#being the most broken grief-stricken disaster by the loss of his brother at the end. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cryxmercy · 4 years

Text

Dum Spiro Spero

When: apx 4 hours after this. Where: White Crest Morgue Who: @kadavernagh, @arthurjdrake, and Mercy

Arthur meets Regan at the the morgue to identify Mercy’s body after the ‘incident’ at Dark Score Lake. Things go about as well as the rest of the night did. Which means exactly what you think it means.

TW: character death, vomit, hospitals, drowning, description of bodies/autopsies

This was one of Regan’s least favorite parts of the job -- possibly tied with expert testimony in a courtroom full of people. Confirming the identity of decedents. Ideally, each would receive identification via a driver’s license, prescription medication bottle, or someone coming in to confirm, in addition to biological confirmation through dental records or implant numbers. At least this time, she had a starting point and knew exactly who to bring in. Mercy Smith’s body was laid out behind the glass window of the viewing room, all but her head obscured. There was rarely any reason to expose next of kin to anything below that. The decedent’s phone has several missed calls from Arthur Drake, and there had even been an envelope with his name on it in her car. Regan guided Arthur through the long hallway of the morgue, wishing she could have been seeing him again under better circumstances; she’d come to like and appreciate him, even though they didn’t know each other well. “I’m really sorry to bring you in here,” she said, meeting his eyes with sympathy, “I know the two of you were close, and I’m here to help however I can.” She opened the door to the viewing room and walked in after Arthur, her chest tight with nerves. It was never easy being face to face with a deceased loved one, even behind a sheet of glass, and even in the clinical setting of the morgue. Regan stayed silent, waiting for Arthur to speak.

To exist even briefly in a place of apparent death while alive and healthy seemed to go against every natural wish a person might have. Life and death were a facet of existence that Arthur could intimately recognise and understand. The process wasn’t surprising, he’d seen battlefields strewn with broken and bloodied bodies, walked streets where stepping over an emancipated corpse was grim but commonplace and then he’d experienced his own death too many times to count - sometimes peacefully and other times not. Life seemed to lay a path out for each person and their choices carried them through until they met their end. He’d watched with his very eyes as folklore and history built legends out of the dead, glorifying their acts and expunging their faults. It had always been the way, but from the moment he felt the air leave his own lungs and fear swell up in his chest within the gasping for air that wouldn’t come within confines of his own home he knew something was wrong. The missed phone calls were wrong. The fact that she was… No. He wouldn’t say the word, couldn’t acknowledge the sentiment. She would come back, she always did. They hadn’t only just found one another for their time to be cut so short.

Every step along the empty, anonymous corridors of the morgue felt inexplicably wrong; a rising sense of uncertainty the nearer they drew to their destination. The drumming of his own pulse pounding, pounding, pounding, and his head with it. Drowning out any and all conversation after the drive here, seeing Regan a vacant hollowness that seemed to douse the spark of joy and life he always carried into most given situations.

He set the backpack down on the floor as they entered the observation room. No words of thanks were offered to her sympathies, they rang true but words were meaningless as he stared at Mercy’s pallid complexion. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her like this, but it always caught him off guard. The tangle mess of spun gold pillowing her head in a halo-esque fashion that it could almost be falsely believed that she might just be sleeping. But there was no rise and fall to her chest, and the unnatural stillness couldn’t be questioned. She was no angel, but even now she was beautiful and radiant in ways no words could put into any meaningful fashion. A hand reached out, as if hoping to take her own but met only the cold wall of glass that separated them. His mouth pressed into a thin line, chin tipping down as he gathered his resolve formulating it into the first words he’d spoken since he arrived in a dull monotonous tone. “What happened?”

Regan was no stranger to grief. Mourning. Loss. It clung to her throughout her whole life, following her everywhere. Her friends, her brother, lovers, her dad. She could recognize in others when they’d lost someone special, how the grief became a physical ailment as well as a psychological scar. You couldn’t move past it; it was impossible. You could only trudge through it, slowly, painfully. And that was what Arthur was doing right now. There was no greeting, no smile, no pleasantries. Regan knew not to push for them or pretend they were necessary. If the decedent really was Mercy, then Regan knew this was the same woman who tended to the flowers in Arthur’s garden. Old friends who happened to both end up in the same damn town. Maybe more than friends. Probably more than friends. She trailed behind Arthur as he entered the viewing room, remaining silent and keeping her distance. It was strange; ever since her dad died, each decedent carried with it something she couldn’t explain or begin to understand -- an energy or a spark that jumped down her vertebrae and made her steady hands tingle. Mercy Smith hadn’t done that. Despite the stillness of her heart, and despite the deathly chill of her skin, Regan knew there was something off. But she never trusted feelings. They betrayed, where cold, hard logic scarcely did.

She was almost surprised when Arthur had a question for her. Regan had expected him to stay there, staring through the glass, hand pressed against it like it could bring him close to her. She hesitated for a moment. “I haven’t made a determination of cause and manner of death yet. I need to autopsy the -- her first.” But that was hardly satisfactory, was it? “Based on my observations of her condition and where she was found, it’s possible she drowned. But drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion; there is no finding that is pathognomonic for it, so I have to -- it’s important for me to look at everything as a whole.” Inside and out. Especially inside. But she didn’t want to share those details with Arthur right now. He didn’t need to know that she’d be looking for hyperexpanded lungs and a trachea full of froth. “Arthur, I’m sorry to ask you this, because I think the answer is apartment, but… can you confirm that this is Mercy Smith?” Regan lingered by the door. “And would you like me to give you some time alone?”

It was perhaps every person’s worst nightmare to outlive the greatest loves of their life. A lover, a wife, a child. Loss cultivated a strange understanding of empathy, of how emotions could affect behaviour channeling actions that otherwise might never have been. Arthur had spent lifetimes struggling with death, disaster and countless crises and catastrophes moments of utter despair and profound exhilaration. But standing here, staring at the ring of dark splotchy purple bruises marring the smooth column of her neck like a horrific branding necklace were the marks of what he knew had happened. The clamp of stronger hands he’d felt by proxy around his own throat, trapping off the air before the light had gone from the world. An ire sparked, fuelled by anguish and the fury of any person thinking they might get away with laying their hands on her in such a brutal fashion, to steal even a day of her life away. His left hand tightened, fingers curling into the thick line of angular scar-tissue made anew several months earlier and countless centuries prior. A bond as evident and apparent as the invisible thread that had always led them back to one another, no matter the distance or time that had passed.

Regan’s answer was clinical, precise and omitted the details he knew any mourning party wouldn’t wish to hear but the unspoken act he knew Regan planned to perform was the last thread. His fist thumped the wall, “no, you won’t touch my wif-” he swallowed back the word with a choked sound “I don’t want anyone touching her.” Because they weren’t. They never had made it to that day. How cruel the fates were that each time they almost found that perfect ending, it was snatched away - the irony of how it was this time Mercy’s death wasn’t lost on him. He swallowed back the bile he felt working its way up his throat. “Yes,” was all the confirmation he gave “someone did this to her,” there was a strange sense of calmness in the statement. The low-burning anger simmering as he stared through the glass.

He exhaled through his nose, she’d come back. She’d wake up and this would all be fine… That’s how it always worked. “How long ago did they-- How long ago did they find her?” How long would it take for her to come back? The question of needing time stirred him out of his stupor, “I have to… yes, I need to wait. I need to be here… I need to be here for her, when she comes back” perhaps it sounded mad, grief-stricken ramblings of a man that had just lost one of the most important people in his life. But Arthur wasn’t leaving the morgue any time soon.

Regan had seen this plenty of times before. Next of kin who couldn’t bear to think of their loved ones being under the scalpel. Legally, Regan had every right to proceed with the autopsy against anyone else’s wishes, especially if she thought there was likely to be a crime committed. She made few exceptions -- really, only in instances of apparent straightforward natural deaths where autopsy conflicted with personal beliefs -- and this was not going to be one of them. But she also wasn’t going to argue with Arthur while he was in the throes of grief. “I understand.” Was all she said. So many of the doctors she’d learned with would have been far better at knowing what to say here. Even Erin would have been more adept. Sometimes practice did not make perfect. “We’re going to find out who did this to her. That’s what I’m here for. We’ll learn what happened.” She kept her distance, as Arthur was still staring through the glass barricade, taking in the lifeless appearance of the woman he clearly loved.

“It’s been a few hours. Almost 4, now.” Of course he didn’t want to leave. But did he really think… Regan’s heart sank to her feet at the thought of Arthur waiting here, watching a decedent, waiting for the cadaver’s heart to start beating and fingers to start twitching. It wasn’t going to happen, and it wasn’t healthy for Arthur to hold out that kind of hope. “Would you like to stay in my office while I’m --” Right. He didn’t want anyone touching the body. She’d need to convince him, point out how important it was that this was investigated. She’d done it many times in the past; it was a well-practiced and sympathetic speech, but now wasn’t the time for it. “I think we should talk in my office. I can have someone come in to take care of her in the meantime, okay?”

It was a nice effort Regan made, but it was the start of a sentiment that Arthur wasn’t by any means ready to hear. He’d seen just how badly the police and even the FBI were when it came to solving the true nature of these cases and this wasn’t going to be any different. A flare of anger overcame him, as he rounded on Regan “you won’t learn shit,” this was emphasised by a wildly animated gesture of his hand the sudden vehemence was a turn of face for the typically mild-mannered scholar who always did his best to watch his tongue and curb the harm his words could inflict. “Least of all you - someone who doesn’t even have any kind of control or understanding about what you are. Do you even know the danger you and your denial poses to the people around you?” His eyes blazed with a simmering preternatural fire, “this entire department is incompetent and ill-equipped to handle the true reality of what happens in this town because all of you choose instead to bury your heads in the sand - blind to what’s happening right in front of your faces!”

“So no, I’m not going into your office,” he retorted shortly, his back to the glass viewing window and plinth on which Mercy’s body rested “and no, you’re not getting someone to come and take care of her. Because she’s going to be fine. She’s going to come back, and you’re probably going to think I’m insane! Which, you know what, that’s fine as well. Because it’s all real. She’s not human, and neither are you. And no amount of placating and self-confirming speeches about how it’s all gonna be alright is going to change that fact - for you, for me or for her.”

Mercy had not gone gently from this world. She’d fought until her last breath. Taunted the creature whose hands were around her neck, trying to choke the life out of her. She’d even spit words of defiance back into the face it chose to wear as it pushed her beneath the water and everything went dark.

So it was no surprise that her return was also not gentle. Not gentle at all.

Somewhere in the darkness of Mercy’s soul, a spark flickered to life. It grew and grew and grew… until it burned bright enough to fuel the almost imperceptibly slow curl of one delicate, pale finger. It didn’t last long, as the flame was still small, and Mercy’s body grew utterly still once more. There was a moment that followed, no more than half a minute, where the harsh, fluorescent lighting of the observation room started to flicker. Once, twice… three times. Before it went out completely, throwing the room beyond the glass into darkness.

Another moment passed. Followed by another. And another. And still another.

The air hummed with static, as it might just before a lighting strike during a thunderstorm.

It was then that Mercy’s eternal flame reignited.

When the lights suddenly returned, too bright and insistent and glaring, the observation room table was vacant.

Mercy lay on the floor, no longer lifeless and still, but suddenly very, very alive. She convulsed, gasping and choking on black, frothy water as her body did it’s best to right itself.

Regan could practically see the rage building behind Arthur’s eyes; they burned with a hot intensity. She knew what was about to happen. Some next of kin lashed out, yelled at her, spat in her face, and they always had plenty of saliva. They couldn’t accept the death of a loved one, didn’t want to think about what came next -- only what came before. When she’d met Arthur before, she’d pegged him as a calm, rational intellectual. But Regan supposed grief could turn anyone violent under the right -- or wrong -- circumstances. Regan steeled herself, hands curled into fists, as Arthur raised her voice and his temper. She debated reaching for her pager. She didn’t want to involve security, but she would. She let Arthur’s vitriol and words slide off of her as best as possible, confusing though they were, and bit her tongue. Forcibly. It was the only way to stop the mounting pressure circling around inside her lungs. It wanted out. It wanted at Arthur. Regan clutched her chest and took a couple of steps back. She didn’t dare open her mouth. But at the same time, the insult to her ability to do her job made her temper flare. The pressure climbed, but Arthur’s instance that Mercy was going to come back made it dissipate, replaced by a pang of sympathy. To this, Regan also didn’t think it best to reply.

The lights went out before she could. For a second, Regan thought she might have screamed, breaking them, but -- no, that wasn’t right. Electrical malfunction of some kind. Just a flicker, and they were back on. She looked at Arthur, finally chancing opening her mouth. “That -- maybe it’s storming outside.” But when her eyes landed back on the glass, back where the body had been lain, there was nothing there. No body. No decedent. What? Had Arthur done something? No, he hadn’t left this spot. Had one of her technicians moved the body when they weren’t paying attention? That had to have been it. “Where… the body is gone.” She turned to Arthur, anger and fear twisted into panic. Surely it had been a technician, but… but she needed to check. She motioned toward Arthur, spurring them both toward the exit. They needed to check the other side of the viewing room, behind the glass.

A mild manner and placating tongue could get you so far in life, but right now Arthur had no bearings to lean into his good will. No valid reasoning to hold back. He’d been holding back for nigh on twenty years, never wanting to let his temper flare and lose the control he’d built across that time. It wouldn’t do to expose himself, he wasn’t so capable of defence as so many other species were. But the combination of his conversation with Nadia earlier in the night about her own safety, the truly staggering incompetence of WCPD and Mercy’s death? A death that very well could have been prevented if he’d just picked up the phone, talked her out of whatever god-awful plan she’d got in her head. She’d always been the sort to play the heroine, and look where it got her. On a cold metal slab on the brink of something horrific. The odds were slim, but they weren’t odds Arthur was willing to gamble on.

After all, what if she didn’t come back? What if she did get stuck on the other side never to return. What then? All for what? The guilt and anger mingled, fueling an ugly concoction that spilt over in vitriol that typically wasn’t imbued by the professor.

The shudder of the lights, the spark dimming and reigniting caused Arthur’s words to fade and his eyes to go up to the light. Their eerie red glow grew more prominent for a second in the darkness before the natural lighting returned as did some of his rational thought. “Vi er født af stormen,” he muttered the words under his breath, born of the storm, “evigt lys vender sikkert tilbage” eternal light return safely. Though Regan’s explanation of a storm caused Arthur to grunt, roll his eyes and shake his head “You are something else Regan.” He grabbed the bag he’d brought along with him as he moved along to join her in the walk, his steps rapid, “I told you what it is. You just don’t believe me or anyone else in this town apparently.”

What choice had Mercy had this time? It had all happened so quickly… a call asking to help kill a demon and save the world, such as it was. Because if the creature survived, it would have laid waste to White Crest… to everything and everyone. So how was Mercy to say no? Considering what she was? And with the odds astronomically stacked in her favor to come out unscathed? This time it hadn’t been about being the heroine. It had simply been the right thing to do.

And if Rebecca hadn’t pulled on Mercy’s life force to power her final spell, they likely wouldn’t be here now. Nic would’ve never been able to harm her. But they were. And so Mercy’s Fury magic was making the situation right. And reviving her, one atom, one cell, one neuron at a time. Until she was snatched from the darkness and back into the light with all the force of a lightning bolt. Yet her body, as indestructible and immortal as it might be… was paying the price for that magic.

What language was that? Arthur’s anger seemed to twist into something else as soon as the lights winked off and on, speaking in a language Regan did not understand. It didn’t feel like the time to ask him. “You didn’t tell me anything.” She bit back, still trying to keep the screech locked inside her. He was mourning. He wasn’t in his right mind. She needed to keep reminding herself of that to keep her own anger at bay. Her hand itched for the pager. Calling security could escalate things even further though, just when Arthur seemed to be simmering. Regan held off. For now. Other matters were more pressing. “Belief has nothing to do with anything. People in this town don’t understand that the burden of proof is on --” She pressed her key card to the side of the observation room where the body had previously been resting peacefully on the table. Dead. Unmoving. But Regan nearly tripped over the body -- now on the floor -- as she ran in, slipping on the pool of dark water.

“How…?” Mercy’s body was still here. That was the first fact, the most important one. Had gases being released propelled her from the table? They could generate a lot of force. But, no. Regan’s eyes jumped around -- Mercy’s chest was moving. She was breathing. She was alive. She was coughing up more dark liquid. What did that mean? Had the first responders made a mistake? Had they not followed protocol? No. Regan had put the body in the freezer, had laid it out on the table for Arthur to identify; she would have noticed if it had a beating heart. She would have noticed. But hadn’t Mercy not felt dead, the same way her decedents did? She stumbled back toward the door, taking in what was happening as a scream took form inside her lungs like a brewing storm.

“I did, you just didn’t bother to listen.” He shot off accompanied by a seriously withering side-eye. “Oh take your burden of proof and shove it Regan, I’m not in the mood for a bloody lecture from you of all people” his voice had adopted a sterner note; akin to that of a disproving parent tired of a child’s nonsense shenanigans. Arthur really didn’t have the time of day to placate to Regan’s denial nor did he really feel like pandering to her whims.

The keycard beeped and Arthur couldn’t help but hold his breath half-anticipating and half-dreading the sight on the other side of the door. But seeing Mercy coughing up black water much akin to what he’d coughed up in his own kitchen with Nadia caused him to exhale in pure relief. She was alive. Thank the gods. Willfully and pointedly ignoring Regan’s question he pushed past, dropping to his knees so that he could scoop Mercy and the sheet she’d been covered in off the floor and propping her up against his chest.

“Shh, shh” the noises were soft and soothing as though attempting to calm a skittish creature as he brushed her hair out of her face “bare rolig, jeg har dig. Jeg er her.” Don’t worry, I have you. I’m here. She was wracked with shivers and Arthur closed his eyes resting his head against her temple as he pulled the sheet around her. Though feeling her grow restless again, the pulse of her energy amping like static on the air he hushed again “Hey, hey now…. I got you.”

Breathe.

The voice in her head commanded her and Mercy had no choice but to obey. She gasped for air, but there was no room while her lungs were filled with water. So her body purged itself of the black liquid, quickly and violently. It hurt, gods it hurt… and Mercy coughed and choked and tried to claw at her throat… at the fire that burned it’s way up and out of her chest and onto the cold tile floor of the viewing room. But she couldn’t. Her body wouldn’t obey. The magic that made her what she was had only one goal: survival. And it would do that through whatever means necessary. Mercy’s confusion and pain were irrelevant.

Yet even the darkness of Mercy’s ‘rebirth’ couldn’t block out the light that came from Arthur’s presence. It burned against the blackness as he pulled her in, and even as she continued to tremble violently, her face turned towards him. Towards his voice and his warmth. Towards the one person she knew would always keep her safe. Her eyelids fluttered, lashes dark against her pale, hypoxic skin, and she seemed to grow more calm as Arthur spoke softly in her ear.

Yet her shaking couldn’t be helped. She still felt cold to the marrow of her bones, even with Arthur’s preternatural warmth soaking into her skin. Her restlessness started to peak again, and the air hummed as it had before. Every breath was still like white-hot knives slicing through her chest… every cough rattled deep and wet and ominous, and her heart continued to flutter rapidly, trying to find a steady rhythm.

“... gør ondt…” Mercy’s voice was soft and weak. It hurts...

Arthur was down on the floor with Mercy in an instant, pushing the hair from her face and cupping her cheek. She was a her, now, right? No longer an it. No longer a cadaver. She never was. That thought practically froze Regan’s feet to the ground. How could that have happened? She so badly wanted to blame the first responders, never imagined she’d ever make a mistake like this. How -- more dark fluid being coughed up. Regan felt torn in several directions, like an aortic dissection after an ugly MVA. Mercy was clearly sick; she needed medical attention. Arthur was still being entirely unreasonable. She still wanted to call security. And the pressure in her lungs continued to build. Not again. Not here. Not at the morgue. The scream was urged on by the conflict and she couldn’t hold it back entirely -- a screech shot out of her mouth as soon as she opened it, breaking the flickering lights and cracking the sheet of thick glass between the two rooms. It was over in an instant, as she clapped her hands over her mouth and clamped her jaw shut. Regan stumbled back toward the door, an apology on her lips, but her concern about the potentially dying former-decedent and her irritable, irrational boyfriend won out. Mercy needed a hospital. She needed more care than Regan could provide. “She needs a doctor! Stay with her. I’ll be right back.” As much as she hated to leave the two of them alone here, she didn’t have a functioning cell phone, and an ambulance needed to be called. Leaving no time for argument, she dashed out of the glass-littered observation room and barreled up the stairs.

He hadn’t been paying attention to Regan the moment he’d seen Mercy on the floor, concern for her well-being overriding any good sense Arthur might’ve had in that moment of time. “I know,” he was just shifting her carefully in his arms leaning her over to help cough up any remaining water that might’ve settled in her lungs when the screech happened. Nothing he’d been anticipating nor could he brace himself and it earned a grimace of pain and discomfort almost enough that he dropped Mercy on the floor but his hold was secure enough that it didn’t happen. Thankfully his positioning let him shield her from the fall of shattered lightbulbs. “OW- The fuck?!” he shot a glare at Regan noticing her backing up over the crunch of shattered glass and then turning to leave barely hearing what she said he had to make a rush assessment of the situation. “Fuck,” he cursed, pulling Mercy and propping her up against the table he scarpered to his bag and ripped it open grabbing his oversized t-shirt and joggers out of the bag. “We gotta go… Gotta work with me now Frey,” there was an urgent note in his voice as he set about pulling the t-shirt over her head and arms (backwards in his rush) and did the same with the joggers.

He wasn’t the strongest of people, and Mercy was fairly built combined with the fact they didn’t have the time to chance seeing if she could walk left Arthur with little choice. Hooking an arm under her knees and her back he heaved her off the floor with a grunt, and made quickly for the door. He’d have to backtrace the route he’d come in by, but he could remember it well enough. There were a couple of close-calls but he otherwise managed to pick a route that avoided any confrontation with other members of staff until he back barge his way out the doors, almost tripping in the process into the fresh night air of the car park towards his vehicle. “Almost there… We’re almost there.”

Mercy made her own sound of discomfort as the high-pitched screech echoed through the room. Her ears rang and there was a sudden, sharp pain behind her eyes that was gone as quickly as it came. The shattering of the glass was a side-note as she continued to cough up thick, brackish fluid. But there was less of it now, and by the time she was sat up against the table, it was only the deep, wet cough that persisted. Regan’s screeching had had one small benefit: it had jolted Mercy to a slightly more wakeful state. Her eyes slipped open for the briefest of moments as Arthur spoke before falling shut again.

She did her best to help him, sensing the urgency of the situation. Lifting her arms and trying not be dead weight as he pulled the clothes on in a rush. When he hoisted her up, Mercy’s head spun wildly, and she felt vaguely nauseous as they started to move. But she did her best to wrap her arms around Arthur’s neck. They felt like lead weights, as did her head as it fell against his shoulder. She managed to stay somewhat awake as they moved through the halls, enough that her grip tightened every so slightly as Arthur stumbled into the parking lot. The cool night air washed over them, and when Arthur spoke to her again, she heard him. Almost there, he;d said. Almost there…

To which Mercy could only reply, “... home... ‘s’go home…”

The ambulance was on its way. Just a few minutes. Not for the first time, Regan was grateful for how close the hospital was to the morgue. She’d instructed security to let the EMTs in and send them down to the basement -- she needed to go stay with Mercy, make sure she wasn’t still on the edge of death. Keep Arthur calm, if that was even possible. She ran back down the stairs and headed straight for the observation room, but a few drops of that black fluid dotted the white hallway floor, making her freeze. There was a small trail of it headed toward the intake bay garage. She knew enough of blood spatter analysis to understand what those tails on each drop meant -- movement. Momentum. Her gut clenched and she kept running, slammed the door wide open and saw… just a lot of broken glass and black liquid. No Mercy. No Arthur. Regan pressed a hand to her forehead. How the hell was she going to explain this to the EMTs, who would be here any second? How was she going to explain to anyone? How was she going to explain this to herself? She stood in the darkness of the room, her eyes pressed shut. “It’s so much easier when they’re dead.”

end.

#chatzy #p: arthur #p: regan #p: dum spiro spero #vomit tw #//I can't think of any other tws but if anyone finds one just lmk :)

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