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ariadnewhitlock · 9 months

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TIMING: Afternoon/evening of August 30th PARTIES: Emilio (@mortemoppetere), Ariadne (@ariadnewhitlock), and a brief appearance by Wynne (@ohwynne) at the end. SUMMARY: Emilio goes to see what's up with the mare trapped in Rhett's van. Turns out he knows her! They both have a lot of feelings. Ariadne is safe... ish. Emilio has lots of feelings and also finds out that Wynne and Ariadne are dating. CONTENT: Child death (mentions), suicidal ideation (implied at some points)

Rhett had a goddamn mare in his van.

This was going to happen. Emilio knew that. This was always going to happen. Rhett had been like this for as long as Emilio knew him. Harsh, brutal. Cruel. He’d never thought the last word would apply to his brother, never thought they’d get to a place where they’d be on opposite sides of anything, because Rhett was a constant. A rock, a foundation, the only person who’d ever really seen Emilio as worthwhile for the longest time.

And yet, here they were. He was sneaking around the area outside his brother’s bunker. He was looking for that damned van. He was betraying something, even if he was doing what he thought was right. A betrayal was a betrayal.

But this was still something he had to do.

The van came into view, and Emilio shuffled over to it. The door was locked; he made quick work of it. He was more accustomed to picking the locks on doors, but popping the old van’s lock wasn’t very difficult, either. He opened the door, clicked the button to unlock them all, then circled around to the back. Bracing himself, he swung the doors open and —

Jesus.

It was the kid. The one from the mine, the one who’d once told him she’d politely ask not to be killed if someone tried it. At least if it had been someone brutal, he could have… excused it, somehow. Put them out of their misery, told Rhett some excuse. But this? This was something else. He wasn’t going to kill the kid, and he wasn’t going to leave her here.

(Was a discovery that couldn’t be hidden better or worse than one that was impossible to ever discover? He was about to find out.)

“All right,” he said quietly. “All right, kid. Let’s get you out of here. Come on.”

—

She didn’t know how long it’d been. The one thing Ariadne did know, though, was that she actually was probably going to die in this van. Or die again, or whatever it’d be called.

Being a monster, maybe she deserved it, but she had people she cared about – people she loved – and she didn’t want to just die here. Not for one man’s silly sort of science experiment. The idea that she was an experiment for him made her curl back up into the ball that she’d stayed in throughout most of the time she’d been in the van.

She’d chewed her nails down to the quick, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever been this hungry. Ariadne didn’t like it, and the focusing on what different sweets would feel like only did so much to satiate her. Which was to say, at this point, not much.

She jumped when the doors swung open, scooting very quickly toward the side of the van, lip trembling, hands balled into fists.

Except it wasn’t Him – it was – Emilio? Right? The one who she’d run into in the mines. Ariadne didn’t know what he was doing here, but she felt shaky. “Please – I – please, I’ve been good, I promise.” The words came out far more uneven than she would’ve liked, a jumble of sounds, both said in one breath and taken forever to stretch out. “I – please.” She shook her head, her whole body.

“Please just leave me here, I’ve been good, I don’t want to – I don’t want to change the experiment now.” Ariadne burst into tears. “It’s fine, it’s – how – how do you know Him?”

—

God, she looked terrified. Emilio felt sick at the sight of her, sicker still at the knowledge that it was Rhett who’d put her here. It was so easy, sometimes, to make excuses for the people you loved. Rhett did awful shit, but he was Emilio’s brother, so Emilio tried to explain it away. He’d lost someone once, and it made him hard. He’d made himself a family in Mexico and had it torn away in a heartbeat, and it made him angry. He’d buried Juliana and Flora, found Emilio half dead and trying his hardest to take the ‘half’ qualifier away, and it filled him with grief. Emilio could take those facts, could bind them together into something that made the only family he had left in the goddamn world into something redeemable because he didn’t want to be alone. He could excuse a lot of the shit Rhett did by closing his eyes to it.

But he couldn’t excuse this.

A goddamn kid, locked in the back of his brother’s van for something she couldn’t control. Terrified and starving because someone had killed her once and she hadn’t died the right way. What made Emilio any different, he wondered? His heart might beat, but he’d died in Mexico just as surely as this kid had died in her bed. Was it love that kept Rhett from locking him up in a van? Or was that beating heart the only qualifier? If he didn’t have that, he wondered, would the love be enough for Rhett to still save him?

He didn’t want to think about it. He was afraid of what the answer might be.

Moving forward, Emilio brushed away the salt Rhett must have been using to keep the kid in place. He faltered when she spoke, when it became clear that she thought he was here to help Rhett instead of her. His stomach clenched, nausea tugging at his gut. How many people would assume the same? How many people would take the things Rhett had done and put them on Emilio’s head? Was all the good he’d tried to do undone because he loved someone who did things like this?

“I’m not changing the… experiment.” The word tasted like acid in his throat. Was Rhett doing this because of him, because he’d told him he didn’t know how long it took to starve a mare? Maybe this was his fault. Would it have been better if Rhett had just cut the kid’s head off? Emilio wouldn’t have been able to save her, but she wouldn’t have suffered like this, either. Suffering was worse, sometimes. He often looked back at Mexico and everything that had happened since and thought about how much he would have preferred a quick death.

“I’m not changing it,” he said again. “I’m ending it. I’m getting you out of here. Okay? And I’m going to make sure he doesn’t come after you again.” He didn’t know how. Rhett had always been a hard man to convince, and this particular action would wipe away any doubt he had that something in Emilio had changed. That he was broken now, something different than the kid Rhett first met in Mexico twenty years ago. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe if Rhett had a new target for that anger and grief and hardness, people like Ariadne would fall off his radar as Emilio fell to the center of it. Let Rhett spend all his energy on ‘fixing’ Emilio, and he’d have less to break people like this. That was better.

The last of the salt was gone now, and he took a hesitant step back. “Come on out,” he said softly, in a tone he’d lost years ago. It was one he’d used with Flora, with Jaime. “Come on out, and I’ll call someone to come get you. Okay? To take you home. I’m not going to hurt you, kid, I promise.”

—

She wanted to scream, but even though she technically didn’t need anything other than nightmares to survive, her voice felt dry. Ariadne supposed, though, that not having been able to do anything for so long was probably affecting her voice or something. She didn’t know how any of that worked, and so her half hearted scream was even weaker than normal. Not that she’d ever been good at screaming, but then again, she’d never had to be good. Up until last year, she’d been so exceptionally lucky about everything that she hadn’t ever figured there would be a need to.

Which was believing too much in the good of the world, but that was still something that Ariadne felt, despite everything. Despite having literally been killed, despite being a monster herself… she still believed that. Which was, perhaps, why she got stuck in the back of some guy’s van. Him. She still wasn’t sure of His name, wasn’t sure if that was because He hadn’t told her or if she’d forgotten amidst everything else, but maybe that didn’t matter. It wasn’t like the police would pay attention to it, anyhow.

But she wasn’t supposed to let people just walk all over her. She wasn’t supposed to be weak, and so she attempted another scream, more fortified this time.

Her lips felt chapped, impossibly so. The man who was here now had saved her, and let her help. Assuming the worst in people wasn’t something Ariadne was used to, nor comfortable with. Except he knew she was here, and he couldn’t have known that without knowing Him. Except she did remember that he’d once said something about being able to sense her, or something?

“You’re not?” She dug her nails into her calves, “but it’s – he – the tally marks.”

Cass would be so mad at her for leaving. Wynne was probably worried. Unless what He said had been true, and she’d been here long enough to make it so that Wynne had moved on. Ariadne was fairly positive she hadn’t been here that long, but still. Her mind had the keen ability to jump to the worst possible scenario, though never blaming the other person.

“You’re getting me out of here?”

She needed to stop asking so many questions.

Except, “how’ll you make sure he doesn’t? He’s strong and I don’t think he takes very well to my kicking and screaming and crying. I think he thought it was funny.” She looked down at her shoes, still not moving from her spot.

The tone of voice that came with the man’s next words was something that somehow immediately relaxed Ariadne. Reminded her strongly of how her dad had encouraged her to jump off the deep end of the pool, once - twice. How her mom had spoken to her when she didn’t want to start school without Chance. How Chance’s parents had spoken to the both of them, trying to convince them that cauliflower was good. (Ariadne still firmly believed that it wasn’t).

“I - okay. I – not my parents.” She didn’t know why she said that, but that would involve too many questions. “I need a new phone. I need – I need a lot.” Ariadne finally stood up, legs shaking. “He’s gonna come out and check soon, probably. I - what if - I think I know who you can call. I think I know their number.”

—

She screamed, and it was a hoarse and pathetic thing, but Emilio flinched like it was a banshee all the same. Like it was deafening, like it pierced through his eardrums and left blood streaming down the side of his head. It might as well have. That scream, that terrified little sound that wasn’t really much more than a squeak, it was worse than anything he’d heard in a long time. He thought of the vampire he’d fought with Zane, the one who’d known what happened in Mexico and weaponized it. I heard she died screaming. Had her screams sounded like that, in the end? Like a tiny squeak of a thing, the half-sob of a child who didn’t want to die?

Tally marks, she said, and he felt nauseous all over again. Rhett had treated it like a game, hadn’t he? Like an experiment, like a little test. It was awful, it was heartless, it was unforgivable, and still, there was a part of Emilio that wanted to defend him. Still, there was part of him that wanted to argue, wanted to insist that she’d misunderstood, somehow. As if his brother hadn’t had this kid locked in a fucking van for who knew how long, as if he wouldn’t have killed her had Emilio not come.

There was nothing worse than love, he thought. Without it, he would have gotten the kid out of the van and taken a match to the whole goddamn thing, would have filled the bunker he knew was nearby with dirt and cement and made it uninhabitable. It was love that made his chest ache now, love that made his stomach churn. Rhett had done terrible things here. He had tortured someone who wasn’t much more than a teenager, and he’d enjoyed it. He’d left her alone and terrified, and he’d probably thought it was funny. He was a dangerous person, maybe a bad one.

And Emilio loved him anyway. Even now, even still.

So what did that say about him? What did it mean when someone you loved was capable of something like this? When the first person who’d ever shown you any kind of affection — the only person who’d shown you affection for years of your life — treated kids like they were science projects? If Rhett was a bad man, what was Emilio? Did his brother’s irredeemable qualities paint a black mark on him, too? Could you be damned just for loving someone?

And how much did the reason for that love weigh here? If he told Ariadne that the same man who’d locked her in that van had once held Emilio’s daughter and rocked her to sleep so that Emilio could get a few hours of shut-eye himself, it wouldn’t change what Rhett had done. If he recalled the way his brother dug the graves that he himself had been too broken to think of, that Rhett was the only reason Emilio’s wife and daughter were laid to rest in the dirt instead of left to rot in a living room floor, it wouldn’t change the days Ariadne had spent locked in a van. You could love someone, Emilio thought, but love didn’t make them good. Love didn’t make a hero out of a villain. The only thing love ever gave you was excuses.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he said again. “And he’s — I’ll make sure. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come after you again. Okay? I’m going to… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m going to make sure you’re safe.” Maybe he’d give Rhett an ultimatum: that if he wanted to kill the kid, he’d have to take Emilio out first. And maybe he’d pretend that he was still confident what Rhett’s response would be to that. “Don’t worry. Okay? I’ll take care of it.”

Not my parents. Christ, she sounded young. How old was she? Nora’s age, Wynne’s? Younger than Emilio had ever felt, older than Flora would ever be. She had parents who were worried about her, and other people, too.

He took out his phone, tossing it to her. “Use mine,” he said. “Call someone to pick you up, have them take you to get a new one later, when you’re better.” And he wouldn’t go with her when she left, because why would she want him to? She’d feel safer without him around, he knew. Even if she didn’t know his relationship with the man who’d hurt her, she must have been able to figure out that they knew one another. The van was so out of the way, hidden; no one could have found it without knowing it was there.

Besides… Emilio needed to wait for Rhett to get back. He needed to make sure this wouldn’t happen again.

“You can take my phone with you if you want to, or you can leave it here. Okay? Whatever you need, kid.”

—

She’d made him flinch and a wave of guilt swept through Ariadne’s body. Even in all her frustration, unfamiliar tiredness, and unrelenting panic, she still felt guilty, too. All of the emotions felt like too much, but she did her best to push through them. To try to let her focus wander elsewhere, like she’d been doing ever since she’d ended up in this stupid old van. To anything else – it often wound up back at Wynne, but it had also been other friends, and also Chance. A lot of that.

Ariadne had convinced herself that he would have contacted her parents, because even if they weren’t talking as much as they used to, and even if they weren’t quite as close as they used to be, they still cared about each other, and Chance would’ve known that she wasn’t the sort to just up and disappear for even one day without warning. Even when she went to stay at Wynne’s, she’d let him know.

She’d also run through dance sequences in her mind – she had neither the energy nor the motivation to actually dance, and thinking about it was good enough. Or, at least, she’d convinced herself of such.

The whole deluding herself thing was something she’d become remarkably good at, all things considered.

Ariadne supposed that, on some level, even convincing herself that she was any version of alive was its own sort of delusion, wasn’t it?

Even if, legally, somehow she was. Because being a literal dead girl and enrolling in college would have been difficult, to say the very least. She’d been too confused when she woke up. Came back to life. Whatever it was. Un-died while still being dead? Point was, He had said that she was supposed to think about what she’d done to get herself into this place, and she’d done a lot of that.

She was nothing if not obedient, even to gray-long-haired creeps who very obviously didn’t understand the scientific method.

“I don’t know –” her breath (which, she supposed, she technically didn’t need, and yet now, and yet always, it felt so necessary) caught in her throat that she had to cough to expel it.

“ – I don’t know if I am safe. Can be. I don’t –” her voice broke off, fragmented, unsure. Scared, still.

“You’re not supposed to worry about me, remember? Not supposed to have to help me.” She fiddled with her necklace. God, she thought, how was she ever going to explain not aging to her grandmother? It seemed as though everything Ariadne had panicked about was bubbling to the surface now. Which had to be the literal worst timing in the world, but she wasn’t so sure she had lots of karma points for good timing anymore.

Thankfully, she did catch the phone that he threw at her. “No. I mean – you can –” he could what? Go with her? She wasn’t sure if she wanted that at all, but she also knew that she certainly didn’t feel safe going alone. “I can – yeah. I’ll call my partner. Except they can’t drive – or don’t – legally not allowed – could you bring me to their place, if I needed you to?” She tapped her fingers against the back of the phone, the click click click oddly satisfying and calming.

“But I – I’m not taking your phone. That’s stealing.” She shuffled slightly closer to where he was. “I don’t steal.”

—

Terror clung to every inch of her, and Emilio had no idea how to combat it. Usually, in situations like this, he could at least do something. A weapon wasn’t much good for comforting a traumatized kid, but it could at least take out whatever monster had birthed their fear. He’d killed ghouls for Nora, even if Nora hadn’t been afraid of them. He’d fought vampires for Wynne, even if he hadn’t fought them quickly enough to save Wynne from a scar on their throat. But what could he do for Ariadne now? How did you fight the monster when you loved it? How did you slay the dragon when the dragon was the only family you had left?

He watched her squirm, watched her panic, and he wondered if Rhett had felt any of the nausea curling in his gut now when he’d locked her away in that van. Had he doubted, for a moment, what he was doing? Had he thought about her family, about her cousin she said was ‘cooler’ than she was or her parents who were still alive because she was a kid? He knew the answer, and it wasn’t a comfort. Rhett wouldn’t have thought of any of that, because Rhett wouldn’t have seen the kid. He only would have seen a monster. Even when she’d cried. Even when she’d been afraid.

She didn’t feel safe, and how could he combat that? How could he make it easier for her to exist in this terrifying world when he was one of the things she ought to be afraid of?

“I know,” he said quietly, because at least that was the truth. “I know you don’t feel safe. I know. But I’m going to make sure you are, whether you feel it or not. Okay? I’m going to do everything I can.” Except he wasn’t. Because if he was doing everything he could do, he’d slay the monster. He’d make sure the thing that hurt her wouldn’t get a chance to hurt her again. But Emilio couldn’t make that promise when the thing that hurt her was Rhett. Emilio couldn’t save her when the thing she needed saving from had peeled him off the forest floor and carried him to a stolen van with his family’s grave dirt still caked beneath its fingernails.

He could make an empty promise, but he couldn’t keep it. He thought she might suspect as much. He didn’t know how to explain it away. Love was a hard thing to put to words, harder when you were trying to explain it to someone who’d been hurt by a person you loved. Emilio didn’t think he’d ever know how to do it fully.

He swallowed, remembering their conversation from before. “Maybe,” he said, “but I like doing things I’m not supposed to do. So I’m worrying anyway. I’m helping anyway. Don’t think you can stop me, kid. I’m a stubborn viejo.”

She caught the phone, which was good. There was still some coordination there. She’d need it if she was going to get home… and get something to eat. He tried not to think about what she’d have to do when she left here, tried not to think about how little he knew she wanted to do it. She’d seemed disgusted by what she needed to do to survive when they’d spoken before, seemed to hate it. Now, thanks to Rhett, she’d have to feed quickly if she wanted to survive. Control would be a hard thing to come by after days of not eating at all, he suspected. But he couldn’t help her with that part. All he could do was what he was doing.

Shaking his head, he glanced back to the van. “I can’t go with you,” he said quietly. “I have to stay here and wait for him, so I can make sure you’re safe.” He’d talk to Rhett. He’d talk to him. He tried to convince himself that it would work, that his brother would somehow see his way of thinking and not hate him for it. It was a useless pipe dream, but what else did he have? “Your partner can take my car. It’s okay if they can’t drive legally. I can’t, either. They can take my car, and they can get you somewhere safe. But I have to stay here.”

He let her come in closer, didn’t move as she got near. If she wanted to stand close to him, of all people, she could. He wouldn’t move in one direction or another; it was her decision. Something ought to be. “It’s not stealing. It’s borrowing. You can give it back to me when you get a new one, or when you finish with it. I’m letting you borrow it. Okay? Not stealing if I give it to you.”

—

“Okay.” She wasn’t sure how much she even wanted to talk. Not to Emilio specifically, but just in general. Like something was just broken. Even if Ariadne knew that sounded overly dramatic.

Except that she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt this tired other than the other time she’d died. Which wasn’t the sort of thing you were supposed to have others of. You weren’t supposed to be able to die more than once. Not unless you were a monster, or some sort of freakish defiance of nature. Except that Teagan didn’t think so, and Inge and Leila thought she was incredible. Cass liked her for what she was. So there were some people, at least, who thought of her as just Ariadne, still. Which meant a lot, even as she sat here, in the back of someone’s van who’d thought it would be fun to experiment with how long it took her to die.

Again.

“I still don’t know much of any Spanish, but okay.” Ariadne lay down on the floor of the van, again. “I’m just offering you an out.” One that she was glad he didn’t take, but still. The offer had to be there. She would’ve felt even more evil and wrong if it weren’t – and of course he didn’t take it, because even if her anxiety told her (and still did) that maybe he was there to help the other man whose name she still didn’t know, he was good and kind and she owed him at least some respect around that.

She had to feed, she was reminded of again, painfully so. Except this wasn’t just a case of her putting it off a bit longer than she would’ve liked. Now it was a matter of living unlife or death, again. She didn’t want that again. She wanted to call Wynne and kiss them and apologize for disappearing on them. Ariadne also knew that with how honest they’d been with her, she’d owe them an explanation of what had happened here, and why it had happened.

Hopefully they’d still want to be with her after that. Or even be near her, be her friend.

Ariadne knew that she couldn’t focus on that right now though, and so she looked down at the phone. “Okay. Or - okay.” Wait for Him. Emilio had to wait for Him. She let out another shaky breath, doing her best to not burst into tears again. “Okay.” She nodded again, unlocking the phone and texting Wynne – she wasn’t sure if she could handle being on the phone right now. Just a:

I’m okay. I need you to come pick me up. My friend Emilio says you can take his car if you need to.

With a pin of her location.

“They should be here soon, I hope.” She stood up, finally, for a moment, still shaking, and stepped out of the van, only to drop to the floor almost instantly and curl her arms back around her legs.

—

She was still afraid. It was a tangible thing, something that radiated off of her like body heat, like a fever. She was still afraid, and she probably always would be now. He thought of the conversations he’d had with her before, about how she’d lamented that if someone were going to kill her, she’d just ask them not to. What life had she lived that she’d genuinely believed a polite request would be enough to prevent someone from killing her? Emilio found himself longing for a world in which she was right about that, for a world where his daughter could have carried the same belief and let it raise her into someone twenty years older instead of someone who died before she had the chance to even live.

And there was mourning in that longing, too. Mourning for the little girl in Mexico who would never grow older, mourning for the kid in the back of the van who’d lost something of herself even if she was still here, mourning for the brother he’d loved and trusted and respected even when he shouldn’t have. Rhett would never forgive him for letting the kid go, and Emilio would never forgive Rhett for trapping her in the first place. What would they be, after this? What would be left for them?

He pushed the thought aside, because it didn’t matter. How he felt, how Rhett felt, it wasn’t important. What mattered right now, in this moment, was the kid. Getting her out of here before Rhett got back, making sure she wouldn’t be in danger because of him again. Emilio had no idea how to do that, but he knew he was going to. He’d do whatever it took. He couldn’t save that little girl in Mexico, couldn’t save the part of the kid who would be left in the van, but he could try to keep it from happening again. He wanted to do that.

(He tried not to think of Andy in that cabin. He tried not to think about the last time he’d tried to protect a kid by talking a hunter out of doing what hunters did. He tried not to think of dirt under his fingernails and a grave no one would ever find, but it was hard to think of anything else. That wouldn’t be Rhett. He’d die before he let that happen.)

“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, trying to pry his accent from the words, trying to exist in the language she understood best even if it was one that still felt foreign to him. “And I’m not — I don’t need an out. I don’t want one. I’m here. I’m helping. Okay? I’m doing that.” I owe you that, he wanted to add, but that would be a confession, wouldn’t it? That would be admitting to something he figured a part of her already knew, telling her that the only reason he’d known to rescue her was because the man who’d hurt her trusted him enough to tell him where to find her. And it was selfish and it was shitty and it was the worst goddamn thing about him, but he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to confess to that.

He watched her stammer through a response, couldn’t bring himself to think of anything else to say. She used his phone, she sent a message, she stumbled. He moved forward, carefully putting a hand on her shoulder as she sat on the ground. “Try not to move around too much,” he told her quietly. He ached with it, ached with her. All he could think about was Flora and Jaime and how the only thing Emilio had ever been good for, when it came to kids, was failing them.

They sat for a few minutes, Emilio on high alert just in case Rhett showed up again. But when the familiar sound of his own car’s engine reached him, he relaxed a little. “Sounds like they’re here,” he said quietly. “I’m going to help you to the car. All right? I’m going to help you to the car, and then I’m going to wait here. And you’ll go with your friend, and you’ll be safe.” He’d make sure. He would.

—

She had been gone for four days. There had been four days without messages, without Ariadne pressed next to them in bed, without her at breakfast or her coming to meet them for a picnic in the park, as they had agreed to. Wynne had been sick with worry, showing up at Whitlock Wares with wide, panicked eyes and not finding her there either. Only her parents, who seemed to be equally worried — which only made them worried more.

Awkward first meeting with their girlfriend’s parents aside, it had been four days of a dead trail, no answers and ice cold panic. Their mind jumped from vampiric cults to werewolves (it hadn’t been a full moon, had it) to their own family to monsters they weren’t even sure existed. Things were only just starting to settle, it seemed — their heartbeats growing stronger and steadier, their fear becoming easier to grasp.

And here they were again, caught in sleepless nights. It felt selfish, to even admit that this was making them feel worse — but it was. Wynne had gotten used to having Ariadne’s constant presence near them. If it was not physically, she was there to text during work or the moments where the world seemed to cave in. She was always an arm’s length away, and though there was plenty of time they spent apart (as there was so much to do, and not all of it could be done together), the fact that she was always close enough to call was a comfort they were attached to. More than that, Ariadne was safe. She not only felt safe, but she was supposed to be safe.

But she was gone. Four days of silence. Until their phone buzzed with a message of Emilio that carried her name.

Wynne was quick. They could be quick if they needed to be, and this situation called for it. Shoes on. No jacket needed. Take the knife, though. Get out the door. Lock it. Avoid Jeff. Slip into Emilio’s place (never locked). Don’t pet Perro. Get the key from the fridge, that’s where he left it when he was drunk. Don’t pet Perro, Wynne, you have somewhere to be! Get out. To the car. Try not to panic. Unlock, get in, put key into the ignition and remember all Sully and the others taught them. Drive.

The issue with their driving had never been their ability to drive — Wynne knew how to handle a car, they just didn’t know how to do so in a tightly populated, urban setting with rules and regulations. They were lucky it was nighttime then, and that traffic was slow — because they were speeding, forgetting about blinkers and speed limits and – at some point – even forgetting how to stop the wipers from wiping the windows aggressively. They at least managed to turn the radio off.

“Your destination is on your right,” the robot lady voice informed them and they hit the brakes, staring wide-eyed at none other than Emilio through the side of the car. Their gaze dropped and they saw Ariadne, who looked alive and okay, but like she hadn’t slept or eaten in quite some time. The window wipers were still going, as if they were running a marathon. Wynne opened their mouth, then realized the window was closed and just burst out of the car, realizing way too late that they’d forgotten their seatbelt. No matter. It meant they were faster to crouch in front of Ariadne now.

“Hey, hey, I’m here, we can go —” they said, placing their hands on Ariadne’s shoulders, pulling her slowly towards them before looking over at Emilio for anything. Explanation, instruction, reassurance: Wynne would take it all. “I’m here, okay, we can – whatever this is, we can go.”

—

She still wanted to say that he didn’t have to help her. Even now, amidst all her relief, there was still a feeling of guilt. If she weren’t a monster, then he wouldn’t have had to do this. She’d never gotten into trouble even remotely close to this back when she was alive. Ariadne still had to wonder how he’d found her. She didn’t know if maybe his ability to sense dead people was like, super long-reaching and meant that he knew where she was always. She didn’t know how else he would’ve found her.

Or didn’t want to think about how he would have known. If maybe her anxiety-riddled questioning about if he’d come to help with the experiment held some sort of truth to it. If maybe, somehow, he’d just up and decided to back out at the last moment. Except that he’d offered to help, so that was probably her being unfairly cruel. Being a monster.

Just like He’d said she was.

Ariadne focused back on Emilio, offering a shrug. It was the most she could do, right now.

“Moving’s not easy, yeah.” She pressed her fingers against her temples, trying to make things stop spinning. Hoping for quite literally any other feeling besides panic, anxiety, or dread. Which wasn’t entirely likely or possible, but holding on to some sort of hope, no matter how false it was, had to be good, didn’t it?

Wynne was coming, too. She’d missed them more than she thought possible.

Missed lying near them at night, missed sending them cute photos or just texts whenever she thought of them (which was a lot. Nearly constantly, as a matter of fact).

Ariadne stayed seated on the ground, still terrified that He’d come out to do one of his checks (she thought they’d been unpredictable, but then again, she hadn’t had any sort of sense for how to tell time, so maybe they’d been exact. Given His grins whenever she freaked out though, she figured they’d been random. It was easier to freak her out that way.)

The sound of a car came and Ariadne looked up, looked up as Wynne came out of the car and made their way towards her, how they were in front of her, suddenly, blessedly, and pulling her close to them and she buried her face in their shoulder, another sob wracking her whole entire body. “I’m so sorry. I missed you so much.” She whimpered again, pulling away to look up at them for a moment, longing to kiss them. “I’m sorry I - I’m getting your shirt all messy. I’m sorry I – I couldn’t text you, and I –” she broke off again, burying her face once again into their shirt, breathing in their comforting smell, the fact that they were here.

Because they were here, she finally felt some sort of safety. Like things might be okay now – which wasn’t fair to Emilio, but she supposed that was what love was, sort of? Finding your home, having them be the person who could ground you the most and make you feel the safest. Or maybe it was the way Wynne’s hands felt in her hair, how comforting their breathing was, even though Ariadne was fairly certain they were unsteady and unsure about the whole situation.

Still staying close to them, she finally looked up at Emilio too. “I – thank you, for letting me text them. I – yeah.”

—

His stomach was in knots. It had been ever since Rhett messaged him. Actually, no. That wasn’t — It had been for longer than that, hadn’t it? Since the day he ran into Rhett in that vampire’s apartment, since the moment he’d realized his brother hadn’t changed and he had. Emilio had been waiting for the other shoe to drop for months now, hadn’t he? He’d known since the day his brother walked back into his life that something like this was inevitable. He’d been doing what he could — making sure Rhett and Ren were never anywhere near his apartment at the same time, keeping Rhett away from Teagan’s lake — but it was never going to be a long-term solution. There was no long term solution. At least, not one he could accept.

(He thought of the ranger again, of Andy’s knife sliding between his ribs. The ranger’s face shifted in his memory, turned into Rhett instead of a stranger. The hand holding the knife became Emilio’s instead of Andy’s. He thought he might be sick.)

The kid was talking beside him, but it was hard to hear her. It was hard to hear anything over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. The car was here, and that was good. That meant she’d get away clean, meant she’d be gone before Rhett came back, meant he could… do something. Fix this, somehow. It was good.

But then the car door opened and Wynne stepped out, and nothing felt very good anymore.

The kid was approaching them, was sobbing into their shoulder, was kissing them. Emilio was somewhere else. An empty white space somewhere, a barn basement, a living room floor. The world was closing in tightly around him, squeezing him in a vice grip. He could swear he felt his ribs give way, could swear he felt them shatter and slice up his lungs, could swear he tasted blood in his mouth. Rhett hurt a kid. Rhett hurt a kid Wynne cared about. Rhett was a monster, and Emilio loved him.

So what did that say about him?

The kid was talking again, and Wynne was looking at him, and Emilio didn’t know where he was but he knew it wasn’t here. He nodded tightly, but it was hard to move around that vice grip. It was hard to do much of anything at all.

He looked to Wynne, pleading with them silently. Don’t ask me about it. Please. Don’t ask me. “Take her away from here,” he said quietly. “Don’t take her to your place. Not yet.” He wasn’t sure how things would go with Rhett, but if there was any chance of his brother showing up at his apartment after this, the kid couldn’t be across the hall. “Take her somewhere safe. You can take my car, she can keep my phone. I’ll reach out. I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again. Just take her somewhere safe.”

—

She was in their arms and maybe that was all that mattered, now. That Wynne could hold Ariadne, and soon pick her up, guide her to the car and drive away — maybe that was the only thing that mattered for now. Even if questions raced through their mind, like why Emilio was here, why there was a van, why Ariadne couldn’t stop crying and what had transpired over the past few days. They were dizzying, but the way Ariadne buried her face in their shirt, sobbing against them was oddly grounding.

It made it clear what had to be done. Wynne had been good at that once, knowing what needed to be done and doing it, with a clear head. Keeping that head high, despite the horrors unfolding in front of them. For Ariadne, they would try to do that too now — keep their head high, keep their crying to a minimum and go.

But they cried. Ariadne was crying against them and it was hard not to fall into the same rhythm, breaths leaving their throat too fast, almost stumbling over each other in their haste. “Don’t, no you don’t have to apologize,” they said, looking at that tear-stained face and wishing they could wipe it all away, whatever had happened these past days. “Don’t worry about my shirt. Or the texts. Okay?”

What did their shirt matter? What did it matter that Ariadne hadn’t texted? Wynne hadn’t texted her once, too, and maybe because of that they had known. That this wasn’t a case of their girlfriend ignoring them, or needing some time apart — that there was something wrong. That something bad had happened to this, too.

Bad things kept happening. People kept being hurt. But why would someone hurt Ariadne? What could have possibly led to whatever this had been? Wynne didn’t understand it and part of them was afraid of knowing, of unveiling another dangerous and ugly part of the world that they’d have to try and live with.

They could barely live with the world as it was, and now the world had hurt Ariadne. Perhaps that was the most unforgivable thing so far.

Emilio looked at them in a way they hadn’t quite seen before, but it seemed clear they shouldn’t ask too many questions. “Okay. Got it. Hey, Aria? We — are you good to go to your place? Do you want to go to your parents?” Wynne tried to look at the other, rubbing some tears from her cheeks as they fought a hiccup. Then they looked back at Emilio. “No, no, please take your phone, so I can reach you, she can – she can use mine. I have her parents numbers and everything.”

He’d make sure it wouldn’t happen again and they believed him. They didn’t have anything else left to do in the moment. Later, maybe, they’d realize that there were limits to how much Emilio could stop, that all these bad things happened even if people like him were trying to stop them, but for now they believed him. Wynne nodded. “We’ll go. But you be safe. Okay?”

—

Nothing was okay, but somehow things felt more okay now that Wynne was here. Which wasn’t fair to Emilio, but Ariadne couldn’t help her pattern of thoughts right now. Besides, she figured that when your closest person was around, things were supposed to feel better than with just anybody else. Even if she still wanted to just melt into the ground, to have everything be brought to a screeching halt.

Not her life – that much she very much wanted. Had wanted before this, and even if she’d been sad, miserable, and hopeless for however long she’d been in the van, Ariadne wanted to live. Even if He’d suggested it’d be better off if she gave up. She had people she cared about – people she loved. If nothing else, she had to make sure Chance didn’t keep getting himself into trouble, because she would not have been surprised if he’d wound up in some sort of situation in the past however-long she’d been in here.

“Okay,” she said, words choppy and broken, “but I’m - still - I’m still sorry.” Shortly before everything, the two of them had talked about the practical impossibility of the two of them always being close to one another, but now she wanted that more than anything. She was supposed to be the monster, and yet nothing felt safer than when she was with Wynne. They were here, they’d come when she’d needed them (because they were good, always), and they smelled exactly the same.

Like home.

She only halfway paid attention to what Emilio was saying, her body trying to get her heart to race from the sheer panic of wondering if He’d come back. If that man with the gray beard and cruel eyes and unkind laugh would come out to check, to tally-mark her for the day. Ariadne clung to Wynne as much as she was able, only focusing back on them when she heard their voice again. “I - yeah. We can go to my place. I’ll – yeah. That should be fine.” She’d deal with Chance’s comments if he was there. Though even though she knew the two of them didn’t tend to see eye to eye anymore, he’d still worry for her. “I just want to go to my place, and shower, and crawl in bed. Can - you - will you stay? At my place. Please. Not – not here.”

She let them pull her up, still wrapping her arms around them, as if worried that if she didn’t this would all be some sort of cruel and awful image that she’d conjured up. That she was still stuck in the van. But she could feel Wynne’s breath on her neck and could feel their cheek when she kissed them. So it was real, and she was safe. Or safe-ish, heavy emphasis on the ish. Ariadne didn’t know how long it would take until she was safe, or what she’d do about the fact that she still really needed to feed, but she’d figure that out. Somehow.

“Will you message when you’re home?” She looked back over to Emilio. “Please? I – I don’t want Him to hurt you.” That would be a whole other thing she couldn’t live with.

—

Wynne was looking at him, and Emilio couldn’t meet their eye. He looked down at his feet, at the ground that kept shifting from the forest’s dirt to the floor of that barn basement to the bloody carpet of a living room a country away. The kids were talking — to him, to each other, he didn’t know. He didn’t think it made much of a difference. None of them seemed to have much capacity for conversation anymore; not Ariadne with her trembling, not Wynne with their worried confusion, not Emilio with his fractured mind. Not a single one of them could talk right now, he suspected.

He was aware enough to catch on that they were going to Ariadne’s place instead of Wynne’s, the relief in hearing it a palpable thing. They didn’t ask him why he’d insisted they stay away from the apartment in Worm Row, but he knew the question would come later. He knew a lot of questions would come later, knew that there were things he needed to answer and actions he needed to answer for.

(Could you explain love, he wondered? When Wynne or Ariadne or both inevitably asked him about it, could he put words to the ache in his chest that bore his brother’s name? This man is a monster, he could say. This man hurt you. This man would have killed you. This man made me who I am. How could he tell the story without damning himself? How could he hate what someone had done while still loving them with all he had?)

He wondered if he ought to give them privacy, if he ought to try to force his legs to take him a few steps away. He was hardly eavesdropping; the ringing in his ears was still loud enough to drown out their quiet conversation. Did it count as ‘giving them a minute’ if, instead of walking out of earshot, he dissociated past the point of hearing them? The question was funny and harrowing at the same time. It seemed a common theme in Emilio’s life, these days.

Ariadne was looking at him again, and it took him a moment to realize she’d spoken. The words seemed to hang for a moment before finding their way to his ear, and he felt sick all over again. She didn’t want Rhett to hurt him. She didn’t want Rhett to hurt him. She had to know that Emilio knew something, that he hadn’t happened upon her here by random chance, and she was still… concerned. About him. As if he deserved that, as if he ever had.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said quietly. “I’ll be fine.” And it was worse, he thought, that he knew it was true. He knew Rhett wouldn’t hurt him the same way he knew the grass was green, the same way he knew the sun rose in the morning. It was a given, the kind of thing you understood the moment you were old enough to understand anything at all. Rhett wouldn’t hurt him, would never hurt him.

But he’d hurt just about anyone else.

Looking back to the van, Emilio felt overcome with emotions he didn’t understand, feelings he couldn’t put a name to. He tore his gaze away from the bad paint job and the open doors, tried not to think about how many times he’d slept in the same floor that had become a kid’s prison for the last few days, tried not to remember Rhett carrying him to the front seat and strapping him in after the massacre, the way he’d bled on the fabric and rested his head against the window. Her hell had been his sanctuary. Her jailor had been his savior. It was not the kind of thing a person could ever forgive.

He forced himself to look back at the kids, nodding his head. “I’ll get in touch with you when I’m done here. Okay? You go, and I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

I’m going to keep you safe, he promised silently. He hoped that, this time, for once, it was a promise he’d be able to keep.

#wickedswriting #c emilio #c wynne #chatzy #writing #the monster at the end of the book #suicidal ideation tw #child death tw #(mentions)#// bex made the beautiful banner #also thank u to bex and marin for writing this with me #and being part of this #it means so much #@ elliott u too. still v grateful for you even if ariadne is Scared :/

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