kadavernagh

[kadavernagh]

Convergence || Nora & Regan

TIMING: Current, after Declan's death and, earlier, The Last Rabbit LOCATION: Banshee jail PARTIES: Regan and Nora SUMMARY: When Hamstring doesn't become a banshee, Nora is thrown in jail. She's surprised to find Regan is already in there.

Nora could feel his death too. It clung to her. It was the shadow under the bench. It was her heart in a million pieces. She wondered how Regan felt it. Did it feel like the end of everything?

There was a shadow following Nora. It loomed at the edge of her vision, an unknowable horror growing and flickering just out of her sight. The shadow’s voice was nails on chalkboard, seeping into her flesh and rattling through her bones. It whispered the names of her past lives. It mimicked the surety of which she’d dropped being Nora to declare she’d be Hamstring, that this was her home now. It danced, flickering and fading in the corners around her. When the whispers became too loud she would spin as fast as she could, trying to trick the shadow. It never fell for it. The empty space where the shadow should have been only served to remind her of the empty look in Declan’s eyes. Full of life, then empty. Right in front of her.

Secretly, or maybe it wasn’t a secret. Maybe she wore it as obviously as she had her feelings for him. But it was truthfully, longingly, selfishly that she wished the shadow was Declan’s ghost. Returned to her. Would he still love her with her broken promises shattered like shards of glass between them? Could he stomach listening to her speak? Her mouth, her treacherous vile mouth that had spun honied words had held nothing but lies. She had promised to save him. Death was no savior. 

The shadow trailed behind Nora, Niamh, and the covenant of angry banshees. They had screamed at her for hours, or had it been for moments. Time leaked through Nora’s consciousness, only tracked by the drying of Declan’s blood against her skin, her clothes, and her hair. The last contact she would ever have with him. The only reminder of the last time they touched. Nora was thankful they didn’t stop to clean her up as they took her to her final destination. She was thankful they let her cling to the remnants of him. Like Miss Havisham in her wedding dress, Nora would spend the rest of her days coated in blood. His blood. 

There was a voice in the back of Nora’s mind. It screamed over the banshees. It filled her insides with vitriol. It spoke in Declan’s voice. A tone she’d never heard in life because he had been too kind, too sweet, too good for the world he was given to. The voice spent every moment condemning her. There was no asylum awaiting her. Dissociation only made the voice louder, sleep was a myth. Sometimes the voice sang to her, a sweet crooning purr. The song was an accusation of everything she’d ever done wrong. A reminder of the warnings she’d received. A flashback of all her missteps that lead to the penultimate moment. The death of Declan. The voice wrapped itself around her heart, squeezing the organ, daring it to stop. It sent pain shooting through her, bringing her to the edge where she was sure death would claim her too. But death was not her companion. It was her stalker. A paparazzi snap-shotting the moments of her life by killing someone in it. 

“Human,” The word was thrown around in snarls and condemnation. The insult to top all insults or an unimaginable crime. They didn’t know how wrong they were. Monster. Pathetic. Liar. Those words would have been more fitting. They would have hurt more, like the look of disgust plastered on each banshee’s face. Pride had once been there. Acceptance. Belonging. Nora wasn’t sure if she saw any anger, or if it was just disgust that a human had lied to them. They spoke in fast Gaelic, talking over each other, gesticulating. For a brief second, Nora was sure Niamh would stab her with the same knife that had slit Declan open. Instead, they took her to a school. It should have been confusing, or interesting, or anything but the only thing Nora felt was numb. Hallways gave way to a basement. The basement revealed a jail. Because of course they had a jail here. Why wouldn’t they?  

The smell of tar bristled at Nora’s nose before she saw Regan. Tar stench clung to Regan, mixed with the night she’d spent in this dank moist place, brimming with worms dressed in little warden suits. Oh, was Nora’s only thought. This was where Regan had been last night. “You’re free to go.” The words felt wrong, a farce of what this place was. But the banshee wasn’t even looking at Regan. Her eyes were pointed down, towards the ground. Nora followed the gaze until her eyes stopped at a cat. The cat’s tail held high, it had an air of arrogance about it. It marched out of the cell proudly, in the way cats do, making sure to remind everyone they are in charge and no one else. Still fell around Nora and the banshee as the two watched the cat walk up the stairs, stop for a brief moment to lick her paw, then leave with a low meow. As if to say she’d be back. 

As the cat’s tail disappeared out the door, activity started again. Nora was shoved into the cell with Regan, the door was locked behind them. Banshees argued in fast Gaelic as they left, slamming the door behind them. Nora didn’t care. They could say whatever they wanted, they could do whatever they wanted, they already had done whatever they wanted. There should have been anger, Nora knew, it should have burned inside her. It should have raged until the bear came out, clawing at every banshee and taking vengeance for what had been done.

Instead, all she felt was sad. Her grief was an ocean. Each new wave of it left her feeling more waterlogged and heavy than before. Nora shuffled across the jail cell, the burden of moving on her own too great. Nora collapsed onto the bench next to Regan. A wet rag. Crumpled and used. “It should have been me.” Nora leaned her head against Regan’s shoulder. An invasion of space, but who cared? Who cared about anything now? “I wish it had been me.” The words rose and ebbed with the waves of grief inside her. “Why are you here?” 

———

Regan had counted the worms squiggling across the ground, back and forth, no less than 822 times before she stopped counting and let sleep take her, the wood grain of the bench stamped into her cheek. 

In her sleep, the last remnants of Jade’s perfume on her jacket became Jade, and she was ready to read out all 69 of those reasons they should be together and remind her, as low as she felt right now, that she was a person. In her dreams, they could be together for the simple fact that they did love each other (and neither of them were irresponsible enough to not do something about it). In her dreams, Elias was safe and not full of holes, Wynne was not once more a sacrifice, and the ham child was painting the walls of her apartment rather than gifts for an old banshee who would never accept her if she knew the truth. 

In her sleep, she was light, weightless. Her organs would have amounted to nothing on the morgue’s scales. Her bones displayed none of the scrimshawing of responsibility that had been carved into them here. In her sleep, the world spread around her in every direction, every possibility like a perfect slab of soft, spongy bog clay beneath her fingers, ready for shaping however she wished. When she screamed, she could bring life. In her sleep, two dead lemmings trailed behind her at her heels like trained puppydogs. She waved at Bill Nye, shook hands with Joseph Bell, and wrapped around Jade. Her wings did not buzz or whine – they sounded pleasant, like fire alarms, and she could call upon them as she pleased. In her sleep, the letter under her jacket and over her sternum became a knight’s metal armor, and a horse named Aneurysm galloped over in her service (then died, as a bonus, like all good horses eventually did). In her sleep, she could be a harbinger of protection and challenge Fate itself. 

The world she eventually blinked herself awake in was nothing like the one in her sleep. It was dark. She could protect no one. She brought only death. Jade’s letter grew damp with cellar moisture and sweat. Elias needed to see a doctor – one who did not harm him – and Wynne needed to be smuggled out. The ham child was in more danger than she could imagine. A worm, somehow on the ceiling, fell on Regan’s forehead. She swallowed and found her mouth completely dry, and pushed herself up, as if rising from the grave, so she was sitting just as she heard the echoing slaps of feet marching down a long set of stairs.

The banshee who descended – one far younger than her yet surpassed her in training – said she was free to go. What? That made no sense. Why should she be allowed to walk out of here after what she’d done? Regan lifted her heavy head and saw that the guard was looking down. The cat. The fecking cat. There was a jingle of keys and the adjacent cell (really, the other cell; there were only two and then a pit full of sheep bones out back, which was the holding place everyone wanted but few got) was unlocked so the dark cat could trot out, tail high. Regan gathered the animal was here for biting Putrecia again. No one wished to kill it because it once dropped a leucistic magpie by the worm statue, and banshees – always searching for meaning – attributed something to that. But before Regan’s head drooped again, she realized there was someone else who had come down the stairs, someone she couldn’t feel like dermestids nipping at the fringes of her wound.

“Hamstring?” Regan squinted. She had been here in the basement for… had it been a full day now? Longer? The brain supplied its own stimuli when there was nothing else available. Visual hallucinations, even in the sane, were common during this kind of dark confinement. Sane was a wee stretch though, wasn’t it? Could anyone stay sane, watching what she had just watched? She kept thinking she heard Elias’s pleas but it was just the cat licking its genitals. Every time her wings flicked the dust away she saw orange. But as the cell to the door cried open and the child was pushed in by a banshee, Regan knew this was real. It slammed with finality and they were quickly left alone, but weren’t they always?

Regan’s voice was stiff from disuse and concern twisted it even more. She was numb, resigned, but not too much to ignore what this meant. If the child was here… her heart leaked anguish for what she suspected had happened. “I’m sorry you’re here. Do they know? Did they realize what you are?” It was more than that. The child was always defiant and difficult to read, hiding any conflict behind the walls she put up. Right now there were no walls, not even a thin sheet of insulation. The child dragged herself toward the bench like organs had been ripped out of her and screamed into a fine spray, like she had been hung up by her actual hamstrings. Declan had died. That’s how they knew. That’s why Hamstring was here. Regan didn’t need to see the death clinging to the child to know it was there.

Hamstring had built a home out of Cliodhna’s affirmations and Declan’s love. Regan sensed the change as early as three weeks ago, with the child’s daily reminder that she was here to convince Regan to leave becoming increasingly rote, mere lip service. If this had worked, if this had all worked the way her grandmother had intended, there was never any leaving for either of them. But the girl was never a banshee. She was just a child. A runaway. Such grief was too large for her small frame to bear (though perhaps the bear was more adequately built for it). Hamstring became something else now, too – not a banshee – but it would take time to figure out exactly what that was. And suffice to say nothing came out like what Regan’s grandmother had intended.

The first words the child spoke made Regan’s lungs turn inside out. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. She would name this new affliction when her head was more clear. Ironically, having nothing to do but think and feel and let her guilt grow teeth did nothing to wave the past away. Her head had never held such weight. “Don’t say that it should have been you. It shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t have been anyone. I tried–” No. Best not to go there, for both their sakes. Regan swallowed a lump that felt like a tumor in her throat. “I am so sorry.” For a Medical Examiner (she still was, right?) Regan was not the best at comforting people, guiding them through their grief. She was too honest to tell families their loved one felt no pain when they had, too stoic to cry with them, too much like a shadow to allow anyone’s needy arms to wrap around her so she could be a lighthouse in the storm that death so often was. She studied the child with sad, tired eyes. “It was you, too. That’s what they do here.”

There was a weight against her shoulder above where her grandmother’s golden blade had struck her, right through the olive jacket Jade had given her. Regan jostled, but only slightly, realizing what – who – the weight was. The bench creaked underneath them, and Regan swallowed, doubting herself. Had the child really just rested her head there? After– and she had never seen the girl so much as extend a hand before. Did she not blame Regan for Declan’s death? For the fact she was in here, behind bars, in a strange place in a foreign country? For all of the personal suffering and loss she had endured that had nothing to do with her love for Declan? Regan bit back her wince and leaned against the wall, not doing anything to buck the child off her shoulder. She didn’t have a bandage for the wound but this, in a way, would do.

“I pushed my grandmother into the tar pit.”

The child once liked Cliodhna. Regan imagined that died with Declan, leaving a smaller scar across the girl’s heart but one nonetheless. Hamstring used to speak of autonomy, of agency, like it was something everyone could be afforded. Yet here she was, experiencing how small and powerless it could feel to live like this. And here Regan was, the rare choice she had been able to make, the captain of her own destiny. Instead of placing her hands on the wheel of a ship, she had made the choice to throw someone overboard.

“It wasn’t an accident.”

———

The shadow slid under the bench while Nora had her eyes closed. It hid there, out of sight, out of reach but not out of mind. It bit at her ankles, it clawed at her soles, it clung to her calves and fixed anchors to her legs. The sea of dirty pavement broiled under them, (or was that her world falling into pieces?) the bench a makeshift lifeboat, buckling and straining with the pressure of staying afloat. The anchors drag her from the bench and pull her under. It took all her effort to stay perched on the bench, her fingers turning white with the force of her grip on the bench. A sprinter pierced her skin. It went unnoticed. 

The shadow laughed. It taunted. It tormented. It giggled. It finished Regan’s unspoken sentence. I tried to inform you. I tried to tell you. I tried to let you know. I TRIED TO WARN YOU. The shadow mimicked Regan’s voice. It screamed the words at the top of its lungs. It whispered the words in her ear. It slapped the words across Nora’s face. Was this twisting in her gut the end? Was death finally coming for her? Or was this guilt? Would she spend every day with a fork twirling her spaghetti intestines together? 

“It should have been me.” Those words would haunt her more effectively than any ghost ever could. They would repeat in her mind for years to come. They fought the shadow’s voice, circling the drain in her head, but never leaving. The drain was clogged, the shadow made sure of that. “It should have been me.” She had to repeat them. They were an affirmation of the truth. A reminder of her past. A shackle she slapped on her wrist to punish herself for never listening. Why couldn’t she fucking listen? 

Regan saying otherwise, that it should have been no one? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. How could it matter? How could anything matter from this point on? Didn’t Regan see the whirlpool in the center of their cell, pulling all the debris and junk of the cell into the center? Couldn’t she feel the bench bucking underneath them? Didn’t she see the worms? They smiled and waved as the whirlpool ate them one by one, unaware of their inconsequential existence in this horrible and large universe. It would be them next. 

Or was this all wishful thinking, “It should have been me.”

Underneath the bench, the shadow laughed. Its voice was Cliodhna’s praise, Emilio’s worry, her fathers’ disappointment, Regan’s truth. Nora wanted to rip her ears from her body, gauge the eyes from her skull, slit herself in the manner of Declan’s death. But her limbs couldn’t move. Only her head on Regan’s shoulder moved, up and down with the gentle tide of Regan’s breath. The shadow had claimed more of her, attaching anchors to her arms, and chest. An oppressive weight crushing her, leaving her with no control over her body. Nora would drown on dry land. Yet death wouldn’t come. Not for her. It would sail the whirlpool with the worms, laugh with the shadow, then clock out for the day leaving the beggar behind. 

When Regan spoke again, Nora had forgotten she wasn’t alone. Had they been sitting in silence for all of eternity or had eternity only lasted two seconds? “A tar pit?” That explained the smell. “It wasn’t an accident?” Nora was a mimic of who she once was, incapable of creating something new, stuck in an endless loop. It looped inside of her, she looped the shadow, and now she looped everything Regan was saying right back to her.

A pause. A moment. Eternity once again wrapped in two seconds. Realization hit like a wave, drowning Nora all over again. Wet laughter bubbled with dry tears. Regan had finally chosen herself. She’d cast aside the duty she’d claimed she owed Cliodhna, and picked to stand up for herself. The irony overwhelmed Nora. The war was over, everything important had been lost but she had won. Regan finally understood. Nora couldn’t stop crying. 

———

The child leaned more. Regan could feel the muscles of the child’s neck relaxing, her breathing slow, her weight shift. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. She might not be able to sleep properly for a very long time. But if this provided something for her, it was the least Regan could do. Regan wouldn’t move, even as her body prickled at the death that had stained the child’s skin and sunk into her pores. An ugly death. Regan was not going to fish for it. She didn’t want to see or know more. 

It should have been me. Regan knew better than to tell the child to stop saying that. And she could offer no more logic to refute that thought, only some recent thoughts of her own. “It would not matter if it had been you. He would have felt it as if it were his death. He would be saying the same thing right now.” She thought of Elias, however much she didn’t want to. “Banshees know how to slice open two people at once. That’s what they do here. That’s the rite.” And it was a skill Regan had picked up along the way, considering she had brought the blade down not only on herself, but the child, and Elias, and Wynne, Jade, Emilio, so many others who had been impacted by her need to not hurt anyone.

It was as if the child heard what a joke that was. “What’s funny?” Perhaps this was like when humans did not know how to react to death, so they laughed (the display of disrespect made Regan bristle, any other instance but now). The child didn’t know the other part about what happened yet, either. “Elias nearly died.” He still hadn’t yet, though. She would have known, right? And did any of this matter right now? There was no changing the past. Regan knew that well, just as all banshees did; the child was still heavy with regret. The irony that Cliodhna would have criticized the child for her reaction did not escape Regan. It was an ugly thought, too. She wished she hadn’t had it.

Regan lifted a tired hand and placed it on the child’s arm, where she knew there was a scar forming. That, too, had been her fault. She gave a gentle squeeze, the kind she’d learned from Jade that conveyed her intentions far better than words ever could. I understand. It won’t be okay, but it will get better. There was so much more she would need to use words for, some day, if she could. (She couldn't. There was no leaving for her. She shoved her grandmother into a hungry tar pit on an important holiday.) They all boiled down to an apology. Regan sensed that now was not the time; the child only thought of Declan right now, and not herself. Instead, she inhaled deeply, taking in the stale, musty air of the cellar and debating speaking one other thing that rose to her mouth.

“I can feel it on you, you know.” His death, of course. Perhaps the child might find some relief that she was not a banshee right now. “Listen…” And Regan had a feeling she would, this time. Her hand dipped into her pocket and clenched around the key to the clinic; she placed it on the bench next to the child, ready for her to take if she desired, and only then. “Don’t let him be buried here, where his mother wanted him.” What was the point in holding that back now? “When I saw him, I told him he could be cremated. He thought it was impossible, but did not say he didn’t want it. I think he deserves to see better places, don’t you?” Her eyes turned down, looking at the child from a strange angle and seeing mostly the top of her head. It was up to her, of course. There was more that passed between Regan and Declan – the fact she hadn’t tried to intervene, that she’d kept him there as long as feasibly possible, when all he had wanted to do was see the grieving child leaning against her right now. (And the far more minor issue of… the child might have been right about jealousy.) The apologies she couldn’t share.

More silence. Occasionally water dripped from the ceiling, moisturizing the marching worms. “You can leave, can’t you? The bear can.” Except, the child might see this as a form of self-punishment, being here and awaiting whatever sentence she received (it would be death, perhaps in the pit or perhaps by scream). Setting Declan free could be the cause that freed her, too. “They’ll come for me soon. The next few days, maybe sooner. They’ll have me on trial before you. I think you should leave then.” Regan couldn’t know when any of this was going to happen, but it seemed certain that, once Regan was led out of here, they were unlikely to ever see each other again. So there was an important matter, in case the child could find her way to Wynne and a healing Elias, in case they could return home to everyone who was waiting for them. “Can I free you from the promise you made to me?”

———

“It should have been me.” The words slipped past her even as Regan tried to dissuade the phrase. At least if it had been her death, he would have had the chance to live. He’d have the idea to go away. Maybe he’d have gone to Wicked’s Rest and tracked down her friends, because she’d told them how they’d love him. He’d know that he didn’t have to die for a banshee’s rite. He’d have the chance to live for the first time. The chance Nora had grabbed for herself the day she walked away at eighteen. She’d taken that chance and she’d wasted it. She’d come to Ireland, despite knowing no one wanted her to, she’d tricked the sweetest human on earth into trusting her and failed him. She didn’t deserve for it not to be her. He’d still be alive if she wasn’t here. Was it better to have known him, known that a love like theirs existed to be extinguished too soon? Or was it better to have never known? To have let Regan drift to Ireland without stopping her? Let Regan become a passing memory along those who knew her, and life move on. 

The laughter hurt her lungs where her broken heart still pierced her insides, but she had no control over her emotions. She didn’t care if she was a cool girl. Caring about anything as trivial as that was pointless. Everything was pointless. The shadow laughed. The shadow laughed in her voice and together they were a grotesque harmony. Because the shadow understood what Nora had seen. “You pushed your Grandmother in a tar pit.” Tears dripped into her mouth, salty and mad and sad. “I told you not to come here, to choose yourself. And you didn’t. I told you to come home with me, but you couldn’t disappoint your grandmother. You pushed her into a tar pit Regan. You did it. And Declan died.” The laughter had transformed into tears, sobs that shook her body and threatened to break her bones. She was glad Elias wasn’t dead. Probably. Or maybe she was jealous. Honestly, she didn’t care about Elias right now. The effort was too great. 

Tears and snot dripped onto Regan’s shoulder, the blood of Declan’s death probably stained the space as well. It was another thing Nora didn’t care about. She didn’t care that Regan was touching her arm, on the fresh pink scar. The same gentle squeeze of comfort that Thea had given her on that car ride to the pit. She tried to care as Regan started speaking, tried to quiet the tears, and ignore the shadow punching her in the guts. With each passing word, it became easier to care again. It was about Declan. 

Nora could feel his death too. It clung to her. It was the shadow under the bench. It was her heart in a million pieces. She wondered how Regan felt it. Did it feel like the end of everything? The disappearance of the last good person? Did she feel this as deeply as she should? As everyone should? A key was placed beside her, barely visible through the tears clinging to her eyes. When she saw him. When she knew he was going to die. Before she’d told her. Before Declan had told her. When everyone in this town had seen them together and knew that he’d die and she’d live and it would be unbearable. As Regan talked Nora could only nod, once, slowly. “Okay.” She whispered. The shadow shoved its hands into her chest and squeezed. She’d promised to protect him, she failed. She’d promised to take him away, she’d do it. She’d keep one promise. It was the least she could do. She took a key and slid it into her empty pocket. Her hand lingered, wishing a friend had hitchhiked the whole way and she wouldn’t feel as alone. But she didn’t deserve that small mercy. 

Regan asked if she could leave, and Nora gave another nod. Of course, she could leave. It would be easy to escape this jail. She saw a way out in every corner. But the shadow had covered her in anchors, bit her ankles, and clawed at her calves. Her legs couldn’t fight the whirlpool in the center of the cell, they would wobble and fold before she made it out. But Regan didn’t want her to leave now. Regan wanted her to leave later. After they came for her. A trial? There were questions she’d ask Regan later. In the days of sitting in the cell. About the trial, if she was going to die, if Nora would fail everyone she’d thought she’d save. But those were conversations for when the shadow’s hands weren’t wrapped around her throat, choking her as it whispered it was all her fault. Nora nodded, to tell Regan she would leave then. 

Then there was a final question. A release from the promise? This was something she had to consider because now she understood. Everything about Declan fell under the promise. The time they spent together. The care they held for each other. The words they shared. All of it was part of her banshee training. Fall for him, kill him. Break her. She was no longer a child in rose-colored glasses. She was broken metaphorically, just like Regan had told her they did when they’d first arrived. “No.” If she loved him less, she might have been able to talk about him more, just like the Jane Austin quote that had meant nothing to her in the days of school. But she wanted to hoard these words. Protect herself from the pain. She didn’t want to live this again. She’d keep Declan’s memory locked inside her forever, but she couldn’t talk about it. 

———

The whole time Regan and the ham child were here, they had been clashing heads, skulls slowly fracturing, Regan trying to protect her but jeal– distracted by the child gaining Cliodhna’s favor; Hamstring trying to convince Regan to go home while thinking of this place as just that, refusing to listen. Small things, too – who earned the fox that died in the yard, windows open or closed, stop taking photos of me while I sleep. None of it mattered. There was never going to be any concession. The second both of them arrived here, Declan’s fate had been sealed. The child seemed to find something remarkably entertaining, but Regan could not see what it was from inside this dark, musty place. “My mistakes could fill a coffin.” She supposed they did. I’m sorry was not going to cut it. “Banshees do not kill each other, but I will answer for it in some way. It will be worth it if I know you’re getting out of here.”

The laughter had started to grate, flowing from her ears to the insides of her skin. “It was all too late. None of it is funny.” Not that Regan found anything funny, but death never was. 

Where there probably should have been regret, Regan only felt the wound of the child’s loss – only a fraction of the pain, but enough to choke her, even when little else made it through her skin right now. The ham child would have seen him killed. It would have been right in front of her. There was blood spattered across her face, her arms, her body. Regan’s shoulder loosened, letting the ham child slump a little more, a little closer.

Regan tried to stay relatively still as she spoke so she didn’t move her. “Everyone here will mourn my grandmother. It will be a slow death. Months, years. They will take care of her. She will be better-liked than ever before... and when the time comes for her heart to stop beating, they will curse my name for decades while venerating hers.” Regan swallowed, glancing down at the top of the child’s head again. She gave her arm another squeeze, only berating herself a little for being what she was. 

“And… no one will think of Declan.” That was what the child was thinking, and she knew it. “So we have to mourn him, alright? Enough for this whole, cruálach place full of ugly honors. I will mourn only Declan. I’ll mourn him well. And that will be your job more than anyone, because you did not die. You have to live to mourn.” Regan’s mind turned to rabbits. The last one could give the most without needing to give its life, couldn’t it?

The child didn’t want to be released from the promise that held her tongue, and would always hold her tongue, because Regan carried no expectation that the two of them would ever cross paths in the future. “If you’re sure. But it will not die with me. It will be with you forever unless I free you from it now.” It would have been nice to be able to sense an impending mistake as much as an impending death. This felt like one, holding onto the promise like it was a piece of the girl’s heart, allowing the runaway to run away from people who loved her once more. Grief – emotions – were not conducive to thinking things through. But she sounded so sure, and after everything Regan had cost her, everything that marked her skin and her heart, everything that would mark each and every canvas she would ever touch a brush to for the rest of her life… she’d respect this. 

There would be more time – not much, but more – to talk about how the child had to leave. That even if she did not want to leave Regan here, she had to. And that… if the child could not do that for herself, because of what she had lost, she could do it for Regan. Regan had read similar advice in her favorite handwriting earlier. It was good advice, and far too late for her to listen to it. Someone should.

The ham child melted into her shoulder, sharing the stain of Declan’s blood, and Regan’s arm finally wrapped around her, because cold comfort was still comfort. It took somewhere between a minute and an hour for the girl’s breathing to slow, her heart with it, but each beat carrying the lives of two people. Regan would sit. She didn’t need sleep. She didn't need to think of the inevitable trial that would await. Right now, nothing was more important than the child drifting off against her. Even Fate had nothing to oppose, when this was only a stop on the way.

#c nora #writing

[kadavernagh]

When Wynne asked if she had anything to give to Regan, Jade considered passing. After all, they parted ways forever, right? No hard feelings. Regan was adamant there would be no other way to reach her, refusing to disclose the address where banshees got their correspondence. This was breaking the rules, so to speak. And Jade loved breaking dumb rules, but she always respected Regan’s decision over everything.

But there was still conflict in Jade’s heart, so she consulted with her cats over the following days. Concluding, thanks to Lullaby’s wise input, that she couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to reach out. Except, she had nothing to give Regan, nothing she hadn’t already taken with her. More consulting was needed for Jade to have her lightbulb moment. See, there wasn’t a thing Regan needed from her currently, not with Wynne and Elias going after her. But in the future, maybe, possibly, if something came up and minds suddenly changed (as unlikely as that was to ever happen), she wanted Regan to know where she stood. 

Jade figured a change of mind wouldn’t be enough for Regan’s stubborn ass to leave Ireland and what she believed to be her duty behind. No, Jade knew she’d try to make it work, somehow. No matter how miserable she felt. So Jade wanted to give Regan a hand, all the way from Wicked’s Rest, on the chance that Regan felt like her own desires didn’t matter enough to tip the scales. Regan had always been a little weak for Jade’s big-brained logic, hadn’t she? So she ended up handing Wynne a small envelope before they left for Ireland. The outside read: “Break in case of emergency”, and then below, “DO NOT break. OPEN” for Regan and Wynne’s more literal brains.

If Regan were to ever open the envelope, she’d find… a letter. It starts with a dramatic opening, “Regan. Hey…if you are reading this it means [del: I‘m]… things are not looking good”.

“Things might be super mega bad, right now, actually. And I know you wanna stick to your guns, I know you think there’s a way to turn this around and make it work. A last-second 3-pointer that’s gonna fix it all and make your granny cheer (I watched Space Jam, I think that’s how basketball works). I almost wanna believe in you, cause that’s all I do. But please… hear me out. Ireland isn’t the end of it. You can do what you must do here. I should’ve said it. You should’ve stayed. I wanted you to. But that’s not why I’m writing to you. I want you to stop thinking about everyone else but yourself. You are a person too. [del:You’re my] But if you can’t think about you, think about me, okay? You enjoy doing that a lot too.” 

The message is followed by a list titled: “69 reasons why we should be together (number 69 will make your jaw drop)”. Jade started the list months before Ireland was even on the horizon, back when Regan was still pretending there was nothing going on between them. She never planned on finishing it, cause she got the girl, but desperate times called for desperate measures. 

The list… is a bit of a mess. Parts heartfelt, part inside jokes, the numbers are not in order, cause, why would they, it’s Jade? Number 12 talks about both of them being nosy, which totally means they would have all the tea about the town, followed by Number 36, a simple “We can share clothes”. Number 20 is “You need someone to watch whales decompose with, I happen to have my Google alerts on”. Number 69 is just a winky face, but number 66 says, “bog sex might happen”. Number 17 mentions how opposites attract, while Number 18 points out that they’re more similar than either wants to admit. Number 52 is “We’d never run out of things to talk about”. Number 47 is “Porcupines deserve to be held too, in fact, they might need it more than others”. Number 10 reads, “Chemistry that should be studied in a lab, actually”, and Number 2, “I’d give up on hearing music for the rest of my life if that meant hearing your voice whisper my name again”.

At the bottom of the list, there’s Number 1, and it says: “I love you, and you love me. That’s not changing in this lifetime. So not doing something about it? Super irresponsible”

The letter ends with,

“Prove me right”. 

Wynne has taken the envelope to Ireland and has not opened or broken it, even if there were some emergencies. The letter is left in Regan’s clinic, as mentioned in Dead End.

#c jade #it is time to open :(

[kadavernagh]

[pm] [user takes 5 minutes typing to get the right words] I made a You'd be mad at me if If I had died would you have come to collect Are you alright, are you safe? You still haven't answered my messages. Elias is still offline. I tried reaching HamC and was left on read (you know how much I hate that :(( ) I think I have a message from Wynne, it's hard to type when I'm scared of opening it and reading it's them telling me something went wrong I'm not supposed to be scared I wasn't even scared when Monty

I hate You shouldn't have messaged me. Why did you Cause now I'll spend every day thinking that was the last thing you wrote before those banshees got to you. You replaced our special night at the hotel with that. Why would y

Please answer me. Just one message. Or some smoke signals, a pigeon (alive, preferably) anything. I love

[user’s autoreply fires off]

🚳💔🎷

🌚🕛🔜

#highoctanegem #c jade #ALRIGHTR IRFRH

[kadavernagh]

[pm] So obviously I know you don't have your phone, but maybe you're with Wynne. I'm sorry I was angry at you. I'm sorry I didn't listen. I'm not sorry that I followed you to Ireland. This was the best experience of my life. I'm getting out, and I'm bringing Wynne and Elias with me. I hope you'll read this because you leave too. I hope you'll realize you deserve more than this life. They want you to be someone else here, and you are loved for who you already are back in Wicked's Rest. It's hard to realize, I know, but you're smart. Come home soon.

[user’s autoreply fires off]

🚳💔🎷

🌚🕛🔜

#honeysmokedham #c nora #too soon..... the saxophone didnt work

[kadavernagh]

[pm] you're coming home, right? i have bones for you they are from chicken wings but i cleaned them i hope you like them. [no message sent]

[no message received; user committed worm remembrance day crimes]

#vanoincidence #c van

[kadavernagh]

The Last Rabbit || Regan & Elias

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The tar pit, Farraige ba Buanachta PARTIES: Regan and Elias VERY IMPORTANT READING (many many references): The Dying Room SUMMARY: Plans of escape are thwarted when Cliodhna traps Regan, using Elias to make her granddaughter a better banshee. CONTENT: Domestic abuse, torture, parental death, some description of skinning an animal

Regan looked to Cliodhna, with the iron determination of a banshee who understood exactly what needed to be done.

It was Worm Remembrance Day. And Regan was going to get the ham child, Wynne, and Elias out of here. She would. (And–) (Maybe–)

As she’d told Wynne, the banshees would all be gathered by the worm statue to deliver eulogies for fallen worms. Not yet, though. At sunset. Hours had never crawled slower (than worms). Regan had checked the cars this morning, finding one set of keys: it was the rental she and Siobhan had taken here, with almost no gas remaining. But it would get them to the highway, to the open green hills, and wouldn’t anything feel possible out there?

For those in the car. (Which–)

The ham child was going to be the hardest to isolate and convince, with the way things had been left, and with Cliodhna hovered over her, preening and prepping her for something the child refused to hear about from the banshee who was actually attempting to help her.

Meanwhile, Cliodhna had given up on her granddaughter. Regan, she probably reasoned, knew everything she needed to, but some inherent weakness kept her from succeeding. The blood of a coward stains more than the carpet, she liked to say. Sometimes Cliodhna would deliver a directive or reminder with enough sting to match her impressive wasp's wings, and she would never stop expecting her granddaughter’s obedience, but her plan of shaping Regan into something to be proud of was dropped in pursuit of greater things, of Hamstring. 

Regan was flawed. Not built correctly. Too tainted by her father. What Cliodhna thought Regan lacked, she seemed to find in Hamstring. Hamstring, who was so quickly swallowed up by the attention that the child wouldn’t listen to Regan any longer. Regan had pleaded. Pleaded. Re-broke her bones that this place had set into new, askew positions so that she could be human enough for the girl to listen. But Hamstring did not listen. And Cliodhna still thought the child was a banshee, did not realize that Hamstring was physiologically deficient in the way Regan’s heart shed metaphorical blood along with real blood. Both Hamstring and Cliodhna were betting poorly.

And somehow, Regan needed to make this work. Get the child. Throw them all in the car. Let Wynne drive away. (Could Wynne drive? Also, was Elias too tall to sit in a car?) Maybe even go with– not important. Get them out.

Regan shuffled out toward the clinic. It was where she was expected to be. She could talk to Elias, try to– okay, she really didn’t know. How could she convince others to do what she herself couldn’t do? It hadn’t worked for weeks, so why now? But the opportunity was now. Maybe he'd be frightened and furious enough to just leave. She had watched him grow timid and small during his time here. Regan would figure it out, because that was what she always did. Every cadaver, every autopsy, she figured it out. And what were humans but a collection of organs? (A lot more. She didn’t have to think on that for long before she self-corrected.)

The day was almost over when Cliodhna had requested her at Farraige na Buanachta. It had been Brenna who slammed open the clinic door and leaned in, a cat’s grin stretched across her face, not reaching her twinkling eyes, as she delivered that message to Regan (and two bleeding banshees in the waiting room): your grandmother is waiting. Doctor, she said as she left. Here, it took on the same meaning as leanbh.

This was probably something worm-related, given the holiday. The plan was still all organ systems go. Her grandmother didn’t especially like spending time with her (it reminded her of her own capacity to fail, in that she had produced such a shameful thing), and was unlikely to keep her long. But… if Regan couldn’t get away, would Wynne keep things in motion? They would, right? Regan had conveyed the urgency enough. Even if the ham child and Elias refused to move, Wynne would think of something. Regan trusted them.

She knew not to keep her grandmother waiting, though, so she dusted off the band-aid dispenser, dragged it into the waiting room for the two patients, and apologized. The crisp envelope next to her bag caught her eye. It wasn’t new. Wynne brought it, and Jade’s handwriting was impossible to ignore. But Regan did ignore it (if thinking about it twenty times a day was ignoring). So why did she stare at it now like she actually intended to keep it with her? It had been available to her for weeks, but right now, it took on a forbidden air, and even more so as Regan traced her fingers over where Jade’s pen had marked the paper.

"Break in case of emergency” and below that: “DO NOT break. OPEN.”

She wouldn’t open it. Ever, if she could help it. Either she would manage to help what remained of herself along with those here for her, or she would become part of this place, and any writing inside of the letter would fade with the centuries. Pulling her hand away was like fighting the inevitable, and wasn't that always the case between her and Jade? Regan closed her eyes, took a long breath, and ended up sliding the envelope into her jacket. It was close to her heart, fine, but hadn’t Regan decided she didn’t like metaphors?

———

Regan felt her grandmother before she could see her, like tiny knives stabbing into her pores. The north winds brought low-hanging fog rolling with them, and she had to wander closer to the tar pit before the harsh angles of her grandmother’s figure carved themselves out of the mist, her black eyes never straying from Regan. When Regan had arrived back in Saol Eile, all she had craved was for her grandmother to look at her. She had been desperate. She needed to hear she had made the right choice. Now all she craved was the opposite. 

Cliodhna was not alone. Someone else was there by her feet, kneeling. But Regan only felt her grandmother. So who… it had to be a human.

Her pace and pulse quickened, and when she made out who the second person – person, not fae – was, a screech shot out of her. “Elias!” She was running now, boots slapping the ground, echoing through the fog. Elias looked grey and waxy and terrified, a clot of dried blood on his neck as if it had dribbled out of his ear earlier. If there was any ability to fight within him, he could not speak it, not through the gag. Elias– how– Regan tried to reach for her best friend, but her grandmother’s eyes seared like a slap across her cheek. They were seen. When Regan showed Elias this place, they had been seen. What had she done? Elias seemed alert enough. He could hear. She probably blasted him unconscious, and then–

Regan’s jaw refused to move. Her eyes, huge and filled with terror that matched her friend’s, were in every way the opposite of the black slits that lived on her grandmother’s face.  

“I should have known when we started you on the animals,” her grandmother finally said, her grip tightening around Elias’s bound wrists. She was speaking in English. Cliodhna hated that, being accommodating for anything lesser, so there was a point to it. She intended Elias to hear this. “Your… what is it, the hypocrite oath? Do little harm. The dispenser took no such oath. The dispenser bludgeons better than you ever will.” Of course she could not fathom no harm. For the first time in many years, Regan’s grandmother swallowed an apparent lump that had formed in her pale throat. Not nerves. Never nerves. Regret, maybe. “I have gone about this the wrong way. Your shame is mine.” A concession.

In her other hand, Cliodhna brandished a dagger. Each of her blades had a purpose – banshees appreciated ritual like no others – and this knife that gleamed gold was ceremonial in nature. Regan was struck still; she could never forget this dagger. It was the one used on her dad eight years ago, the one that gave her this… this gift. No, not a gift. It was awful. It was awful. Right now, she could not pretend otherwise. Her grandmother would never use this knife on paltry animals, or in self-defense, or on any humans who crossed or inspired her. No, Cliodhna viewed this, right now, as the an chéad scread. 

She intended the knife for Elias, but why? Regan was already an awakened banshee (despite–), and killing him would only turn her away from her duty, not push her into it. Pushing, always pushing. Had her grandmother recognized how lost Regan was, how she asked the impossible of her, and decided to move on to torment without necessity instead? Or… or she probably intended for Regan to be the one wielding it against Elias. Regan would never. Never. Her grandmother, who seemingly had limitless perception when it came to Regan, as she had with each and every tool she carried, hadn’t seen that? That couldn’t be right.

Regan’s jaw was still frozen, her eyes flicking between Elias and her grandmother. “What are you–” she barely managed to get half a question out.

“Yes, this is for your human. The first of them, anyway.” Cliodhna confirmed. Wynne. Did she mean– did she know? “Your face is soiled with emotion right now, leanbh.” Behind Cliodhna, the tar bubbled, starved to witness suffering when it could not exert its own. Cliodhna poked at Elias's stomach with a sharp nail. “So much unmarked flesh this human has. He is long. Oh, leanbh, your confusion is gan smaoineamh. I am going to stab him. You will look upon his anguish. You will not try to stop me and you will not scream. You will not turn away or close your eyes. You will not even blink or swallow. Your face will be still as the dead.” Now Regan understood. What this was, why her grandmother had made Elias hear it and feel such hopelessness, why Cliodhna thought she had failed Regan, too.

Cliodhna continued, her voice pleased with confidence that this, finally, would fix her granddaughter. “If you don’t remain still, I will stab him again. You will not be moved. If you are, we continue. I stop when you learn.” There it was. Regan looked only at Elias now, her eyes welling up with the water of a hundred bogs.

“So much unmarked flesh,” Cliodhna repeated, running her long fingers through Elias’s hair, scraping his scalp with her nails. “My cailín beag caillte, you do not care about your hands, your stomach, being drowned, being blinded. This is what you care about. And so, your shame is mine, for I did not see it.”

As Cliodhna’s dark eyes bore through Regan, they sent a clear message: you can stop this. His gag was yanked down.

She plunged the dagger into Elias’s shoulder. 

Regan screamed with him.

———

Admittedly, Elias had closed himself off to Regan and Wynne and anyone else who tried to talk to him. He didn’t know why he’d suddenly become so angry, but he was just so tired of trying to care so deeply about something only for it to completely backfire on him. He was just so tired. He was in the clinic by himself, early, before Regan was there, when Cliodhna had arrived. Of course he knew of the woman, he knew that it was the one person that Regan needed validation from. Knew that it was because of her that Regan was even here. She was the root of all evil in Regan’s life. Elias didn’t hate people, but he hated Cliodhna. 

It happened quickly. Before Elias could so much as look at the woman in front of him, she’d let out a scream that had rendered him unconscious. Upon waking up, he was kneeling on the ground by that fucking tar pit. Elias frowned, head pounding and mind swimming in confusion. In retrospect, Elias wasn’t so sure what he’d expected to happen upon showing up. He knew that Regan wasn’t going to come willingly, so why did he bother? Why was he so desperate to cling onto someone who was so willing to throw him away? Throw everyone away? Throw Jade away? Elias thought of every time he ran away from something because it became too real. 

He’d run away from Regan before, moved back to California because he was so afraid of what he’d discovered. He’d run away from Marcus when he started trying to pursue him, because the idea of being in love with someone made his stomach turn. But despite the churning, he’d gone back to Wicked’s Rest, rekindled his friendship with Regan. He’d decided to try things out with Marcus. He’d fought against what his instincts told him to run. Always so afraid, he’d finally done something about it. Instead of letting Regan walk out of everyone’s life, he’d fought to get her back. He’d always fight for her. He’d always fight for everyone he considered close to. But it kept biting him in the ass every goddamn time. 

Always so willing to run into the fire, but always the first one to get hurt because of it. That’s all Elias was. He was so sick and tired of being the proverbial punching bag of everyone’s story. That warden who needed answers? Stick a weapon in his face and threaten to kill him for the sake of his own answers. Regan leaves town? Let him get fucking kidnapped by a derranged banshee grandmother for the sake of his best friend. It just kept happening and he felt so out of control. He felt like someone falling from a terminal height, desperate to grab onto something but missing. He was freefalling to his own death and there was no one to grab a hold of, nothing to grab onto. 

The woman was talking, but Elias barely heard it. He saw Regan running toward them, and knowing that it was a trap. His face fell in anguish as he realized that not only was he going to die here, but poor Regan was going to watch. He was going to be tortured, and Regan was meant to watch. Because Regan was weak, Elias was going to suffer. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the inevitable. The gag was yanked down and the dagger was plunged into his flesh. White hot pain burned through his shoulder as his eyes flew open and he let out a cry of agony. Regan screamed too, and it was so loud, so shattering that his ears rang. He couldn’t hear correctly. Everything hurt, the world threatened to swallow him into darkness. 

All he could think of in that moment was how much of a colossal waste of space he was. How he was nothing more than a vehicle for others to get where they needed to go. Elias squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered, feeling so weak, so frail. And he didn’t want to be. He opened his eyes to look at Regan, shaking his head. He was so out of it that he spoke in a language only he understood. “Mainū marana di'ō.” He told Regan in his parent’s native tongue. Expression pleading as he translated into English. “Let me die.”

Maybe that’s all Elias’s life was supposed to be. Helping others. And if this was what it took for Regan to reach her true potential, then so be it. He took a deep breath, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder and looked to Cliodhna, staring at her in defiance. He wanted to say something, tell her off, but all he could do was look his assailant in the eyes with a hardened stare. “Do it.” He growled out, teeth clenched together as the pain pulsed in his ears. He wanted to shout lies at the woman, tell her that he didn’t matter to Regan, that nothing she did to him would matter in the grand scheme of things, because that’s what Regan had told him time and time again back in Maine. They weren’t friends, and they never would be. 

But it was so plain on her face, the agony that overtook Regan. Elias didn’t want to die here. And yet he was at peace with letting it happen. Regan had screamed, and that meant someone would die. And Elias knew deep in his heart that it was meant for him. He was going to die, but he was alright with it because it wasn’t going to be Wynne or Nora. It was going to be him. He was keeping his promise to Emilio. In the only time it mattered, Elias Kahtri was going to be brave.

———

Regan had seen hundreds of people die. Some in medicine, for death was an inevitable part of being a doctor; her dad, who escaped such a fate for as long as he could; others in the morgue, as she coaxed out visions of their final moments; among the worst were the deaths she had seen in Saol Eile, the slow agony of sinking into the tar pit, the sonic explosions, the sacrificed. But even here, she had never seen this kind of torture. Cliodhna was not going to kill Elias. There had been no real scream – other than the pitiful show of poor control from Regan that Elias reeled from. Cliodhna was going to torture him, because she knew that one stab wound on him dwarfed hundreds or thousands Regan could have ever inflicted on herself.

Regan couldn’t pull her eyes away from the blood seeping into Elias’s shirt, running down his sleeve, coating his hand red. She did what she always did when she saw an injury: she assessed. Not life threatening, not right now, but the blade had gone deep. She needed to approach, to kneel, to soothe, but the second Regan set one foot in front of the other, Cliodhna brought the blade up to Elias’s shoulder again – hovering, threatening. 

Her grandmother looked down at the dagger, appraising the smooth, thin layer of blood. The gold gleamed through it. Once, she had told Regan that was why she had selected it for such a lofty purpose: it made for such a beautiful sacrifice, and what was more beautiful than a banshee claiming her birthright? (Regan could think of a few things and people.) If there was any beauty here, she was blind to it. Cliodhna never looked at her like that, the way she looked at that blade. And at Hamstring.

Regan was not ensnared in any kind of bind, her grandmother had no power over her in the way fae sometimes did. But being torn between knowing she needed to help Elias and knowing she would doom him if she tried, paralyzed her more than any promise. She had broken actual binds with more ease.

Let me die.

No. No. She was not going to let her friend die in front of her. “No!” Regan screeched again, vibration skimming across the bubbling tar. Her grandmother was as unmoving as Regan was supposed to be; she had anticipated every second of how this was playing out, and Regan couldn’t think of a single way to avoid it. How was she supposed to close her heart off now? After– she– at the lake, that was when she realized it, that she never could. She had been so certain. She started inviting rather than rejecting dreams of hatched plots and packed bags, of Jade’s love and her brothers’ forgiveness, which was a victory that felt only like a failure. Part of her knew, even then, that she would never have any of that. She would fail here and never see anything else. Anyone else. She couldn't believe she would ever be leaving with Wynne, Elias, and the child.

But they had come so close. She could have left. If things had worked, maybe she could have left. So close… and then...

She failed. And then she failed.

This was not about some future stakes that her grandmother insisted, over and over again, would befall on everyone around Regan if she did not learn control. This was about Elias, right here and right now, and Regan continued to fail. No echoed through her again. She wasn’t sure if she had screeched it a second time or if it was pumping like blood through her body. There was no pretending she didn’t care for Elias. That lie might kill her and Elias both; her grandmother was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. The only thing that would be less effective than lying was begging. Regan felt the gold knife pressed against her, too.

Regan looked tearfully at Elias, who strained against the obvious pain he was in, who spoke words Regan did not understand, and who she wished had left weeks ago. He would and had moved mountains for her, and she caused him pain in return. She felt her own agony mirrored in his eyes, the weight of their shared suffering over them like a body bag. Every plea for death was like a blade in her own body. How could she witness this? How could she stand by and allow her friend to suffer at the hands of her own grandmother? He was blurry when she looked down at him, everything was. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I can’t just watch or let– I can’t.” The tears marked another failure, and they both knew it. Cliodhna was not going to let Elias die yet. She was not going to let him fall unconscious any time soon. She was not going to deprive her granddaughter of this opportunity to be righted, no matter how futile it all was.

Regan remembered being relieved to hear that, once.

“I–” Regan’s eyes were wet as they turned up to her grandmother, and there was no use trying to hide how profusely they leaked. Some banshee. “This won’t work. I’ll never– if you do this, I will never become what I need to. It won’t work. So pl–” An eyebrow lifting that might as well have been another slash of the blade. Regan tried to shore up her voice, which worked only until the next wave of tears struck. “There are other things we can try, right? There must be. I couldn’t have failed them all. I– there has to be–” Her grandmother’s eyes were so dark and deep they swallowed Regan. The dagger shined in her hand again, seeming to extract every streak of sunlight even through the fog. Her grandmother’s orange wings glowed in the minimal refracted light. Her tone was harsh and flat where Regan’s was desperate and human. 

Cliodhna goaded, “This is a waste, then? Another one? If he serves no purpose to you, then we will end this now. Scoiltfidh mé a scornach agus déanfaidh mé bróga dá chraiceann. I will give him purpose.”

No. No no no. “Stop! This isn’t how I’ll learn! What about, um… what about positive–” Her grandmother cut in, now venomous, hissing in Irish, “I have seen that wretched, amaideacht thing on your finger, and you will repeat no human fantasies to me. They have filled your head with lies. You left here before we could even suture your fontanelles. Your head is soft. You were a body with not yet a single fly, one of Hamstring's white sheets before it was made beautiful. Instead these neamh-roghnaithe humans make your face flush and your knees weak. Your patella are not even fit for my collection.” 

More tears prickled at the corner of Regan’s eyes, springing from glands she wished she did not have. She clutched her left hand, her ring, torn between concealing it and searching it for anything she could find. She did neither, and squeezed it.

Regan's grandmother looked at her as she looked at far lesser creatures. “Leanbh. Regan, I will strip you in the dying room. I will slice your skin, carving valleys into your dermis, until I am deep enough to pull out every festering ideal that has infected you since your birth, and you will be hung with the rabbits and the stoats until you are nothing but dry, beautiful bone, and no longer your father’s daughter.” Cliodhna turned the knife on its side, moving it closer to Elias, but still staring into Regan. She switched to English. “If there is beauty to be found in you, I have yet to see it, but we will try once more, because I will allow no child nor grandchild of mine to bleed across their pedigree.”

Cliodhna turned her head, as she often stood back and examined her delicate work, the way it opened for her and gleamed. “You never liked using the animals, more tender than even their flesh, but have you noticed? It is the last rabbit, the one who has seen its warren slaughtered in front of it, who bleeds the most, whose organs swell, who smells the sweetest, who will give the most upon its death.” 

Cliodhna lowered herself to Elias, knowing she still remained above him in every way. She kept her eyes jabbed into Regan. “I have failed you, my leanbh, and I am correcting this. I am going to show you how you will give the most.” Cliodhna’s eyes somehow went even blacker, darker than the tar itself, as she turned the knife into Elias’s arm, cutting into her granddaughter too, because she knew exactly how to skin a rabbit.

———

The blood was running down his arm and pooling onto the ground beneath him, and he could hear the tar pit gurgling, yearning for sacrifice. Elias had told Regan that it’s what he wanted, and here he was. Being the key thing that would bring Regan to be the banshee her grandmother wanted to be. He was falling through the air and there was nothing to grab a hold of. He was falling, and there was no one to grab him. He was going to fall to his death and it’s because of his own complacency. 

The two were talking, but Elias didn’t understand. He wasn’t sure if that was because they were conversing in Gaelic or because he was starting to become delirious from the pain. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Was he dizzy from pain or was he dizzy from blood loss? Could you pass out from this kind of stab wound, or was he just making it all up in his head? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. 

Regan was begging and pleading, so he opened his eyes to watch. He felt like he was out of his own body, as if he were watching this from a third person perspective instead of it actively happening to him and in front of him. Regan was desperate, she was so upset to see him like this. He didn’t need to speak Gaelic to know that Regan was pleading for him right now. He shook his head, letting his gaze fall to the ground. 

He couldn’t help but think that it was foggy out. In the movies, it’s always raining and miserable when a character dies. But that wasn’t the case here. Instead, it was just fog. The world kept spinning because in the grand scheme of things, Elias was irrelevant. Funny how things worked out. 

Cliodhna was speaking in English again, and he began to brace himself for another pierce of the knife, and it came straight into his arm, the blade flattened in his arm, and he felt a tearing sensation in his arm, the pain was agonizing. He felt the twist of the knife and his vision went white, he cried out, thrashing and trying to yank himself away from the knife, but it was no use. Someone had him in a vice grip he couldn’t escape.

He felt like he was going to pass out from pain, but he knew that this woman would be done with him the moment he did. So he stayed strong, though a wave of nausea washed over him as he fought against every instinct he had to stay alive. He took a deep breath through his nose, forcing himself to look up and meet Regan’s eyes. He thought of all those moments that had defined their friendship, how it had all started. 

He remembered leaving the Mushroom Circle, Regan suspicious of him and questioning his motives. His vision whited out, he was being cut into again, more skin removed. Fuck, that hurt. There weren’t words to describe what he was feeling. Just white hot pain and the ringing in his ears blocked out all noise. Was that because of the shock or because Regan was screaming again? He didn’t know.

He was so out of his own body at that moment that he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. Elias wasn’t built for torture. Well, no one was built for it, but especially not him. He wanted to cry, but he refused to be weak. So he just whimpered and squeezed his eyes shut, praying that it would end soon. All he wanted was his friend back, not said friend’s grandmother to torture him. 

He couldn’t help but think of Marcus, how there was so much he hadn’t said to him out of fear, how much he wasn’t going to be able to tell him now that he had his life flashing before his eyes. He was so afraid to love, to go in that deep with a person that he was more willing to turn him away then ever let him in close. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He whimpered under his breath, thinking of Marcus, thinking of Regan, thinking of Jade and Wynne and everyone he’d ever met that had made living in Wicked’s Rest worthwhile. 

He was never going to tell Marcus how he felt, he was too afraid. He was always too afraid. Why was he always so afraid? Was allowing people always going to end this way? Was he going to always get hurt because he dared to love? A sob escaped his lips and Elias opened his eyes. He’d let himself love someone and this is where it got him. Sure, he didn’t love Regan in a romantic sense, but he’d loved her like a sister, like family. And his worst fear that he’d be hurt was not only coming true, but made ten times worse than he could ever imagine. 

Maybe it was a way of protecting himself from this exact moment, maybe it was precognition, a sixth sense. Maybe it was just sheer, dumb fucking luck that nothing ever worked out in Elias’s stupid little life. Good at robotics, hate the field. Find someone he can say that he genuinely loves and wants to be friends with forever? Grandma tortures him. What the fuck was going to happen if he fell for Marcus? Shit, had he already fallen? He thought of his stupid smile and stupid good looks. “He had a good body,” he remembered Regan saying, not realizing at the time she was referring to an actual corpse. 

Shit, he was going to die without telling a soul how he felt about them. He was going to die and he was never going to be strong enough to tell Marcus how he felt. He loved Marcus, he loved Regan, he even loved Jade. He had built a community around himself and he was losing it. He was never going back home, his parents and siblings would never know what happened to him. He was going to die in Ireland for familial love. For once in his life he allowed himself not to be afraid, and now he was paying for it. “I’m sorry, Regan.” He whimpered out, staring directly into her eyes with tears welling in his eyes from emotional and physical pain. “Please, you need to tell Marcus I’m sorry, I…” his voice faltered when the blade came close to his face, silencing him.

———

Cliodhna’s black eyes became glassy; they glazed over like she was bored. Had she expected something else? Regan was soft, weak, her heart pumping blood that was too wet. Regan anticipated a speech about all of this, reminders about the most delicate pieces of her, the ones that would need to be hardened with scarring, but she was met with only boredom. Her pleading bored her grandmother. There was no emotion to appeal to. There never would be. 

Blood pulsed out of Elias’s arm, forming a puddle beneath him, staining the knees of his jeans. The apology made Regan’s heart leak more, her jaw trembling as she could do nothing but watch. Why… why was he apologizing? Her eyes froze against his and welled with fear that she was no longer supposed to know. A request came from Elias. Like he was on his deathbed. “I… I will… I’ll tell him.” The lie was nothing compared to the way her body was already tearing apart, fissures across her skin, raw pinkness inside. She was on one of her grandmother’s hooks, dangling, ripe to eviscerate. She was not leaving Saol Eile, they would never let her leave now. They would know what she had tried to do, in helping humans. The wings had been pulled from any hope she let Wynne rekindle. There would be no telling Marcus anything. 

Regan tried to kneel, to get a better look, to deliver any aid at all or look her friend in the eyes while they were next to each other, to stay with him through his suffering or his death, whatever would come, because the worst way to die was alone. But at the movement, her grandmother’s knife migrated from Elias’s arm up to his throat, and Regan’s pulse trembled like that of a human she could not be – quick and desperate – or perhaps like one of the animals she had been made to lay her hands over, when they could feel the lethal way her breathing shifted and knew they were about to come apart.

Regan's voice was a squeak (a crime in its own right). “You won’t.” She had never been more uncertain. Were her lungs not churning, wind kicking up? It was the very start of a storm, when the clouds choked out the light and the wind started rattling against everything it swept over. Only a breeze, but a harbinger of stronger drafts. At her grandmother’s boredom, Regan had an opportunity to say more if her mouth allowed it. “He– he will be impossible to replace.” For both of them.

Like Regan, her grandmother never laughed, but she did open her mouth, exhaling a dry bark, as if she had never heard anything so stupid. Her grandmother spoke in English again – she wanted it to be one of the last things this human heard. “Maine is no obstacle. There are others. There is another here, though I favor them for a true, more promising an chéad scread. They have that look about them, only fit for bleeding out for others.” Wynne. So she did know. Did other banshees? Was the ham child still safe? The blade glistened. Cliodhna glistened more, the boredom shaken from her at her granddaughter’s disobedience. “I will drag every one of your humans across the sea, and have you watch as I break them in front of you, one by one, until you learn to break.” She looked down at Elias with something like disgust in her dark eyes. “They are better at breaking than you. How náireach for me to be saying that of my granddaughter. But if you refuse to be built from my blood, you will be built from theirs.”

Regan went limp as Cliodhna continued, “You are not doing the human any favors. That means you are not beholden to him, at least. You give too much to them, the humans.” She paused, considering something, perhaps how her failed welp of a granddaughter never gave quite so much to her, to Saol Eile. “Let us see if we scream.” The knife was forced into Elias’s stomach, plunging into the bowels. There was a scream joining Elias's. Not a death scream, not yet, but Regan recognized it as her own, as faraway as it seemed. Her grandmother pulled the knife out, a steady flow of blood poured from the wound. If Elias could bear the pain, he might remain conscious for a while. But he would need medical care. Fast. Her grandmother did not look toward her, only at the knife in her hand. “Hold your lungs, leanbh.” The flash of gold stabbed into Elias again, a second wound next to the first.

Cliodhna turned to Regan while the knife remained in her friend, temporarily plugging the inevitable. Regan couldn’t move now. She did not react. No scream – not yet, not yet – and did not attempt to go to him. Her thoughts came to a grinding, blinding halt as everything played out in front of her without her there. Was this what Cliodhna wanted? Her gone? Her frozen solid like she herself was in the tar? She did it. Accomplished. Right? She had to be perfect, because Elias’s breath was growing shallow, his head lolling forward. She could be nothing so he could be something. A stirring force still hammered in her lungs, the only movement she could feel inside of her now. But Cliodhna’s eyes saw everything, every imperfection Regan possessed, everything keeping her from being what she had to be. Her eyes picked apart skin and muscle and snapped bone for the marrow inside. Regan knew how to save lives and how to understand death, how to let it speak to her. She spread ribs, she cracked skulls, she held every organ in her hands with every ounce of reverence as any other banshee here. But never had she looked at the living and wished to pull them apart. 

There was a bloated silence as Elias kept emptying out.

Finally it broke. “Your mouth opened,” Cliodhna said flatly, and unsheathed the knife from Elias’s skin, releasing another heavy spurt of blood. Before Regan could object, gather her jaw and seal it in place with the cement she felt in her joints and her heart, the dagger plunged again.

———

It was getting harder to stay upright, harder to stay conscious. But Cliodhna held him firmly in place as she drove the dagger into his flesh, pain searing and like fire. Of everything he’d ever done in his life, he’d never expected to die like this, so brutally and from someone who had such hatred in their heart for his very existence. All this time he’d tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, give people a chance because you never knew what was going through their mind, what they’d been through in their life. But – Elias groaned, the pain becoming too much to bear as he felt his consciousness slip. He couldn’t keep his head upright, thoughts becoming more incoherent. 

The dagger was plunged into him again, and he let out a gurgle of pain, unable to keep up with it all. This was it. He was eating the words he’d once told Regan, that he’d move mountains for her. He’d done that, and this is where it got him. This is where closeness got him. He’d always been big on forgiveness. Big on seeing the positives in the darkness. But this? There was no coming back from this. 

Through the midst of torture and blood loss, Elias snapped. The part of him who was, that Elias was gone. Born from the blood and pain was someone else, someone twisted and angry and full of hate. He hated the banshees. He hated that this had happened, he hated himself for being stupid enough to follow Regan to Ireland. Most of all, he wanted to hate Regan. But he couldn’t. And he hated that he couldn’t. 

Through the sheer agony, Elias forced himself to look up, to meet Regan’s gaze. “I chose this.” He gurgled out, eyes hard yet unfocused. “Don’t blame yourself for this. I chose this.” It was getting harder to speak, his words threatening to slur together as his consciousness dipped. “I love you, Regan. You’re family to me, a sister. You have so much more to–” the blade stabbed into him again, cutting off his words with a cry of agony. 

No. He wasn’t going to leave Ireland, this is where it ended. Where consciousness threatened to give way to eternal darkness, which Elias had always feared. He’d always feared the end, feared death. But at this moment? He was at peace. He was ready to die.

———

She couldn’t do this. Elias was bleeding to death in front of her. She couldn’t do this. Everyone knew it, and she hadn’t listened, and now Elias was suffering for her trying to become something she could never be. Regan stood, shaking, as Cliodhna pulled the dagger from her friend again, followed by a ribbon of blood dripping from him. He looked only a breath away from losing consciousness, sweat dripping from his temples and out of his pores. A man nearing a terrible death. Regan’s heart shattered – and every second more that Elias had to endure this, a new layer or valve broke off. He was ready for his death but Regan was not.

She needed to tell Elias that she couldn’t bear to lose him, that his life meant more to her than he could ever know. But the words caught in her throat, suffocated by the weight of her own despair that she needed to trap so deeply inside of her that it didn’t show itself in a single twitch of her mouth, a blink of her eyes, or even a heartbeat. She would not be his death.

Her limbs were still locked in place. It wasn’t enough. Her grandmother looked at her, assessing, not needing to scrutinize for long before finding a long list of flaws. “Your eyes narrowed. And that mouth of yours opened again. What is it you would like to say, Regan? Speak it now.” Cliodhna was going to stab him again anyway. And again. Regan’s stomach iced over because it knew the only way this was going to end but she was fighting it anyway. She’d seen enough. Too much. This was all–

Her grandmother was waiting for an answer. Regan had only one. “Stop,” she whimpered, the word barely more than a breath. Defiance came at a cost here, when it dared surface at all. She knew that Cliodhna would not take kindly to insubordination, that there would be consequences for her actions. She was willing to face any punishment, any. Her grandmother made that dry barking noise again, the knife waving in her hand. “Anything else, leanbh?”

“Please!” Regan screeched. Defeat loosened her muscles, broke the rigor that held them, and before she could stop it, words started flying from her mouth. She thought before that begging would make things worse. There was no worse from here. So she would beg. She was not too proud for it, not now. “Don’t– please don’t– I’ll do anything. I’ll stay here for as long as I have to, I’ll do whatever is asked of me, he’s my best friend, stop, please!” A sob escaped. Then another. She didn’t have the ability to pretend they were anything else. “You can watch autopsies, I will give you thousands more mice, hundreds of pressed flowers, I’ll never hesitate again, I’ll make you proud, I’ll be everything you want me to be.” Old memories bubbled up like a putrid, infected open wound, one that she had neglected rather than treated. In that time it had run its course through veins and arteries and now it was bursting like an aneurysm. “I can’t do this again. Please don’t– my dad– this isn’t a gift! Please stop. I won’t be a child. I won’t be a failure. Please.” 

Her grandmother looked at her like she had just swallowed something vile. She knelt, breathing cool air in Elias’s face. This time, the knife was not aimed at his arm, or his abdomen. It lay against his throat, threatening his jugular. This was the one that would end his life. “Leanbh is too generous for you. A child does not know better. You know what you are not.” The knife pressed in more, beads of blood forming around the blade. “Look at you. Listen to yourself. I see there will be no further progress made today, if there was any at all.” Her grandmother sighed sharply, the only external indication that she was once again disappointed. That was what Regan was. Disappointment between layers and layers of bloodshed. “You feel it in your lungs, don’t you?”

She did. Elias was about to die. He was asking to die. Telling her it wasn’t her fault (but how could it not be?). That he chose this (no, he chose her). Regan’s lungs expanded to hold that dark, gathering storm that demanded to come out. The gust she had felt before was now a whirlwind, a warning that death was here to collect and there was nothing that could be done about it. Her grandmother was going to kill him. But… Regan hadn’t screamed yet. Her body hadn’t insisted on it. Death was not ready to drag Elias away. There was only a second to change the course of things before Fate locked it all in place and made it pour from Regan’s lungs. 

The whole reason Elias was here, in danger, about to die, went beyond what Cliodhna was doing today. Cliodhna was the reason Regan no longer had her dad; Cliodhna was the reason she became what she was; Cliodhna was the reason she had come here and brutalized herself for years; Cliodhna was the reason she forfeited all of her loved ones; the reason she would outlive them all; Cliodhna was the reason she didn't allow herself closeness, friends, love; the reason she couldn't love Jade like she had wanted to for so long; Cliodhna was the reason she didn't know how to want, how to be a person; Cliodhna was the reason she no longer recognized most of the emotions that passed through her heart. Cliodhna pushed her. She pushed and pushed and Regan backed up each time, giving up more of the future that stretched ahead of her with every step back.

She was ready to push forward.

Regan looked to Cliodhna, with the iron determination of a banshee who understood exactly what needed to be done. And it was not only for Elias.

Her grandmother soaked up the acceptance in Regan’s eyes, seeing only what she wanted. “Good girl. You–”

Regan’s certainty became action. She surged forward, not at Elias, but at Cliodhna. Never in her 500 years had her grandmother expected something like this, and certainly not from such a useless shame like Regan. Regan rammed herself at Cliodhna, her scarred palms flat against Cliodhna’s stomach as both of them were sent hurtling. There was a jab, a bite in Regan's upper arm, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see her grandmother’s golden knife – the one that had been carving up Elias, the one that was plunged into her dad’s heart – planted in her skin like a flag. Wings beat madly. Cliodhna flailed. One or both of them screamed. Cliodhna fell back, her foot grazing the surface of the tar. Regan nearly fell on top of her, but while her wings gave her enough lift to balance herself on the edge of the pit, her grandmother was not quick enough. Cliodhna managed to straighten herself in the air but not before the tar took her other ankle, locking her in place like an unfinished statue emerging from cold marble.

It was all over now. Cliodhna’s wings beat furiously, whining, faster and faster, but she couldn’t pull her feet from the tar pit, the place that had taken so many lives. Regan fully caught herself now, scrambling away from the edge. She stared at her struggling grandmother, but all she saw was that little boy she had screamed for 8 years ago, and all of the other humans her grandmother had turned into lessons.

Her grandmother’s Gaeilge boomed out as a yowl, like an animal being stripped of its skin. It was the first time Regan had ever heard such desperation in her voice. “Child! What have you done? Come back here. You will remove me from here! Now! I have given up much to help you, don’t you see? Twice, now, I have tried. You’ve turned an honor into a pitiful waste. You have always been worth nothing. You run like your father. You can't be human, you useless–”

Regan turned away from Cliodhna, practically ignoring her. She pulled the golden blade from her arm – the wound hurting as much as the fact it put a hole through Jade’s jacket – and watched her grandmother in the knife’s reflection. Regan hoped Cliodhna questioned if she had done the right thing. That would make one of them.

Twice now. Twice Regan had tried, too.

Regan’s forehead creased at her grandmother’s words, her body coming to life again, her mind beginning to stir with familiarity. Cliodhna had peeled and carved enough of her away that Regan could see what was beneath it all now. The last four weeks became harsh acid in her stomach, climbing up her throat, spraying in her grandmother’s direction with venom. It was caustic enough to burn her, too, but right now, she did not care. She saw it all plainly, no longer filtered through the dark windows of her grandmother’s home. Regan’s voice took on every ounce of poison she had saved up for 8 years. She spoke to Cliodhna, watching her struggle only through the reflection on the knife. “...What is it, grandmother? Do you have something to say? Don’t look so glum.” Regan paused, then said the last thing she would ever say to this wretched woman, her face as stoic as could be. “I broke myself for you, didn't I? I would expect you would have a... oh, you are unfamiliar with the word. We call it a smile.” 

There was silence behind her, until her grandmother said her final piece, too. “When you are back here, which you will be, you will beg Fate that I still have my mouth and nose above this tar, because you will have killed whoever gave you that ring, or your brothers. You will kill everyone you will ever–” Disgust twisted her up. “–love. Everyone you will ever smile with. And you will come here, pleading with me to help you break yourself properly, and I will point out that this is the day you have gone against Fate. I will point out that others will suffer for what you have done, they will suffer for as long as you live, my shame, my stupid leanbh.”

The following scream that roared out of Cliodhna was explosive, and Regan jumped automatically, standing over Elias, hands pressed to his bleeding ears. Covered in his blood. It came from every part of him. It covered her shirt; it mixed with hers. She needed to get him out of here, or he would die; her lungs still told her as much, even if they still weren’t demanding a scream from her. A scream. Every banshee in Saol Eile would have heard her grandmother’s scream; they would swarm here in minutes. 

Elias. Elias needed medical attention immediately. She was going to protect Elias and the ones she loved, no matter the cost. She’d get them all out of here even if she could never leave, even if her plan today had been a failure, like her. He was the one who had any chance of escaping. Not her. “Stay with me,” she pleaded, “I need to move you. I’m– I’m so–” No time for struggling to apologize now. Regan might have been pathetic, useless, all of the words her grandmother had hurled at her, but she still knew how to be a doctor. “Stay with me.”

———

Things were happening, but Elias was too far gone to hear it, to experience it. He was going to die, and he was going to die bitter and angry. He couldn’t, not after everything he’d ever been through. Even after having his reality shattered from under him, even after meeting someone that changed the course of his life so rapidly. He thought of the people in his life that made it worth living. As much as he felt a tug toward an unseeing force, he allowed himself to remember his memories with the people he loved. Even people he didn’t know too well that he wanted to know better. People like Cass, Sam, Burrow, and Frankie.

Jade. 

The greeting cracked her up, and her shiny eyes danced between both figures. “Don’t say that, unless you’re totally cool with that’s what she said jokes”, she wiggled her eyebrows at the cloaked figure in an ‘am I right?’ type of gesture.

Regan. 

“My bag is heavy,” Regan said, offering both a truthful statement and utterly unimportant one, “Um, but I don’t – I’m not saying I need help with it. Only that I was trying to rearrange my purchases. Distribute their weight more evenly. It doesn’t matter.” 

A flash of light crossed his vision.

Marcus. 

“Do you think selkies are in these waters?” He asked, tilting his head from side to side, not knowing who it was standing behind him. “There’s a cryptid I would love to see.” Elias thought aloud, knowing he probably sounded like a lunatic as he said it out loud. “What do you think, you think seal people exist?”

Regan had been forced from inaction to action all because of him. Her pleading fell on deaf ears, and she… she pushed her grandmother into the pit. She pushed her in and she did it for him. Another layer to tack on to the already building trauma he was experiencing in that moment. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a gurgling noise.

As badly as his body hurt, as loud as that light screamed to him, beckoning him forward, he couldn’t. He felt Regan’s hands on him, he heard her voice. He couldn’t understand her, there had been something that rendered him deafened. Maybe it was a scream, maybe it was just all the blood loss. But Regan hadn’t left him to die, even when he told her to. She hadn’t left him to drown like he was used to people doing time and time again. 

He didn’t have much strength left, but he had enough to infer what she was begging him to do. To not sleep. What was that famous Shakespeare line? 

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause

Elias Kahtri wasn’t going to die here. 

One foot moved in front of the other, forcing himself to stay upright, to not collapse. To not run away again, he was done running. Another foot in front of the other. It was so hard to move, but he had to keep going. Two steps felt like they were impossible, like trudging through hardened concrete, but he couldn’t let himself run away from his life again. No, I won’t die here. 

He felt like he was outside of his own body, watching as Regan helped him away from the scene. Watching himself struggle to walk, letting himself be half-dragged by Regan. He opened his mouth to speak, but blood coated his tongue, poured out from his lips. “Can’t…” He gurgled out, feeling the hot stickiness of blood sticking to his face before he snapped his mouth shut again. It hurt to talk. He had to tell her. “‘M not… leavin’ you.” He slurred, forcing his eyes open long enough to look her in the eyes, tears spilling from his eyes as he knew he couldn’t hold onto consciousness a second longer. “I don’ wan’ leave you.” A sob wracked his body as he felt the call towards that light again. 

He had to hold on, he had to try. He had to do it for her, for Marcus. For once in his life, he had to do it for himself. A ragged breath escaped his mouth. More blood. “I’m dying.” He finally said, a feeling of dread overtaking his body, like hands were grabbing him and pushing him under. “I don’ wan’to die.” He whispered out with the last of his effort before going limp against Regan, eyes rolling into the back of his head before he was pulled under at last.

———

Elias was pale, his breath haggard, his wounds still spilling out blood on both of them. As Regan pushed herself underneath his arm, he actually stood. He shouldn’t have been able to, and it was probably going to make his wounds worse, the shock to his system more deadly, but there was no choice. They had to rush. But Regan still took it as slow as they could reasonably could, urging him along, when he shouldn’t have been doing anything but lying in an OR. That didn’t exist here. The best she had was the clinic, and even that… they couldn’t get there in time. Regan would be found first, and if that happened now, Elias really would be dead. Why did she have to push her grandmother into a tar pit on Worm Remembrance Day? Everyone would be gathered together by now. They’d come as a horde.

She led him as far as he could tolerate. He was mumbling, could barely speak or hear or probably even see. “You’re not dying. I am an expert on when someone is dying.” That emerging scream for Elias had receded, but despite her reassurance, she knew this didn’t mean he was out of the woods yet. He was literally in the woods. Also, he could still die. Elias needed medical attention, and Regan… it couldn’t be from her, and not even because of some stupid sense of guilt (which, fine, that was there; it had bled down and been soaked up the deepest tissues inside her). Between her and her grandmother, all of the screaming wouldn’t go unnoticed. She could still hear her grandmother howling, not far away. Regan took a long, deep breath, as she tried to summon bravery she did not have.

There were things that approached dying – and bleeding out, unconscious, in the middle of the woods with limited medical care was certainly one (or four) of them. Regan helped Elias down, stunned by his tenacity that had brought him this far, both in physical steps and surviving everything that had just happened. “Easy,” she said, leading him to somewhere he could be concealed, though she wasn’t sure he could hear her now. No. She was sure he didn’t. A spike of panic shot through her when he tumbled against her, no longer able to support his own weight. He was out. Regan took his pulse. Alive. Heartbeat slow. Alive.

Regan would do the best she could in the time she had. She pulled off Elias’s shirt, trying not to graze his wounds. Surprisingly, this idea was something she hadn’t tried before – Regan stretched the shirt between her hands and found that, unlike what all of those wilderness survival books said, tearing a shirt was actually quite difficult. (Jade probably could have done it.) Okay. Plan B. She balled the shirt up and pressed it against Elias’s stomach, where it was quickly soaking up his blood. For his other wounds, she tried to blot them with her own shirt, but there was always more blood, and cotton became saturated too quickly.

Her breath left her, and it felt like giving up, even though she knew what had to be done. “I’m so sorry.” Regan sat down next to him, propping him up as much as she could. She had a moment. It was important. Had Elias been conscious, she wondered if he would have squirmed away. But he wasn’t. And one way or another, this would be the last they saw of each other. Regan pushed closer to him, and she rested her head against his shoulder for just long enough to trade a smear of his blood for a patch of her tears. “I’m sorry. I’m going to get you out of here. I promise I will get you out of here alive.” She wasn’t sure if she could tether herself to someone who was unconscious – and if she could, a failure would probably mean she’d die with him – but she didn’t care. She meant every word. 

Carefully, Regan lifted his hand and placed it over the balled up shirt, seeing if he would know to apply pressure, but of course, he remained just as limp as before. She tried to sob. She would have liked to, even, away from her grandmother and the other banshees, in the presence of her best friend. But Regan was empty. “I’m sorry,” she rasped, apologizing for that, too. 

She rose to her feet, though she didn’t feel as though she had much to stand for. While all of the other banshees went to investigate what happened to Cliodhna, Regan sounded a scream of her own, trying – with all that she had left – to call over one of the two people in this town who would want to help. People who should have been driving through green hills and open skies right now.

Regan couldn’t stay. They would be looking for her soon, and she wasn’t going to draw them here so they could finish what her grandmother started. With one woefully wet final look at Elias, Regan took off back toward Farraige na Buanachta to meet her fate. She always did meet it in the end.

#writing #c elias #domestic abuse tw #torture tw #Parental death tw

[kadavernagh]

Get you a girl who speaks in parentheses. Get you a girl who includes information in a sentence that isn't necessary but adds additional context or commentary.

#regancore #well i should be reblogging this one shouldn't i

[kadavernagh]

[pm] Why did@yiu send that? Are you okat? Are you safe? I don't think you're safe :( Why's Elias still offlime? Why did you send me that message? And th@e poc

Do you need help? Release me of the promise and I'll be there in a second. (Or the hours the flight takes0

Please. pleak

I lobe yoi

[user’s autoreply fires off]

🚳💔🎷

🌚🕛🔜

#highoctanegem #c jade #ALRIGHT THIS IS RUDE

[kadavernagh]

It's Conditional || Nora & Regan

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Saol Eile, Cliodhna's house. PARTIES: Regan @kadavernagh and Hamstring @honeysmokedham SUMMARY: Regan is ready to go against her training. She's ready to tell Hamstring what Declan is supposed to be.

“Declan is going to die in front of you. That’s how it works. You are going to love him, and he will die because of it.”

The thought of opposing Fate, of even thinking about it let alone suggesting it, roiled in Regan’s stomach like her grandmother’s cooking. Yet she was doing just that. As if the clandestine plans she had made with Wynne weren’t bad enough (but she didn’t need to be part of them herself, she didn’t, she was going to think about it, and that’s what she was doing, not–) her attempt to convince the ham child that this place wasn’t what she thought, was in direct opposition to Fate. Declan was going to die, and practically all of Saol Eile knew it. How many banshees had screamed for him already? And even if, somehow, someway, he managed to escape his destiny, they could not let him leave this place alive. 

Yet Regan was still going to try one more time. The way her chest felt loaded down with rocks was surely a response to the disobedience possessing her, and not out of the compassion she was still trying to exile. Regan waited until her grandmother had left – there was a highly-anticipated worm race in preparation of the holiday �� and found the ham child in the guestroom, drawing something, and becoming less and less like a guest every day. That was about to end. “Who’s that one for? Declan? We need to discuss him.” She couldn’t count the number of times she had declared that, then been brushed off, or ducked away herself, too cowardly to say what was necessary and go against her kin. This was the first time she had broached the subject since actually seeing Declan, screaming for him, though. And if she had any hope of pulling the child out of here in the short window they might have soon, she had to strip the paint from whatever rosy walls the child gazed into all day.

She invited herself past the threshold of the door (was it inviting? This was her place of residence) and leaned stiffly against the wall as the child sketched out some of the finer details of a badger’s skull. The child was talented, there was no doubt, but something stung like dirt rubbed into an open wound whenever Regan walked by one of the drawings adorning the walls where there had previously been only blank space. Cliodhna was fond of them. She did not smile, but the small grunt of approval at that first drawing of a dead cow replayed in Regan’s head, where bitterness gnawed like it had teeth.

Regan watched, sternly, pointedly, before realizing the child was too absorbed in what she was doing to listen (and probably wouldn’t even so; it was no wonder Emilio let her do as she pleased). Had the child even heard her before? Regan cleared her throat, tight and controlled; it would have broken nothing. “I will first say what I’ve said every time I’ve spoken to you: leave, because I am not.” It was lip service at this point. The child wouldn’t, even though this was detrimental to the both of them. And as for Regan… she glanced down at the ring on her finger, the one she had almost lost in the lake for making her feel like even half a person every time she saw it, and she had lost the ability to pin her failures on it. 

The child’s assent did not come; of course, the child would not go either. Regan had a decent idea of what would get her attention. “I met Declan. He had an appointment with me. Did he tell you about that?” She was probing for potential knowledge about what Declan was, the honor that awaited him (had the child been a banshee…). Her wings flicked in agitation. “You don’t listen. I’m doing this to you as a favor right now.”

—---

Each day the barrier between guestroom and her room was dissolving, the letters of guest morphing into something adjacent to home. After discovering, and approving of, Hamstring's drawing prowess, Cliodhna had supplied her with paper and charcoal, in return Hamstring had been making her art. The older banshee appreciated the grotesque and morbid art Hamstring was supplying, something the humans in Wicked's Rest would blanche at; shuffling away with muttered lines of distress because monsters were what haunted them and not what they appreciated. 

This badger skull was a new one for Cliodhna. When she returned from the worm races, they would have bone broth and discuss banshee things. Cliodhna's English was confusing. Sometimes she spoke in easy-to-understand phrases that followed all conventions of English grammar. Other times her questions felt badly translated, "Is your flesh ready?" "Are you bonded?" To which Hamstring would employ years of media training. You see, telling interviewers you don't understand their questions is rude. It makes you look uninformed, and being uninformed means you don't care. Instead, you deflect the question, bringing up something new. Deflections were easy when Hamstring was genuinely curious about the giant worm statue and the story that goes with it. 

The heavy thrum of instruments slamming and a "vocalist" screaming leaked out of Hamstring's headphones. Head down, her fingers worked on the fine shading of the badger's skull. Hamstring discovered that Cliodhna liked her bone art to be true to the source, but she still added a twist of her own, a break near the temple where a knife and worm were entwined. A whisper of words, catching on Declan, brought Hamstring to attention that she wasn't alone. Hamstring looked up, slipping off the headphones and staring blankly at Regan. This was new. Normally it was Hamstring walking into Regan's room every morning, asking the banshee if she was ready to go home yet. "Sup?" Hamstring was considerate enough to turn the music off, eyes plastering on Regan. 

"I want to leave Regan." That wasn't true anymore, it was a lie that slipped easily from her tongue to dance in the space between them. A jester performing for his king out of duty and not out of joy. Because if Hamstring left, her days of lounging by the waterfall with Declan would end. That alone was enough to chain her to Saol Eile for the rest of her life, despite the promises she'd made to return to Wicked's Rest. But they wanted her there in one piece. Return whole, is what she had promised. Declan - and this was hard to explain- felt like a piece of her. Leaving him and returning would break something in her. A broken promise. A broken Hamstring. Those were too many breaks, it was easier to stay here, where life was simple.

"But we both know I can't without you. If you want me gone, say you're ready and we'll be out by tonight." Regan wouldn't call her bluff, Hamstring knew, Regan was still searching for something here. Hamstring suspected that something was supposed to stop Regan from feeling like an outsider and fit in. What Hamstring had found here. In Hamstring’s mind, the jealousy of seeing Hamstring fit in this place she was forced to run from, was tearing them apart. Constantly Regan would turn the other way if she saw Hamstring coming, avoid conversation with her, or simply make an excuse to leave her presence. But Hamstring understood. Hamstring knew the bitter feeling of watching someone else thrive where you longed to simply belong, so she didn’t hold it against Regan. Hamstring would also have given anything to help Regan find that missing piece. Maybe with it, she’d feel confident enough to return home to those waiting for her. Or happier with their life in Saol Eile. 

“No, he didn’t tell me,” Hamstring answered, looking up with a question at Regan. Regan had been telling Hamstring to be careful around Declan since the moment they met. To leave him alone, give him space. So while Declan had told Hamstring about his doctor's appointment, the lie was once again easier. To stop a familiar argument from repeating. It would be a waste of time, a record on repeat forced to play the same song over and over again. Hamstring took a deep sigh, looking back down at her art and starting again. “And what is this huge favor, Regan?”

—------

Hamstring didn’t want to leave. If Regan said she was ready to go right now, would the child even go with her? (She wasn’t ready to go (she might have been ready to go), not unless– and even then, how– no, she couldn’t leave, even if she wanted to (did she? Did it matter? (yes, there were things that mattered, people that mattered, one person (Jade, it was Jade (did she get the message?). But her brothers were also (what about her mom? And her dad would have hated to see her here, it was what he spent his whole life trying to avoid))– and they would never know why, would never understand. (but what if they could?)) who mattered so much she–) Did anything matter beyond these short, wind-up toy lives the humans had?), and she didn’t want to, she didn’t, don’t think about the lake (the plan, there was a plan, a loose plan, but a–), focus on them). 

Regan frowned, trying to ignore what was definitely indigestion (she was a medical doctor).

But no. Hamstring had Declan here. She had been able to reinvent herself even if it was as something she was not: the child was able to do what Regan couldn’t. No wonder her grandmother approved. Sometimes Regan wondered if Hamstring remembered she wasn’t really Hamstring. The way she looked at Cliodhna with admiration that Regan never possessed for her grandmother… it wasn’t going to last. Declan was going to die, and Hamstring had to be gone before his body grew cold. And Regan sat complacently by. She had. She held Declan up at the clinic for an unnecessary examination to keep the two of them away from each other, her efforts to tell Declan of what else was out there came from a half-stone heart, and if it hadn’t been for Wynne, for the lake, she was not sure she would have been brave enough to be standing here right now.

Bravery often felt like the worst kind of foolishness, didn’t it? Could a coward be brave? Would her grandmother have looked upon her boldness and declared that it came from a weak heart wrapped in undisciplined muscle and a body attached to wings and lungs she did not deserve?

Regan’s gaze dropped. The child’s question was not what it seemed – not only did Hamstring not really want to leave, but leaving without Regan was still out of the question. Regan wouldn’t play her hand yet. “I don’t know what your plan was. You can’t get out the same way you got in. They wouldn’t… even if I… they wouldn’t let me leave again. There is no walking out.” Which didn’t mean she wanted to go (but–). She couldn’t want. She didn’t. She hadn’t. She couldn’t. Yet worry about those back h– in Wicked’s Rest hooked onto her skin even more than the feeling of fae all around her, and that tiny, stupid, remaining ember of hope for something better kept sparking no matter how many attempts she made to drown it out.

She had told Wynne she would think. This was thinking. That indigestion really was homicidal. 

Wynne left the lake yesterday, sensing that the purpose of this journey here had been worthwhile, feeling the victory of a successful mission, if only they could wait her out for a few more days. Regan remained deeply uncertain. When she came back here last night, Cliodhna’s eyes tracked her in. Her grandmother was silent, until she wasn’t. 

“You breathe,” her grandmother had remarked, and Regan registered the concealed disgust in her tone. 

“Yes.” 

Regan had meant it as assent, agreement, that she had failed and would always fail. Her grandmother had raised a brow and let her slink upstairs. Only now did Regan recognize the defiant edge that had developed that day. She did not feel nearly as sharp as that single, cutting word.

Her disobedience made her feel the burn of the lie she’d told here weeks ago to keep the child away from her grandmother’s scream, it forced her to remember the other lie she’d told at the clinic to afford Wynne and Elias enough time to get out of here if they were smart enough to use it, it made her recall how she spoke of cremation with Declan in a voice so quiet it did not feel like it came from her lungs, it reminded her how obvious the message she’d sent yesterday had been, how even Wynne knew who Regan had been inspired to talk to. There was a common thread weaving all of these together, and it was not Fate, but something more tangible.

It made clear, finally, why she was standing here right now. Regardless of whether she remained here or not, she cared.

“Listen to me.”

Regan wasn’t sure how much she believed that Declan didn’t immediately run to the child after that appointment, but it almost didn’t matter. Declan wouldn’t have told Hamstring what Regan was able to tell her about the rites. All of Hamstring’s gratitude was reserved for Cliodhna, though, not her. 

The child was as stubborn as Regan was desperate. “Put your pencil down and listen to me. The favor is information.” Information she was supposed to spill to the child weeks ago. She had tried, though, she had. Just… not that persistently. Not like this. Never like this. Regan rolled the back of her skull against the wall. She wasn’t supposed to tell humans any of this, but right now, Hamstring was not in a position a human would ever be in. Regan had put her there. “Declan is… he’s part of your an chéad scread. You’ve heard my grandmother mention that, yes? Of course you have. It’s all she talks about.” If Hamstring heard bitterness seething behind her words, no she did not. “It’s a rite. We all go through it. I did. And the second it happens for you, you’re going to be revealed as a fraud. You won’t scream. You won’t have wings. You will break, but not in the way you’re supposed to.” And Regan hadn’t even begun to think about what might happen to her for perpetuating this lie. “Let me guess. She’s asking you about how fond you are of Declan, and how prepared you are to accept what’s yours, or something along those lines.”

She had never asked Regan any of that. She just… she just…

Regan tried to stand a little straighter, pushing her shoulders up, but she wasn’t sure she’d be standing had the wall not been propping her there. Never had she spoken of this so plainly with anyone, and it felt like a betrayal coating her mouth with ash, even though her heart told her it wasn’t a betrayal at all; it was exactly what she needed to say. Like the protective lies, like telling Declan about her father’s smile, like sliding her ring back on her finger. 

“Declan is going to die in front of you. That’s how it works. You are going to love him, and he will die because of it.”

—--------

"There is always a way out. We could steal one of the cars. We could walk. I can turn into a bear and you can ride me out. You have a personal entourage of talented people, and Elias. We'll make a way out for you." This was their impasse, the reason Hamstring knew she'd have more time with Declan. A rock pressing against a hard place, each expecting the other to move, each an immovable force. What was that book she'd started reading? Greek mythology was always good for comparisons. Perhaps Regan was Sisyphus, pushing the boulder Hamstring up the hill to send her home, and each day Hamstring would roll back down, starting the day in Regan's room, proudly proclaiming she was still there with her presence. Or the metaphor could go the other way. Hamstring had never been good at metaphors. 

Regan had a serious tone. Combined with the fact this was the most Regan had spoken to Hamstring in days, she decided to take this seriously. Hamstring placed her charcoal down, and turned in her chair so she was facing Regan dead on. Blank eyes staring at blank eyes. A contest of emotionless presenting. Hamstring had heard of her chead scread, an event she assumed was the banshee equivalent of a debutante ball. Which, by the way, was something she only escaped having because of its roots in white supremacy and was not feminist, as her dads put it. Hamstring knew her dads would have loved to present her to all their peers in a ball gown with a dance. Actually, hadn't that been what happened anyway? This was not paying attention. Hamstring drew her mind from her past, the past that didn't matter now that she was Hamstring. 

Hamstring took a moment to digest everything Regan was saying. It was a loud accusation. It felt like a slap. A sting of pain shot through her body. Hamstring had to sit with it for a moment. Why did these words hurt? "I ran away from my home." Hamstring looked away from Regan, her eyes searching the bright blue sky out the window. Anything but eye contact. "I wasn't good at being my fathers' daughter. I didn't fit into their idea of family and success. I'm a monster. And they are human. It was never going to fit. They loved me. I love them. But I could never love myself there." Her hand started tapping at the desk. The only sign, in a perfectly crafted mask of indifference, that something was wrong. 

"Two years after I left, they adopted a new baby. She's... just a kid. But I think she'll be a better fit than I ever was." A moment, a pause. A silence. "It hurts to see her take my place. Fit in better. Be where I should be and do it right, knowing that I could never." A deep breath. "I'm sorry that's what I'm doing to you here. I would help you, if I knew what I was doing right. This shouldn't be you vs me. It's us vs them. Which is why I don't understand." Another deep breath, as the anger started to boil over. "Why you're trying to scare me again? Every time I do things you don't like, you do this. You tell me someone is going to die. I broke into your house, suddenly I'm going to die. I'm getting close to Declan, fitting in here, and you don't want me, so I better leave so Declan doesn't die?" 

Hamstring was on her feet now, her monotone tinted with emotion. "I know it sucks. But that's not my fault." The anger was too much for Hamstring. She started shoving her way past Regan, intent on leaving the house, putting some distance between them and walking this big emotion off. Maybe then she'd be ready to deal with it. 

—--------

“You will leave even if it’s without me.” Regan was firm, giving her final words on the matter, knowing that it would likely come down to this, and much sooner than the child thought. She would hate Regan for the rest of her life, but she’d be alive to do that.

Unlike… it wasn’t what Regan had expected, the way the revelation of Declan’s death seemed to wick right through the child’s face. It hadn’t been absorbed, only heard. If the child were to move her head, Regan might see the sentiment dripping out of her ears. “Are you listening? I told you to pay attention. Declan is going to die.” And as she said it, Regan realized her mistake. Not one right now (though she was sure there were many now too), but months ago. Why should the ham child believe her about someone’s death when, in a moment of perceived retribution, she had managed to make the girl think her death was near? That she had taken off into the mines shortly after – Regan’s words no doubt on her mind – was something Regan still tried not to think about. Even though Regan didn’t think she was getting to the child, Hamstring did still have a thoughtful look on her face, one aimed toward the past and not the future.

When the child did eventually speak, it was a seeming non-sequitur. Her being a runaway made sense. Regan always knew there was something, some personal interest, that kept her personally involved in Regan’s situation. In hiding in Regan’s luggage, she had been seeking something for herself, too. Regan didn’t even pretend to know where this was going, not that it mattered – the child was doing everything she possibly could to not even look in Regan’s direction. “Why… why would you run away if they loved you?” She probably shouldn’t have asked, but she did; she had known a family that loved her, and the only force that could have pulled her away from them was Fate itself. Something else slipped across her mind, but if it was irony, it was gone before she could see it. And Regan did understand not fitting in, never being able to measure up. She did. Was that the child’s point? No, that didn’t seem right.

It hurts to see her take my place. 

That was it. A connection she never would have made on her own sparked, making her hair raise as if it generated static. “What?” The t came out hard, flipping out of her mouth. A couple of days ago, she might have been able to hold it back, to keep her lip from curling and her brow from lowering, but now the accusation skimmed off her epidermis. She stood up straight, pushing herself off the wall.

“Are you out of your blistering mind? You think I’m jealous? You think…” Regan had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping in the wrong direction, “This is not some adoption, dúisigh. My grandmother does not adopt. Have you watched her at all, downstairs, with the animals? The carcasses with blood crusted around their ears? She deafens them and hollows them out, displays their pelts as triumphs, and then she is proud.” Hamstring didn’t see it. “She is proud of her rows and rows of patellas, selected and cleaned and organized precisely how she wishes. The first words she spoke to me after she– after my– she said ‘at least your wings will be impressive’.” Desperation seeped from Regan’s voice in too many places for her to plug up. She had been leaking since walking out of that lake, shoulders hung in defeat, and it would take decades to undo it. If she ever could. She suspected she couldn’t. After all… it wasn’t working. 

Hamstring was not tolerating any of this well either, though probably for other reasons. She had never heard the child speak this much of her past, and for it to surface in this way– did she feel robbed? Like she had bounced around looking for something like this for years, and finally found it? Regan didn’t care. She was going to feel robbed of so much more if she didn’t listen. “Stop!” It came out as a screech that sent a stab of humiliation through her. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The door swung on its hinges, Hamstring pushing out. Regan chased the child down the stairs and found the front door much the same, with only Hamstring’s silhouette ahead. “You’re not listening to me. He’s– he’ll– it isn’t about fitting in. He’s–” Outside. They were outside. And all of Saol Eile could hear this. Regan’s mouth dropped open. She debated following, but she couldn’t keep up with a bear, nor would it be good to provoke the child to become one. With one last breath, one last attempt, Regan called after her. “It’s conditional.”

#writing #c nora

[kadavernagh]

[pm] Wynne said you guys were coming home Thursday. Is that true? Are you coming with them? You can have your apartment back if you come home. You can have all of the bones that I found (I found a lot, there are some under my house apparently!!!! Animal bones, I mean. Not like, human ones.). I don't think I want to be friends with Jade anymore, though. She scares me. Um. Just come home safe and don't drink milk on the airplane. I heard bad things happen.

[user's autoreply fires off]

🚳💔🎷

🌚🕛🔜

#c van

[kadavernagh]

[pm] Why is Nora saying 'Fuck Regan' ? What happened? Also is everything still [...] Are we still leaving Thursday? Have you thought more? [....] Plea

[user does not have a phone; in fact, user previously used wynne's phone]

[user's autoreply fires off]

🚳💔🎷

🌚🕛🔜

#c wynne

[kadavernagh]

[user’s hand slips and she accidentally sends this enigmatic photo]

[user was initially happy, thinking it was a throwback to all those blurry selfies Regan would send. But then she remembers how Regan’s message ended and she worries again. She wonders if this means something. If someone got to Regan and this was the last thing she managed to snap. She will lose sleep over it, but then she’ll realize it’s totally chill and fine! This is just Regan being bad with technology. ]

#c jade #i'm reblogging bc it's in the thread

[kadavernagh]

[pm] This... is still Jade, right? I lov Someone else didn’t take your account? Your biography changed Oh, it’s Regan. Kavanagh. Hello. I lo Uh, I’m here with Wynne. In Ireland. They came to Ireland. Humans. Ohaasjgy [user is wet]

[user asks wynne if the phone is waterproof. it's not. user becomes less wet] It isn’t working. Not the phone. What I need to do here, it’s not working. Because I w wan I just did something that– I almost didn'’t recognize It will never work. So I shou But they will never let me leave. And things are about to get bad. Bad. Do... you understand? I need If you can get anyone out I release you fr So, um The ham child is the problem right now. She needs to be convinced to leave. I have an idea for them, to get them out, but it is unlikely to work. If someone, anyone can soften her, now is the time. I don't know where I am supposed to be Thursday. On Worm Remembrance Day.

[user is wet again but with acute onset ocular fluid expulsion]

Is this just making it harder for y You're still the a chuisle mo chroí. Do not tell the other banshees. But I needed to say it.

[user sees Regan's icon pop up and drops her phone, it doesn't help that she only has one working arm at the moment. The screen cracks, cause she's an iPhone user :/ but it's still decent enough to keep reading]

Regab!? Regam!!! Hoe did you... Wifu?

[user spends 15 minutes trying to figure out what the acronym Ohaasjgy means]

Reg I thought... You said no contaxt yes it's Jade I love yiu. Plese come home the kids miss you :(( It can work here with me. I jusy know it. It can and it will.

[User continues to read, the excitement dying out, turning into dread the more she reads]

Are you sage. Are you in danger. Im coming relesse me from my prommy. I'm taking her kneecaps I sweat. We'll find a way to get yiu guys our.

I love you :((( stop it. that sounds lije a goodbye beforw someone gets offed. You can't do that. Cone home hayati. 🍑🍑😿😿

#c jade #i'm reblogging bc it's in the thread

[kadavernagh]

I release you of

I release

Please

[no message sent]

[no message received]

#c jade #i'm reblogging bc it's in the thread

[kadavernagh]

[pm] 🪱🪱🪱🪱🪱🪱🪱🪱🪱

[user breaks yet another phone.]

#c emilio #i'm reblogging bc it's in the thread

[kadavernagh]

[pm] She needs to get out of here within the next few days. They will kill her. I've tried to tell her. I will try one more time. I can't do anything else.

This is Regan, by the way. Kavanagh.

Slán go deo.

[pm] What?

[user feels the world closing in on him; he can't breathe.]

Do more than fucking try, Kavanagh. You can do more. She's there because of you. She's in trouble because of you. Get her out safe, or I swear on my fucking life I'll find this place and I'll burn it to the fucking ground. I don't care if they kill me. I don't care.

#c emilio #i'm reblogging bc it's in the thread

[kadavernagh]

[user's status has changed; user has no idea]

🚳💔🎷

🌚🕛🔜

#if anyone can find meaning in these i'll be very amused #is it a coded message about an escape plan or did she just do this by mistake when her hands were wet and she was using wynne's phone #we'll never know #but it's the second thing