wasn't sure if it made her more angry or sad. For all those moments she seemed to be sucked back into the past against her will, she almost wished she could go back. Not to her own past, but to that twelve year old kid who had the weight of the world thrusted onto him too young, to that kid who'd been blamed for things that were never his fault and carried burdens that should have never been his in the first place. She could tell him it wasn't his fault and that he'd grow up to be braver and kinder than any of them, but she wasn't a time traveler, not really. She couldn't go back in the past and be the Andy to someone else who had so desperately needed it. 

Emilio was still a broken man. Alex was still a broken monster in the sense that she wasn't one at all. If this fucked up game had highlighted anything, it was that. She was just as soft as she had always been in that room, but that felt less like some fatal flaw. 

If there was one thing Alex knew, it was that nothing she could say would necessarily change that guilt Emilio carried. This wasn't even something he wanted to share with her... and it wasn't as if she had been so keen on sharing her worst memories with him either, but there was a certain clarity that came with speaking them out loud. 

“It wasn't your fault,” Alex said simply. Because that part was simple. The rest... well, it wasn't like her parents had a grave either. She wasn't even sure she'd want to visit if they did, not anymore. But maybe his brother was different. She didn't know. “If you ever wanted to remember... I think planting something is nice. Wynne and I are planting something for their brother. My garden's got plenty of room.” 

It was an invitation that he would or wouldn't acknowledge, but it was there. Alex felt inclined to show him something of a kindness because maybe it hadn't been a bad thing he saved her life. Maybe she'd known that the whole time, but hadn't been able to let go of the idea she wasn't worth saving. 

They moved ahead their two squares and Alex felt something close to relief. They weren't quite out of this quite frankly homophobic rainbow alley... torturing the gays with rainbows was homophobic and no one was telling her otherwise. Emilio was reading the riddle and she could practically leap out of the square. Metaphorically anyway. She wasn't trying to bonk herself with a barrier again because that was decidedly really not fucking fun. Not that any part of this game had been. They weren't even being given actual candy to comfort them through this de facto heart-to-heart. Just vaguely mocking lollipops and candy canes staring at them from the sidelines. 

But this riddle was easy. Given this memory didn't exactly paint Alex in a positive light, none of the previous ones had either and this was like in the same vein as everything else. Her dad didn't love her so she stole a stuffed animal from a baby. Boohoo. 

She could probably even spin it as a joke and still have it count. Alex answered, “A baby... Weird, but I've got this one.” 

She staged her best dramatic deep breath and announced, “I stole a stuffed otter from a baby once because my dad didn't love me.” The deadpan delivery was practiced and nowhere near Nora's, but the lack of immediate ding sent Alex right back to her regularly scheduled rambling. “I mean, that's kind of the gist of it. I was like.... 5 I think and at the mall with my mom,” she explained nervously, “I needed new shoes, I think and we were waiting in line behind a dad with a baby in a stroller. And... he was just looking at his daughter with so much adoration and love and... I hated that baby a little bit because of it so when her dad was paying for their stuff, I stole the baby's stuffed otter.“ 

She shrugged, ”It was petty and like... only steal from rich connards or corporations now. Not babies. I guess in my kid brain that baby felt rich.“ There was probably some Hallmark card about love making you rich, but she usually got handmade cards. The markup on Hallmark cards was a little much for two broke kids on the road though she did steal Andy that ”over the hill“ card when she turned 21. 

”If you also stole from a baby I'm going to Walmart and burning every copy of Candyland. I can't be twinning with an old man, it's illegal.” The joke was just as hollow, but Emilio looked like he was about to have a complete mental break and Alex wasn't really sure what she was supposed to do here. She needed him to tell this story so they could get out of here, so that the barrier could stop feeling like it was somehow closing in on both of them. 

—

It wasn’t your fault. He hadn’t said it aloud but, somehow, Alex had known exactly who Emilio figured was to blame for what had happened. And he was less surprised by that than he would have been at the beginning of this little game. Through their shared stories, the similarities between the two of them had crept up to the surface. It didn’t matter if the things they’d shared had been exposed unwillingly, didn’t matter that they never would have said any of it if not for the strange happenings of Wicked’s Rest forcing their hands. Once their memories were out there, they were out there. The understanding came for free. Alex knew Emilio blamed himself for what happened to Victor the same way he knew she blamed herself for what happened to her parents. It didn’t matter if neither experience of guilt made any logical sense. It didn’t matter if no one in their right mind would blame a twelve year old for his brother dying a town away with a guardian who was responsible for protecting him or a seven year old for her parents dying at the hands of people they’d doubtlessly wronged. Grief rarely adhered to rules of logic, and those who were grieving were never in their right minds.

“Wasn’t yours, either,” he offered quietly, though in Alex’s case, he knew she’d likely heard it before. Andy wouldn’t sit by and let Alex blame herself for that attack without telling her, probably more than once, that none of the fault belonged on her shoulders. Alex probably didn’t believe it, because Emilio wouldn’t have, either. Even now, hearing it from her, he had a hard time accepting that what happened to Victor didn’t happen because of him. But it needed to be said, sometimes. And it was one of those things he suspected carried more weight when it came from someone who didn’t know you quite as well. Although… Emilio certainly knew her better now than he had a few hours ago.

He sucked in a trembling breath at her offer, glancing to the side like he half-expected someone to chastise him for considering it. Victor would never have a grave, but there was something nice about the idea of planting a flower for him. There was something nice about the idea of it growing next to a flower planted for Iwan, even though the two had died decades apart in different countries. There was no connection between them besides the fact that their siblings met one another after their deaths. But Emilio found he liked the idea all the same. Like Iwan and Victor could rest side by side, free from a world that had failed them both so completely.

“I’d like that,” he said quietly, offering her a small smile. “Thanks, Alex.” It wasn’t a word he said very often. Rhett had pretty much plucked it from his vocabulary not long after they’d met, removing it with great care and telling Emilio in no uncertain terms that he ought to forget the syllable altogether. But the letters fit easily in his mouth now, sounded less foreign than everything else in English, somehow. 

But any relief he might have felt, be it from the newfound understanding with Alex or the end that was now in sight, melted away quickly with the riddle on the page. He should have known it was coming. He should have known. This game, whatever it was, seemed to know enough about them to know exactly what existed within their pasts, seemed to understand precisely what they didn’t want to say. He’d been stupid to think there was any shot of him getting out of this without having to reveal the corpses in his past. It wasn’t enough to talk about Victor, whose ghost had haunted him for more than half his life now. The game wanted more. Everything always wanted more.

Alex was talking, but it was like Emilio was listening from somewhere underwater. Like he was sitting on the bottom of a lake, drowning or about to drown or already having drowned, while she spoke at the surface, unaware of the corpse floating beneath her. He felt guilty for not listening, somehow, but maybe the guilt was misplaced. Maybe he felt guilty for a thousand things at once and the shame was looking for a home, looking for something tangible and current. There was a weight on his chest, and he didn’t know how to get it off. It was going to suffocate him. There was no way around it.

Her story finished, and it was simple. Sad, still, because she’d been a kid who was unloved and angry about it, but not quite as heavy as the basement or the tent she’d shared about before. This riddle wasn’t for her, he realized. It was for him, but he couldn’t wrap his tongue around the words, couldn’t force them from his throat. They were stuck behind his teeth, heavy and acidic. 

A buzzer sounded, insistent. Emilio remained silent. The buzzer went again, and again, and again. The game wasn’t patient. His breathing picked up a notch, each inhale a quick gasp and each exhale a shudder. He scrambled towards the last square, shoving himself against the barrier like he’d done in the beginning, like an animal stuck in a trap preparing to chew through its own arm to find its freedom. The barrier was just as solid now as it had been before, and he sat down ungracefully with his back against it, pulling his knees to his chest. And the buzzer, in its unforgiving cruelty, continued to sound. There was no other riddle offered, no other escape. 

Emilio let his forehead drop against his knees, trying to calm himself down. Was it rage or grief that was swirling in his chest now? He couldn’t tell the difference anymore. It always felt the same. The buzzer sounded again, and he let out an animalistic sound, half groan, half growl. “Okay,” he shouted, hoarse and broken. “I’m — Fine. Fucking fine, okay, I’ll go.”

The buzzer silenced immediately, and the world seemed to still as if the sky above him was holding its breath. Another trembling breath, a shudder shaking his frame. He didn’t lift his head; when he spoke, it was muffled by his position. He pretended it made it easier.

“She was born on a Friday. I still remember it, you know? She was — Fuck, she was tiny. They handed her to me, and I could’ve held her in one hand if I’d wanted to. But I was scared. Yeah. Never been so scared in my fucking life. Faced off against ghouls and spawns when I was a kid, already gone against a fucking elder vampire at that point, and none of them scared me half as much as holding her. She was… It felt like I’d already failed her, you know? First time I held her, I already felt like I was fucking up. Wasn’t ready for it, didn’t know what it meant. Almost missed the birth, I was so scared. My sister had to kick my ass to get me back in the room. She didn’t sleep much, first few months. Her mom said that was my fault. Slayers, you know, we don’t need much sleep. And that’s what she was, because that’s what I was. So she was up all the time. Cried a lot. That scared me, too. Worried I was doing something wrong. Holding her wrong, or something. Her mom, she was less of a mess than I was. Babies cry sometimes, that’s what she said. Doesn’t mean there’s a problem, just means she’s a baby. She was right. Yeah. She usually was. But I was so fucking scared.”

There was no pleasant ding, still. And Emilio knew. He knew what it wanted. It wouldn’t let either of them out of here with parts still hidden, wouldn’t let them keep anything for themselves. They didn’t get that. Not here, not anymore. They weren’t allowed. So he swallowed against that lump in his throat, thought about the whiskey waiting for him when he was finished here. They hadn’t made it this far to fail. It wouldn’t be fair to Alex for him to refuse now. And besides… she probably knew. It wasn’t hard to guess. He told a story about a baby, and it was clear that he didn’t have one in his life now. She probably already knew. All that was left was to say it.

“It was a Sunday, when she died. She wasn’t a baby anymore, but she still felt like one. Four years old, already acting like she was her own person. Whole personality, you know? Whole life, all wrapped up in those four years. But there — There’s days when it doesn’t feel like it. When everything gets… mixed up, yeah, in my head. On those days, it’s like… Like it was all at the same time. You know? Like the only thing between her being born and her dying was the weekend. I failed her in the beginning and I failed her in the end, so what’s it matter how many days were between them? She still felt like a baby. She just wasn’t crying anymore.”

He went quiet and, for a moment, a suffocating silence filled the alley. He wasn’t sure he was breathing, wasn���t sure Alex was. And then…

Ding ding ding! 

The colorful ground beneath them flashed. Confetti fell from nowhere. The barrier he was leaning against dropped, and he didn’t bother stopping himself from falling backwards into the alley. The same robotic voice from the beginning sounded again. “Congratulations, PLAYER 1 and PLAYER 2! You have completed the game!” 

It sounded far too celebratory to match the mood in the alley, too excited and cheery to go with the weight of what he’d just dropped on the concrete between them. His throat ached, his eyes burned. He didn’t move from where he’d fallen on the sidewalk. Everything felt so goddamn heavy, like just sitting up would take all the strength he had in him. He wanted to leave, but he didn’t think his legs would hold him even if he gave it all he had.

—

If you had told Alex only a few short hours ago that she would be inviting Emilio Cortez to her garden and that he'd be accepting the invitation, she would have scoffed and made some joke about how the fumes from his 5-in-1 Irish Spring would kill all her plants. Even before, there wouldn't have been any real hatred behind it except for herself, but the idea itself didn't seem so laughable now. All her broken parts were so clearly reflected in the slayer and it was sobering in a way. It made her want to hold onto Andy and Kaden just a little tighter despite the fact she had been trying so hard to push them away. 

“We'll pick something good out,” she said softly. It wasn't the first time she made the offer. Kaden and Wynne readily came to mind, but Alex thought maybe this would heal something in her too. Maybe that was a little bit selfish, but part of her knew Emilio would rather help her than himself. Her words of reassurance didn't magically take away the hatred she knew he held for himself just as his hadn't magically turned guilt and self-hatred into anything but anger. Because anger was easy. They both knew that. 

Her story fell mostly on deaf ears. Alex could pick up some hint of acknowledgement in his features, but no words followed. The cheerful music played like something out of one of those soda shoppes but somehow the silence felt so much louder. 

It was funny the way so much could be said by not saying anything at all. Even before Emilio spoke and the buzzer sounded insistently, Alex knew that whatever he had to say next was going to somehow be heavier than everything they'd covered before. The word 'baby' now left an acidic aftertaste on her tongue that seemed to coat her whole throat as realization hit her. There was only one reason the word would elicit such a physical reaction from the slayer and somehow it crushed her too. 

Alex found she didn't want him to say the words. She could already piece it together and she felt a part of herself break for Emilio. Because he had been a kid who never wanted this. Because he'd been too soft and if there was a baby, she knew he loved them. She knew he was the kind of man who would look at his baby the way that father at the mall did, the kind of man she'd always wished her own father knew how to be. 

Suddenly, the way all his broken pieces fit together made sense. His insistence at making sure Alex was safe despite her best efforts to sabotage his efforts at every turn, the way he softened when he saw the way she recoiled from his harsh words.

Emilio had a delicate heart and no amount of beating from his mother had ever beaten that out of him. Alex found she didn't think it should have been when she could so clearly see just how much he loved his own child in the way he was breaking down on the glowing yellow square they stood on. It seemed to illuminate every labored breath and she had to look away. 

When he spoke, Alex wanted so badly for his words to not confirm what she'd already pieced together. They didn't do that. Everything was as she thought and she wanted to tell him he didn't have to continue. She didn't know if it'd be selfish or kind. She didn't want to hear the memory that came out as more of a confession because it tore her apart, too, but she also didn't stop him because his grief made the barrier feel like it was closing in on both of them somehow, as if it could swallow them whole. 

So she let him continue to speak and for once didn't bother to hide the tears that pricked at the corner of her eyes. It wasn't fair. Alex knew life wasn't fair, but this was especially unfair. The love Emilio felt for his daughter was still so present even if she wasn't here to feel it. He loved his baby like he was supposed to. She could have grown up to be better than either of them. She could have loved herself but she never even got that chance. 

He'd held that little girl like she was the most precious thing in the world, worried over her, and he lost her. The word Sunday felt heavy and the confetti that rained on them didn't feel like a celebration. They'd both just ripped their hearts out in some warped, rainbow alley and the sounding of horns felt grating. She wished there was an actual trumpet player for her to kick or argue with... that'd feel more satisfying than unceremoniously stepping forward into the blue square and then out of the game altogether. 

Alex was still for a moment, unsure of what to say or do. She remembered the night in the kitchen with Kaden, when he spoke of Damien. How she'd reached out and hugged him... and despite how it seemed foreign to him initially, it seemed to help in a way, too. It was a small show of acceptance, a wordless way of saying I see you and what you're carrying and it changes nothing. Or maybe it changed everything. Did she not trust Kaden more after he told her about Damien? 

So before her own doubts could come back and steal her courage, Alex reached out to Emilio and wrapped her arms around him. She didn't both with the apologies, she knew they rang hollow because nothing really changed grief. Apologies rang hollow after a while. He flinched at first, which she had almost expected. The action didn't make her doubt her own standing, for once, because well... she knew more about the slayer than she ever wanted to. 

She stayed like that for a moment. It was easier to show support than speak it sometimes. Alex wasn't even sure what words could help heal a wound that was gaping. She wasn't sure the words existed. The gesture itself said more than she ever could. 

When she pulled away, everything still felt too raw. Everything Alex had spent so long trying to shove down was forced to the surface and right now, Emilio was probably the only person who really understood the confusing mess of emotions she found herself lost in. It all still felt too heavy though, she wanted to feel as light as the candy-coated trail had suggested. 

”I have an idea,“ she said with a smirk that didn't quite hold the same mischievous glint it normally did, ”I think you'll like it.“

Something told her Emilio was the kind of man who appreciated a little bit of arson... Or maybe it was more destruction of property. Alex was no lawyer even if Elle Woods had been her first childhood crush. Maybe part of her also wanted to buy the stupid game too. A nice little gesture of 'fuck you' to her parents for not letting her have any amount of joy as a kid. 

”I hope you like breaking the law and lighting things on fire,“ she gestured ahead, ”We're going to steal some board games and light them on fire... And buy one of them. I'm sure you can figure out who that one's a fuck you to.“ 

There was still a heaviness in the slayer's shoulders and in her own words, but Alex knew he'd take her up on the offer. They both had all of this shit dredged up that needed an outlet and Alex could think of no better form of catharsis than lighting some games of Candyland on fire and watching them turn to dust. 

—

The barrier was gone now, but the alley felt smaller than it had before. Like his story had filled it to the brim, like the force of those words was going to force the both of them out like a pot boiling over. He heard the trumpets and the confetti and the triumphant sounds that came with ‘winning’ the game, and he was so angry that it was hard to breathe. He was so furious that he thought it might smother him like a pillow shoved over his nose and mouth, like a wet cloth designed to drown him on dry land. He was angry. He was so fucking angry. 

But he wasn’t. Not really. And hadn’t that always been the problem?

Emilio looked for rage to warm him, clung to anger because it was a fire in the hearth in the middle of a blizzard, but it was never real. He called his grief by an alias and pretended that was its name, and sometimes, he was a good enough actor to fool himself. Sometimes, that anger felt like anger, and he let it hold him when nothing else did. He let it wrap itself around him, curl up beside him like a dog. But there were days when the disguise slipped, days when it was embarrassingly bad like a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and a costume shop wig that wouldn’t fool anyone who looked at it for more than a moment. 

Today was one of those days. The rage burned, but it didn’t. The fury festered, but it didn’t. Emilio was angry, but he wasn’t. 

And he thought Alex probably knew. Because they were alike, weren’t they? Right up until the end, their stories lined up with one another. They were soft, they were shoved into too-small spaces, they carried death with them everywhere they went. And maybe, in a way, even those final memories stood side-by-side in a way that still made sense. Alex was unloved by a father she was better off without. Emilio carried too much love for a daughter he could no longer hold. They were both angry, but they weren’t. They both wished, more than anything, for the rage to be real. 

He heard her shuffling in the alley beside him, heard her coming in close. Nonsensically, he half-expected a blow. As if, after everything, she might make good on that promise to kick his good knee, as if she was the type of person who might literally kick him while he was down. She wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t, but she came close and he tensed anyway. When you spent all your life as a punching bag, even a supportive hand on your shoulder could look a little like a swinging fist at first. 

Her arms wrapped around him and, instinctively, Emilio flinched. His body was still trembling, still shaking, still so painfully his. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into a tight embrace, and it took him a moment. A heartbeat, maybe two, to recognize that it wasn’t an attack. When his mind caught up to his body, there seemed to be a second of hesitation before he allowed himself to relax.

How many times had someone hugged him? It had happened in Wicked’s Rest so much more than it had ever happened in Mexico, he knew. Before moving to this strange little town, he was sure he could have counted the number on a single hand and still had fingers left unused. Unsurprisingly, the Cortezes weren’t big on physical displays of affection. Even Emilio, who’d loved his daughter so much more than he’d ever loved anything else, had hugged her so rarely that he hated himself for it now. 

He took a deep breath, and then another. He tried to calm himself. Every stuttered beat of his heart sounded like an apology, like a plea for penance. He was sorry to Alex, who had deserved a love she’d never been shown by parents who should have been better. He was sorry to Andy, who’d given up her childhood in an attempt to make up for that. He was sorry to Flora, who died young and terrified just four years and a weekend after she was born. He was sorry to Victor, who was a memory instead of a person. 

And maybe, between all of them, he was finding another apology to carry, too. Maybe he could learn, somehow, to be sorry to that kid in the shed with a knife clutched in his trembling hand, leaning against a door he wanted so badly to open.

Alex spoke, and it took Emilio a moment to come back to himself. She was smirking, and it was less genuine than it normally would have been but he had neither the space nor the desire to call her out on it. There was no path forward that allowed them to recognize what had been said here and still breathe around it, he knew. There was no way to talk about what had been said without getting lost in it. It was still too raw. It would always be too raw, even if a century separated them from this alley and the things that had been said within it. Talk was cheap. Action was better.

And he really liked the sound of the action she had in mind.

Leaning back, the detective nodded. He brought a trembling hand up, shoved some of the wild curls away from his face. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice hoarse and foreign, even to him. “Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Let’s burn that shit to ashes. And… I’ve got a couple of bucks in my wallet. I’ll buy you one, too.” 

Neither of them could repair the damage done to them. There were things that couldn’t be fixed, no matter how much duct tape and chewing gum you used to stick the pieces back together. Glass, when shattered, would never slide back into place just the same. The cracks would always be there. The cold air would always creep in around them. But that didn’t mean you didn’t try, did it? That didn’t mean you didn’t do everything you could.

They were broken. And they probably always would be, despite anyone’s best efforts to change it. But there was something to be said, maybe, in being broken together instead of alone. 

And arson. There was something to be said for that, too.

“Come on,” he said, pushing himself to his feet in a way that creaked and ached. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” And on to whatever came next.