#gatlin fields | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

howdy-cowpoke · 14 days

Text

LOCATION: Prickly Pear Acres TIMING: Recent (right after ‘We Begin Again’) PARTIES: Monty (@howdy-cowpoke) & Kaden (@chasseurdeloup) SUMMARY: Kaden gets dropped off at Monty’s house after his near death experience. There’s a lot of angst, and then all hell breaks loose. CONTENT WARNINGS: domestic abuse, suicidal ideation, animal death (all implied)

—

Instead of using the car ride through Gatlin Fields to Prickly Pear Acres to try and process any of the events from earlier, Kaden did his best to block it all out. His eyes were fixed ahead, staring out the window but he wasn’t seeing anything. It was all a blur, just shapes and shadows. If he let himself think about anything at all, Kaden might have felt the disgust brewing inside him. He might have noticed that he was falling back onto his training – shutting out his emotions and not letting them distract him from his next move. The mission was all that mattered.

Even so, his mission at the moment wasn’t to continue the hunt or regroup or recon – nothing like that. His only mission then and there was to get to the farm and to Monty. He didn’t have a single plan after that.

The ranger was so lost in thought that he missed the fact that the scenes sliding along the other side of the window had frozen in place. The car was parked, they were at the farmhouse.

Right. He should stand up. Arden offered to help, no surprise there, but he refused. He wanted to be polite, grateful, or something like that towards her, but he couldn’t muster much of anything. She’d saved his life twice now and he wasn’t sure if he deserved it.

Kaden shoved the thought aside as he shuffled to the front door, struggling to climb the handful of stairs and leaning heavily on the railing on the way. He didn’t knock, and he didn’t announce himself — he didn’t say anything at all. Hell, Kaden hadn’t even looked to see where Monty was. The man could have been right in front of his face and he wasn’t sure that he would have seen him. He did manage to turn to give a small wave to Arden before closing the door behind him.

He was in danger of freezing up — of the emotions catching up to him. He could feel them clawing to the surface. The only way to delay them was to follow the plan, take the next step.

There was no next step.

Kaden looked to his left and saw the couch. Good, a plan. He made his way to the sofa, still shaking as he clung to the towels wrapped around him, and took a seat. There was a throw blanket, colorful and hand woven. Kaden reached for it and layered it on top of the towels, trying to find some warmth. Not because he felt the cold so much as it was something to do. A step he figured he should take. His clothes, shoes, and hair were still wet. He didn’t notice. Rather, he didn’t feel them, the weight of the soaked fabric clinging to his skin. He did know he should do something about them. Take them off. Change clothes, maybe. He tried to determine the next steps as he sat on the couch.

—

It was the swing of headlights throwing bright light across the windows that alerted Monty to the unplanned arrival on the farm. He thought maybe it was Daisy, back a few days early from her trip to Texas, but she’d have let him know, wouldn’t she have? Confused but curious, the zombie abandoned his late-night project of fixing the hinges on one of the upstairs doors, scrubbing his palms on his jeans as he approached the top of the stairs.

The front door opened, but no voice called out to him. Strange. For whatever reason, he didn’t feel afraid or worried, though he probably should have. Who had let themselves in, and why hadn’t they announced their presence? A work-hardened palm trailed along the banister as he descended the steps, each gentle thud of his boots matching the beat of a steady, calm heart. The one he could almost still feel pumping in his chest sometimes. Ears listened carefully for a voice, but none came. Instead there was a shuffling of feet, and the soft cotton sound of weight on the couch cushions and the blanket that was draped over its back being dragged from its spot. A breath, ragged but familiar all the same. Oh, he’d know that sigh anywhere, he thought, and his dead rotten heart sang to the night sky beyond his roof.

“Kaden?” He moved down the hall in earnest, coming to the end of it where it opened up into the foyer and living room. His gaze fell immediately on the couch, and the figure he saw sitting there confirmed what he already knew, as well as something he hadn’t yet realized—this was not a social call. The man was soaked, shivering, and looked beside himself with… what was it? Fear? Grief? Whatever the complex emotion, it carried Monty swiftly to his side, the incognizant grin he’d been wearing falling to the floor just as quickly as his knees did, hands leaping to the other’s face. There were scrapes peeking out from beneath the collar of his sopping shirt, red and angry. “¿Qué pasó? Kaden, what happened?” Monty asked, breathless in his way and already fussing with his clothing, trying to get it off of him to better see any wounds, and to get him warmed up.

—

It took a beat for Kaden to register that he wasn’t alone in the room, not until he felt the tugging at the soaked clothing he was wearing. Right, he was going to deal with that next. That was convenient that someone was handling that. Someone.

Monty. Kaden looked up and locked eyes with Monty. A sense of relief washed over him, safety — but there was something else, too. It was some sort of pit in his stomach, a clump of emotions that felt heavy and uncomfortable that he couldn’t quite name.

He’d nearly died earlier. He thought he was going to die — hell, he almost planned for it at a certain point. It was hard to figure out what came next. Or how to describe it. What he felt or what to tell his partner or anything at all. It was easier to stay still, to stay blank.

If only he could manage that much. Kaden clenched his jaw, tried to hold it shut, push away anything that was trying to boil over inside of him, but his teeth kept chattering instead. It only made him try harder, try to pull from the well of his years of training to endure, to shove emotions away, but it felt like it was melting away from him the more he tried. Looking back at Monty didn’t help – the facade was a wash.

“I don’t–” his voice was shaky, weak but gravely. All the coughing, all the lake water. He hated it. He didn’t know what he wanted but he knew he didn’t want to deal with it. Kaden cleared his throat and tried again, even though his voice wasn’t any stronger than before. “I don’t know where to… Darkling Lake. I was at the lake.” That explained the water, right? That would be enough for now. At least another few seconds. It would have to be enough. Kaden wasn’t ready to process anything more just yet.

—

“... the lake.” The words were repeated softly as the zombie tried to discern further meaning from them, tried to put together a puzzle that only had the corner pieces. He'd… been in it, obviously. The wet clothes and the way he was acting told Monty that it hadn't been by choice. That something bad had happened. But Kaden was here, he was breathing, so who—or what—else had been involved? He felt angry suddenly, angry at the idea of someone having done this to Kaden, having shaken him so badly that he could hardly speak. “Okay, cariño. Let's just worry about getting you cleaned up, ah?” The focus on things he could control was as much for his own benefit as it was for Kaden’s, keeping them present in the moment to take care of immediate needs before they wandered off down darker roads that seemed wholly uninviting.

Peeling off the man's outer layers, Monty then pulled him to his feet and readjusted the blanket over his wet shoulders. “To bed,” he explained, guiding Kaden down the hall to the downstairs bedroom. The rest of his wet clothing was removed there and Monty gathered the clean, dry, warm alternatives that the hunter had left behind in Monty’s drawers. This probably wasn't the scenario he'd had in mind when he decided to leave a few outfits on the farm—it had almost certainly been a precaution against pig shit and dog slobber, but that was neither here nor there. The first aid kit kept for company was retrieved next, and the cowboy carefully cleaned out the wounds he found on Kaden’s body, keeping him sat on the edge of the bed all the while. The worse wounds were secured with bandages, the rest left to breathe—it looked like he'd been dragged over the ground, the injury pattern was one Monty was intimately familiar with, having trained horses. Still he held his tongue in spite of the way his worry and curiosity burned. Kaden would explain in time.

Helping Kaden get redressed as gently as he could, Monty let himself be used as a support throughout, pressing little encouraging kisses to the other's skin whenever his strength waned and he had to stop and gather himself. Once he was dressed, the cowboy insisted Kaden get under the covers to get warm, kneeling beside the bed and brushing his hair from his face with care. “Who brought you here?” It would tell him something. Tell him who he could question, if Kaden was unable to relive the experience.

—

Kaden watched the emotions flash across Monty’s face, but he couldn’t discern a single one. The words made sense, though, and he nodded before following his partner, letting him take the lead. It was easy enough, it meant he could continue to run on autopilot, no thought needed. He was afraid to learn what those thoughts might be once they were unleashed. Better to not touch them.

For as little as he was thinking, Kaden felt even less, as if he was disconnected from his body. It had nothing to do with the pain or the cold or any of that. No, it had more to do with the strangeness of still having a body, a beating heart, limbs and bones and everything that went with them. There was a point earlier tonight where he didn’t expect to have those anymore. He couldn’t quite figure out what to do with that information. Instead, he followed along, let Monty help him out of the heavy clothes and into new, dry ones. One thought broke through the dam – whose clothes were these? It was a short lived question. Right, they were his. He’d left them there. For when he planned to return.

Strange to think he hadn’t planned on visiting the farmhouse that night. Nothing about the night had gone according to plan, had it? If Kaden could find a laugh, he would have let it out.

When he refocused on the world around him, he realized he was sitting on the bed, covers wrapped around him. He felt Monty’s fingertips brush against his cheek as the man pushed his hair back. There was care and kindness laced within them but it almost felt like a sting — a reminder that he had survived the night when he wasn’t sure he’d deserved it. Kaden wanted to reach out to Monty and melt into him, but something kept him at a distance, seated on the bed while Monty crouched in front of it.

He took a deep breath before answering the question the cowboy posed, hoping that he could use the beat to find his voice. Hell, it wasn’t just this voice that was missing, it was the words, too. Kaden released the tension in his jaw long enough to let himself speak. “Arden. She— I met her before. In the woods. The last time I—” almost died. How many times could he almost die before it stuck? It should have stuck. He should have died. And he couldn’t tell if some part of him wanted that outcome to be different or not. “When the werewolf got me.”

He was afraid to meet Monty’s gaze, afraid of what he’d see there now that Kaden had laid out the truth of that situation from months ago. It only seemed fair now that he knew what he was. Might as well be honest. “Saved me twice.” He didn’t know how to feel about that either. What it meant. Did he owe her? Probably. That's right, the fae, she owed him now. Apparently. None of it made sense. It didn’t add up. One of them should be dead. That was how this worked. Even if he didn’t believe in the shit his parents told him word for word anymore, this was still not how it all worked. It was like he was split in two and neither side could agree on how he was meant to feel or what he should do. He could only hope that Monty would be able to help him find some balance somewhere in all of this, that he could help steady him. He’d done as much when physically helping him just now, it didn’t seem too far off. Kaden reached out and laced his fingers with Monty’s, gripping his hand tight as he tried to focus on that — just that and nothing more — and trying to feel real again as he teetered back and forth between the two sides of his self-schism.

—

If Kaden was expecting to see surprise flit across Monty’s face, there was none to be found. He’d known about the werewolf, of course. Gael had turned up on his farm once again after that full moon, bloodied and confused. After hearing that Kaden had been injured, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Of course now he knew that Kaden was a hunter, a ranger… someone designed to kill werewolves, which certainly explained why he’d been attacked in the first place. But he hadn’t killed Gael. He wouldn’t. Monty knew that now, and it was a relief, but… but the guilt overpowered everything else.

He’d known this whole time that Gael was the werewolf that hurt him so badly, and he’d never said anything. How could he? Putting the two men at odds like that, he… he couldn’t do that to either of them. It was better that they did not know. But was it fair? Was it his place to decide this for them?

No, of course it wasn’t. So he drew in a shaky breath, acknowledging that he’d have to come clean about it, he’d have to match Kaden’s honesty if he wanted the man’s continued trust. But before that— “I am glad she was there, then,” he responded, placing his free hand over the one that Kaden was gripping tightly. He was searching for something to ground him, the distant look in his eyes one that Monty recognized easily enough. “Hey,” he whispered, shifting his weight and giving Kaden’s hand a squeeze, “stay here with me, all right? Whatever happened out at the lake… it’s done. It’s over. You’re here now. You are safe.” Relatively. He got up, not letting go of Kaden’s hand as he moved to sit beside him beneath the tented bed covers, the arm between them circling around his back.

“I… I knew about the werewolf. I didn’t say anything because I… well, I thought you were…” He sighed, hoping that if nothing else, turning the conversation to this tangential subject might help his partner come out of this trauma response sooner. “I knew because I… because he showed up here the next morning. Like he did the first time I met him. Covered in blood, confused, and ill. When you told me that you’d been attacked, when I saw the wounds for myself, I knew… I knew it had to be from him. I never asked, because he would not have believed me, and I feared you wouldn’t have, either. I kept it to myself.” He glanced up from their hands, watching Kaden’s expression carefully. “I’m sorry. It was—Gael.”

—

Kaden almost turned to look at Monty when he confessed he knew about the werewolf. Almost. He still couldn’t quite will himself to turn, let alone consider eye contact. It wasn’t entirely surprising that his partner had figured out that it was a werewolf that got him. He was aware of the supernatural the whole time, after all. “He showed up?” Kaden repeated the words but they still hadn’t quite sunk in. What did he mean by that? The werewolf showed up at the farm? Fear gripped him for a moment, worried that the wolf in question had maybe attacked Monty, too and that was why he–

The moment passed as quickly as it came. No, he’d been fine. The only one torn up had been Kaden. He knew that. And it only got clearer the more his partner spoke. Of course he put two and two together, that all made sense. It made sense that it was–

“Gael?” If he had it in him to laugh at the irony, he might have done so. Of course it was the man who insisted he wasn’t a werewolf who nearly tore him to shreds. Of course it was the one he was trying to help the whole damn time. Why wouldn’t it be?

And Monty had to see both sides of it. And he thought he couldn’t tell either of them. Kaden gave his hand a squeeze, even if he couldn’t manage much else. “I’m sorry.” The words were almost a whisper.

Kaden could practically feel the water seeping into his lungs with each word, just like it had earlier that night. The water that was meant to stay lodged there, meant to bury him and smother him all at once. Monty’s words from before echoed in his mind.

You’re here now. You are safe.

He tried to hold on to them but– no, he wasn’t even sure he tried. Or if he wanted to hold onto them. He wasn’t sure of anything. “I don’t know if… I mean, I can’t tell if… I can’t–” Kaden pinched his eyes shut, scrunching his face as if it would help him make sense of any of it. “I almost died tonight.” No, that wasn’t quite right. They’d covered that much. It wasn’t the whole picture, at least. “I thought I was going to and I–” His thoughts came up to the same wall he’d been running into over and over again since he got in the car on the way over. Did he want to die? Hard to say. He was expecting it. He felt like he deserved it, like it was fair. Like that would be the thing to balance the scales, maybe. He’d made some sort of peace with it in the moment. But as soon as he was out of the water, heart still beating, nothing made sense anymore. Would he have preferred if things had gone differently, if Arden hadn’t showed up when she did? It would have been easier, at least, in a way. Less to process. Nothing to worry about. Closure, maybe.

But did he want that? Did he want to–

The question was a wall and he didn’t know how to get around it anymore. And the thought of climbing over it was daunting. His whole life, Kaden was faced with the inevitability of an early death. And even though it was the thing that loomed over every hunter day in and day out, it wasn’t something he dared look in the face. Not if he could help it.

“Hunters don’t die in their beds,” he said, breaking up the silence. Right. That didn’t explain a lot, did it? “I mean we don’t…” Kaden paused to find his breath again. “I’ve never expected to die of old age. Given… everything.” He was sure he didn’t have to paint a picture for Monty about the dangers of being a hunter.

Putain. That still wasn’t an answer to his own question and he knew it. “Tonight, when she asked me how many people I’d killed. And how many families I ruined, I–” He felt his throat constrict around the words. “I couldn’t– I couldn’t say– I mean I didn’t fight back and I was going to…” He buried his face in his palms, rubbing them down his face. It didn’t make him feel any more real. “I was going to let it happen. The nix. Drowning.”

He should have drowned. He was supposed to be at the bottom of the lake. No, maybe not should. Maybe just expected. He expected to be at the bottom of the lake. He wasn’t sure. “She was… I don’t know. Hunters. She was after hunters. And I–” The guilt choked him. Or maybe it was some cocktail of emotions that he couldn’t parse through. Didn’t want to parse through, he should say. Which left him slumped in the exact same place he’d been before, unsure of how to feel or what to do or what the hell he even wanted.

Monty’s presence began to feel a little more real – the arm around his back, the hand clasped on his, the feeling of his body against his side. Kaden leaned into it, if only slightly, and rested their joined hands on his partner’s leg. Maybe it would ground him a little more. Or something.

—

Monty didn’t know what else to say to the confession, to Kaden’s needless apology, so he just shook his head and held the man tighter. Their lives were… complicated, so it stood to reason that their relationships were only more complex. There hadn’t been a good way to approach that situation, he told himself. Not for any of them. Anyway, it was done now. Whether or not he should have told Kaden he knew who had attacked him was neither here nor there, though that wouldn’t stop him feeling guilty about it in the small hours of the morning.

Now Kaden was struggling to share what he was thinking, starting and stopping and starting again, changing his words around and squinting his eyes closed. Monty shifted beside him, watching his face carefully, hanging on every syllable that managed to make its way out, even if it didn’t quite make sense yet. Yes, he’d almost died. He’d thought he was going to, and… well, what else could come next? Monty prayed that he was wrong, but he didn’t interject. He would let his partner struggle his way through vocalizing the feeling, because things like this needed to be said aloud. They needed to be made real and tangible. Only then could Monty witness the true burden and try to help lighten the load.

He hadn’t been wrong. He’d been horribly, achingly right, and watching Kaden wrestle with that reality was probably the most painful thing he’d ever had to do. Hunters died young. They died doing what they’d been raised to do, falling when one creature or one person like Monty or Gael or Dīs succeeded in defending themselves. That, or they were victims of a need for revenge. Justice. Whatever you called it, it just added more death to a world already fraught with it. And the creature that had ensnared his love, this nix, had asked him a question that was impossible to answer. There was an answer, but someone like Kaden couldn’t speak it. Monty had never been able to speak it, either. But he knew that guilt. He was familiar with that weight, but still too much of a coward to accept the judgment passed by others. He fought back not because he felt he was innocent, but because he was afraid of the inky black nothing that surely waited for him beyond the veil. This is where he and Kaden were so different, and where Kaden was most certainly the better of them.

Kaden got quiet again and leaned on him, urging Monty to speak. “I do not think that you… that you deserve to die for things you did when you were not your own person.” He spoke softly, afraid of the parallels he needed to draw. “I cannot accept that as your fate, not just because I do not want to lose you, but because… because it would mean I would have to accept it for myself.” He glanced over at Kaden then, untangling their hands and slipping his arm from around the other’s back to instead frame the face he adored between his palms, forcing the other to look at him.

“You are so much more than the things you have done. The things you stopped doing, the things you learned from… and you are so young, mi corazón. So young.” He searched Kaden’s eyes for something, anything that might suggest he was getting through to him. “There is still so much time to learn and to grow. You cannot shut yourself down as I did, you do not have the luxury of forever.” He let out a small, strangled chuckle, brushing the damp hair from Kaden’s brow once more. “I want to watch you grow old. I want to be there with you, I want… I want you to live.” A pause. “I want you to forgive yourself. You are different, Kaden. Different from the rest that only see monsters to be slaughtered.” He let one hand drift down to the other’s chest, pressing over his heart. “Me being here should be proof of that, don’t you see? You don’t deserve what she did to you.” His vision blurred.

“You must fight.” His voice strained.

“To make it better, you must fight.” It was selfish, he knew. He wanted Kaden to fight because he wanted Kaden around, he didn’t want to have to say goodbye so soon. It was selfish, but it was the truth.

—

Of course Monty was equating this to his own past. Kaden found himself shaking his head. It wasn’t the same. For whatever reason, it felt like his actions were a choice, Monty’s were just about survival. It wasn’t the same. Was it?

He shut his eyes when he felt hands cup his face, the calloused fingers he knew so well were soft in their own way. The touch was too tender, too kind, and too easy to give into. Kaden wasn’t sure he was ready to face it, not yet. He knew everything he was trying to avoid and shut himself off from was waiting for him on the other side of his eyelids.

Kaden wanted to avoid it a little longer, but that voice was like a siren song, calling him to look back at the man he loved. Any composure or detachment he’d managed to cling to started crumbling around him the second he was faced with those brown eyes searching for his own. He bit his lip as if it could stop his vision from blurring, as if it could keep the dam from breaking. Monty’s words were hard to hold onto so he reached up to clasp his hand over the one that had parted from his touch only a second ago. He wrapped the other around his partner’s waist and it felt like he was holding onto him like some kind of life preserver to keep himself from being pulled back under the waves.

Listening to those words, really listening, felt more like fighting for his life than trying to keep air in his lungs earlier that night. Growing old sounded like a fairy tale, a fantasy that wasn’t afforded to him. But god if he didn’t want it to be true for Monty’s sake. For Alex’s and Andy’s. Even Keira’s. If she cared.

His limbs and appendages started to feel like they were his own, like some part of him was in his own body again, even if it was only a little, and the only place he wanted it to be was exactly where it was. He wanted it there, holding Monty, being held by him. He wanted it to exist. He wanted to exist. At least for now.

No matter how much he tried to hold it back (and he tried), the sniffling and the dampness on his cheeks couldn’t be blamed on the lake anymore. Kaden was too afraid to face his voice, to hear how strained it would be, to let it push the floodgates open even wider. A nod was all he could manage. A nod before he pressed his forehead against Monty’s, holding onto him as he tried to ride the wave of emotions trying to drown him in a different way than the nix had. “Okay.” It was all he could manage to croak out after all that time. “Okay.”

—

A tired, hopeful little smile managed to bloom on Monty’s lips as their foreheads met, his eyes closing with some relief. “You do not need to tell me all that you are feeling,” the zombie added softly, wanting to offer some peace and comfort to someone so obviously struggling to wrangle his emotions, “but you should let yourself feel it. It does not make you weak. It does not make me think less of you. I love you, Kaden. I always will.” The scope of the literal truth of that statement wasn’t something he’d overlooked—he knew he would long outlive his partner, short of a slayer getting their hands on him in the next sixty years or so. But if he had been able to carry his love for Hector with him for as long as he had, love for someone who had loved him but not in the way he had wanted, someone who had abandoned that love in his most desperate time of need, then of course he would always think of Kaden fondly, long after he was gone. He couldn’t predict what their future might look like as Kaden aged, as much a victim of the steady march of time as most others were, while Monty remained unchanged. All he knew was that he would be there, in whatever capacity he was permitted, and he would never stop loving him. Not ever.

Sitting there in the quiet, dimly lit room, it was hard not to notice a strange sound coming from outside. Monty slowly lifted his head, angling it to look out the window with a mild look of concern settling into his features. He held Kaden close to him, almost protectively, as there was another odd sound. He took a moment to try and figure out what it might have been, his body language tensing with each passing second. It was probably nothing, but—

There was a sudden chorus of frightened animal cries, and the cowboy leapt from the bed with his heart in his throat. He glanced back at Kaden as he stepped to the window, feeling fear and guilt pulling him in two directions, words failing to form on his tongue. Ripping back the curtain, his gaze fell on the nearest barn and he let out a strangled sort of moan, seeing the beams of flashlights whipping around as they shone between the slats of wood that made up the walls. “I’m sorry,” he breathed to Kaden, holding out a hand as he moved away from the window and toward the door. “Stay… stay here. I’m sorry, I—” He couldn’t just leave it alone, of course, but the timing was… tragic.

The animals were in a panic, their fearful wails and the stamping of hooves drowning out everything else. As he shoved his feet into his boots and grabbed the rifle by the door, Monty could hear that chaos erupting from every barn that housed his livestock. His dogs were barking and snarling in the distance, and there was shouting from voices he did and did not recognize. Horror strangled away his voice as he sprinted for the stables, his only thought being to get Habanero out of there. He knew those cries. He’d heard them before. Something, or someone, was killing his livestock.

He would be damned if he let them get his best friend, too.

#. thread ;#. with ; kaden langley #. bedlam ; pt. i #. bedlam ;#domestic abuse tw #suicidal ideation tw

8 notes · View notes

banisheed · 30 days

Text

TIMING: Current FEATURING: Metzli (@muertarte) & Siobhan (@banisheed) LOCATION: Siobhan’s house, Gatlin Fields CONTENT WARNINGS: mentions/discussion of domestic abuse SUMMARY: While still in Wicked's Rest, Metzli and Siobhan enjoy a quieter moment and Metzli's cooking.

It was a gloomy day, the kind where clouds showed no sign of parting and the heavens cried a downpour so heavy, there was nothing else to do but stay inside. This wasn’t something Metzli minded. The pitter-patter of the rain was a welcomed beat, repetitive in a way that they found soothing as they hovered over the stove. In the pan, there were several gorditas frying, oil sizzling and popping. Almost joining the rhythm of the rain.

“Food is ready,” Metzli declared, plating a few of the bean and cheese pockets next to rice and a side of cactus. “I hope you like these.” They wiped their hand on their apron, grabbing the plate and placing it in front of Siobhan so she could have her meal. Her dog and Fluffy were waiting for their own serving, but Metzli knew better than to give into those wagging tails and big eyes. Instead, they placed a few pinches of cheese into two bowls for them to have, securing their mug of blood and sitting stiffly across Siobhan.

“There is also dessert, but that needs to set a little longer in the fridge. It is flan.” Clearing their throat, Metzli wrung their fingers against themselves and rocked a little, trying to find something idle to do to appear normal. Siobhan knew them better than most, and if strangers could tell they were worse at being a person than before, then it’d be almost futile to be anything else. Still, Metzli wanted some semblance of normalcy, even if it felt a little like the thing they detested the most; a lie.

“How is your food?”

—

The voice roared in Siobhan’s head; no sugar, no oil, you’re not some child. Staring at her plate of food, she imagined and expected the clawed hand of her mother to swoop down and in the rain-coated air, she heard her admonishments. Her mother’s voice was a constant most days, woven into her mind between the parts that told her to breathe and blink. In reality, there were only the sounds of Metzli, her friend, caring for her, cooking for her. The aroma was not of the boiled fruits and stale wheat of her home, but of fat, protein and spice; good food, made just for her. She could hardly believe it. Metzli was the only one that had ever cooked for her. At home, she ate unseasoned, rudimentary foods: wheat, milk, and saltless stew. Her mother told her that a gluttonous tongue was one prone to weakness. With her mother’s words, she learned not to desire, not to yearn, not to crave. Metzli’s cooking pulled saliva from her dry throat.

She didn’t even cook for herself; her diet was grocery store sweets and whatever alcohol she fancied for the day. Someone, the person who had put this food on to her plate, cared for her in a way she didn’t for herself. “Fuck,” she murmured, taking her first bite. It didn’t matter what she bought, what she ate at a restaurant, nothing trumped the flavor born from hands that cared for her, hands she could hardly fathom. Siobhan wasn’t starving, but eating Metzli’s food, she always felt like she was. “Good, so good…” she moaned against her food, lost in some primal ritual between food and the hungry. “Flan?” She asked with her mouthful. “You shouldn’t have.” But she was so happy that they had.

She ate with the ferocity of someone who expected their meal to be taken away, and with the life she’d lived, it was exactly the thing she expected. How many days since a proper meal? How many days since enjoying herself? Finally, Siobhan looked up; oil dribbled from the corner of her mouth. “I feel cruel.” She swiped at it. “You’re drinking blood; you don’t know how good this is for me. And it’s so good. Oh, Irish food--I love it, don’t mistake me--but this?” She gestured at her plate. “Divine.” She’d meant to say something else but the thought was lost to pleasure.

“Thank you, thank you…I don’t think I can say it enough.” Siobhan grinned. “I can hardly believe you’re an artist and not a chef. I’ve told you before that I usually just eat junk, right? This is nourishment.”

—

Mexican food was hard to come by up north, and good Mexican food was an even harder to find. Few establishments held their standards high enough to garner regulars that knew what it should taste like. What without using the proper spices and blends. Hell, Metzli had a hard time finding what they needed in town, sometimes opting to ask Anita for help when they wanted specific peppers and the like from the invisible shops in their phone.

It was odd, in a way, to still be perusing through grocery lists and shopping when food had long since been a necessity. Everything Metzli needed for sustenance was within the warm mug in front of them. Since their death, or their whole life, Wicked’s Rest was the first place they’d truly had meals. The kind they read about in books and saw in those movies about happy families. Being invited to the table was never an offer extended to them. Not when their presence at the table always led to anger and shouting. Metzli had enough trouble as it was, with their stoic and quiet demeanor. They didn’t want to add insult to injury by behaving oddly when things grew too loud.

But that never seemed to be the case anymore.

Eating with Siobhan was much nicer, and even better, she liked having Metzli around. Not only her, but Cass, and Nora, and Leila. They had learned that tables didn’t have to be tense, and smiles could be caused by their mere attendance was enough. Although, their cooking did help, and they liked to be of use, even if they knew they didn’t have to offer something to be loved in return. They were free.

“You are not cruel.” They replied with a shake of their head, taking a sip from their mug. Metzli knew cruel, and it came in many ways. Anyone and everyone was capable of unleashing such treatment, Siobhan had never treated Metzli that way, and they had no reason to believe she would. Despite their existence as an abomination, she loved them, and they loved her back, in earnest.

“I am glad you like the food. Nopales-uh…cactus are not a favorite for everyone, but I did not want the plate to be uneven.” Another sip of their mug. “Learning how to cook was important when I was alive. My family did a lot of working so I would take care of food and chores when I was not on jobs with them.” Metzli paused, back straightening with a thought they deemed interesting running through their mind. “If you think about it, chefs are artists too. They just have different medium.” They bobbed their head side to side. “Well, it also is a little more useful.”

—

“Not cruel for this—I was only joking—though as a general assessment of my character? A little cruel.” Siobhan laughed, a sound she was discovering came easy to her in Metzli’s company. She didn’t have many friends. It was accurate to say she had none, in fact, except the vampire that shouldn’t have been a friend in the first place. What had done it? What forced her to crack? She couldn’t remember now; was it the scars that marred both of their flesh? Was it Metzli’s overwhelmingly tragic history? She took another slow, savoring bite. She’d always been interested in the idea of innocence; its debatable existence occupied her philosophical musings. Despite everything Metzli had done, despite everything they were capable of doing, she felt the presence of goodness tangled somewhere in their soul. It was more than she could say about herself. Now, there was no removing the vampire from the title of “friend”.

“They asked a lot of you,” Siobhan said absently, not wanting to make a larger topic out of it. Metzli’s terrible family brushed uncomfortably with realities of her own life that were—as she insisted—completely different but strangely similar nonetheless. “And cooking now…it doesn’t feel like a chore for you?” Briefly, she worried if there was a moral panic to be had about her dinner.

“Are they?” Siobhan hummed. “Chefs as artists…I’ve never considered that. Of course, I don’t cook nor do I create art. Is the feeling really the same?” She wondered at it, grasping at the illusions of feelings—they were too far removed from her. She didn’t know what it was like to create a piece of art, surely her articulated skeletons were art but their beauty wasn’t something she created, only assembled again. And she didn’t cook. She really didn’t cook. If a pan was in her hands, it was because she meant to use it as a weapon.

“You’re a good person, Metzli,” she said, seduced and entranced by food as she put more of it into her mouth.

—

“You have never been cruel to me. Not even with your jokes.” They rolled their lips over their teeth and offered a smile that didn’t quite meet their eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was all Metzli had to give, and it fell quicker than it formed. In the tune they were now deafened to, they knew, somewhere deep down, they’d fall on the more somber end of the melody. Something with strings made from their heart and keys made from their bones; a bold and powerful cadence that thrummed against the entirety of one’s skin and moved them.

Metzli would be lying if they said they yearned to feel it. They couldn’t. Nothing begets nothing. Not even logic was enough to swell any symphony of nature into crescendos. It could not keep rhythm with the beats of their loved one’s hearts and left them meeting that noise with silence. Metzli still wondered how that could still be so loud. How they were the only one to be affected by it. Then again, nothing begets nothing.

“Cooking never felt like chore.” They replied with a shrug and a shake of their head, thoughts wandering back into the past. Their parents were happiest at the table, relaxed and done with work for the day. Metzli always enjoyed it from behind the door of their room, listening to their parent’s love for each other outweigh their hatred for what life had done to them. “It was nice to be useful and be able to give my parents something to be happy about after working hard. I made them so…unhappy a lot. There…there was relief in being able to fix this just a little bit.” Metzli swallowed, staring distantly with tears streaming down their cheeks, though they were oblivious to it.

They moved on to the topic of chefs and artists with ease, none the wiser to the way their past, even in their new-found freedom to feel, affected them. “I think the feeling is…is…um…I cannot remember.” Brows furrowed as Metzli grew lost for a moment, trying to describe what the feelings were. When nothing clicked, they blinked and refocused on Siobhan. “I am not.” They replied simply, at first. “I am…just a bad person who is trying to be good now. It is not the same as being good. It is…” Trailing off, Metzli rose from their seat and excused themself quietly to go sit down in Siobhan’s living room. They knew they’d begun to ramble a bit too much. She didn’t need to see them in that state.

—

Siobhan frowned, she couldn’t imagine Metzli making anyone unhappy. The fondness that had settled into her mind for her friend was a powerful one, she reasoned. There was no use fighting it back now. “Hey.” Siobhan stood slowly, pulling her gloves from her hands. Then, remembering how Metzli felt about being touched, Siobhan hesitated, hands raised to wipe away tears but incapable of the act. How useless she was, after all. She dropped her hands and as her friend spoke she said nothing and as they moved away, into her living room, she said nothing still. For a moment, she stood alone in the kitchen, battling the ever-present voice of her mother: don’t go, don’t be weak.

Siobhan walked into the living room. “Why did you walk away?” she asked, standing at the foot of her rug, staring at her friend. “Did I say something wrong? Did I…” She paused. “I’m sorry.” Siobhan could probably count the number of times she’d apologized on one hand, but they had been such insignificant gestures to her that she hadn’t bothered to remember any of them. So much of her life existed in echoed memories; misty remembrances of figures and words. In Wicked’s Rest, everything was clear. With Metzli, her friend, each detail was bright. She stared out of the window.

“I don’t know anything about what it means to be a good person,” Siobhan said, “but you make me proud with all you’ve done. Maybe you’re not a good person to the world but to me…to me you’re the best.” She looked over at her friend. “May I sit beside you?”

—

How could Siobhan say anything wrong? How could she ever think that she could be wrong in any way to her friend? From the beginning, even though her nature was to be death’s hands, she never declared anything wrong. Metzli’s existence was an abomination, but she saw worth in their being on that earth. Whether it was for their ability to be useful or their connection to one another, it didn’t matter. There was value. The kind that Metzli never thought they could have. And if what little Siobhan had shared about her life was any indication, they knew she believed something in a similar vein.

“You did no wrong.” Softly, they rocked themself, trying to keep calm as they searched for their words strategically. With a deep breath, Metzli wrung their fingers against themself, feeling their own skin and finding comfort in it. In a matter of moments, they were grounded enough to continue. “Feeling is…a-a lot.” Their brows sewed together as their tears continued to fall and their body rocked. “When I will feel a lot as child, it was bad. Mamá y papá did not like this. You did nothing wrong. I-I…I did.” Because it was true, at least to them. When they were alive and at their truest self, before the clan had any chance to mold them into the creature they were now, Metzli still had no idea what forms of expression were actually acceptable. As far as they knew, for their entire life, none were.

But they knew now that that was a lie, and even better, regardless of their display of emotion, Siobhan was proud. She deserved to know that her thoughts were reciprocated. She needed to know what she was worth.

“Touch me.” Metzli replied, slowly slipping their hand beneath Siobhan’s, guiding it gently to their face. Her skin was cold, but still warmer than theirs. Her palm cupped their cheek perfectly, the softness of it tempting them to lean into the kindness. That was what love was supposed to feel like. Not stinging flesh from a recent impact, or a blooming warmth that stoked into a blaze as tears ran over them, adding to the burn. They were sure Siobhan knew what that sensation was, and it caused a different kind of ache to toss around in Metzli’s chest until tongue could no longer be held in place.

“I am proud of you too, and you are my world. I think that is what matters. Doing bad is not good, but learning and trying is. Doing good for love is…is everything. I think.”

—

“You didn’t. Do anything wrong, that is. You didn’t.” Siobhan didn’t know where the reassurance had loosened from, but the words shot out of her with steady confidence: as if she had never been so sure of anything else in her life. She had never thought of herself as a comforting presence, as anyone that could be a friend, and still the idea was laughable. But just this once, just with this one person… “Well, don’t say it like that.” Siobhan laughed, falling easily into place beside Metzli. Metzli’s skin wasn’t warm, but neither was Siobhan’s. She ran her thumb along the dried tracks of tears, across the bones of Metzli’s face. Underneath it all—the history, the trauma—there were still the bones.

“For love, huh?” The word stung the end of her tongue; the foreginess of it left a bitter taste. It was clear that Metzli knew what it was, but Siobhan could only guess. She’d asked so many times and still the answer wasn’t clear enough. In fact, most of Metzli’s sentiment was inscrutable. What did pride mean if it came from a vampire, someone she should have been liking down on? What was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to a woman like her? She knew her friend was trying to comfort her, as she had been trying to do for them, but instead, she felt propelled from her body. Her soul, hanging somewhere far beyond them, twisted with freezing confusion. Siobhan drew her hand away. “It will be strange to be back with my family after all this.” That wasn’t what she wanted to say. “My mother would hate you.” Those weren’t the words that were sitting in her mind. “What matters in the end isn’t your pride in me, but my family’s.” No, no, she didn’t mean that.

Siobhan stood up, moving across the room to sit—as she should have to begin with—across from Metzli. “I understand that your parents were cruel to you—and for that I’m sorry. I am proud of how far you’ve come now; I hope you go even further. But this?” Siobhan gestured to her house, full of sentimentality and life; still smelling of the food Metzli had cooked. “Isn’t anything for me to be proud of. Going home—When I go home, then you’ll see it: everything I am. Everything I am supposed to be. And you’ll be proud then, of the right things.”

—

Metzli’s face softened further as their eyes closed, a sigh they didn’t realize they were holding tumbling up from their lungs and past their lips. The tenderness in each brush of Siobhan’s thumb made it easy for the tension in Metzli’s body to release, and they opened their eyes to meet hers. Pools of velvet, swirling with both sorrow and a quiet longing, an edge of kindness for Metzli circling around. Each glance from her was a heavy crash with the weight of hidden pains. They wanted to swim.

“Your mother does not need to like me. You are who matters to me.” Even if she wasn’t allowed to let anyone matter to her. Her words didn’t hurt nearly as much as they would have if they hadn’t understood her strict background, and Metzli saw the moment a shadow crept over her gaze, the search for solace in her friend flickering away and disappearing when she stood.

Her body curled into itself, ever so slightly, with uncertainty, and Metzli knew if they could have stared a little longer into her eyes, pushing aside that discomfort of locking a gaze, they could have peered into those windows and found a little more to understand. With haunting clarity, no doubt. Regardless, Metzli stood firm on their beliefs, standing up and marching their way to place themself in front of Siobhan. “Everything you are, everything you have done and will do, is something to be proud of.” They took a step closer, bending at the waist to connect their forehead to hers, “I am proud now and I will be proud later. That is love, cariña. I love you. All of you is very much right to me. All of you is making me proud. I am excited to see you happy with yourself and with your family. It is what you deserve.”

—

Her mother needed to approve everything; it was the way of a mother. Who knew better for Siobhan than the woman who’d birthed her, raised her? The woman she took after in appearance and voice. Her mother had, for most of her life, released her from the freefall of choice. She had always known what was best and right and what ought to be done; she always had an answer. Without her, Siobhan was as lost as a wandering duckling. It was by some miracle that she hadn’t been run over. Siobhan could see what Metzli could not: that she was surrounded by weakness, coated with an idiot’s sentimentality and disrespect. She was friends with a vampire, didn’t they get how wrong that was? Siobhan turned her gaze away.

“You’ll see,” she mumbled, closing her eyes now that Metzli was so close. “Yes, ‘deserve’. Yes, you’ll see.” When she opened them again, she met Metzli’s eyes with certainty. Siobhan looked at them the way her mother had always looked at her, her brown eyes clear of any lingering emotion. What remained was steel: jagged, sharp, opaque. “You’ll see,” she repeated. Metzli wasn’t saying anything wrong—the kindest things that had even been said to her were coming from those lips—but they weren’t right. They weren’t the things her mother would’ve said. Siobhan abruptly stood up, knocking their heads together, which she was sure hurt her more than it did the vampire. For a moment, her forehead throbbed, and then there was nothing.

“It’s not love. This—you. Real love, you’ll see it. It’s there! You, my…acquaintance—you’ll see! How great I really am, how lovely my family and my people and my skills. My wings! You’ll see my wings! I won’t be like this. I’ll be better, you’ll see. And you’ll cast this aside. You—you’ll forget about this. We’ll spit on this part together, curse the past. You’ll see!” Siobhan wasn’t sure how much sense she was making, but all of it aligned in her head. Like cobwebs loosening off an old machine, her mind churned. Her voice rose into the fanatical pitch it had once known well; her eyes widened and she smiled in that way, once, had been the only way she knew how, where the muscles of her face barely wrinkled. Where everything looked painted on. “Don’t say you love me now, you haven’t seen me yet. You don’t know me, but you will. You’ll see.”

—

It was no use. When a belief was so well ingrained into something that it choked one’s soul, there was no loosening that grip. Unlike Metzli, Siobhan had family to speak of. They didn’t treat her well and dangled the possibility of love as long as she made herself useful. From the day she was born, Siobhan had to work for what was rightfully hers, only receiving scraps. As if she were some animal motivated by food. They made it impossible to reach anything she longed for, each step she took only leading to her starvation. It made Metzli’s chest ache as they watched Siobhan justify it all, but there was nothing to do but listen and accept it.

Even if it felt like a lie.

And they hated lying.

“Okay.” Metzli nodded their head slowly, with a slight tremble and a quiver in their chin. It was all they could do to not gag on the acid coated their throat like they were a fae growing sick from the faux acceptance. They took a breath, offering a smile just as small as Siobhan’s. Almost as if to be a reflection, though they didn’t believe in theirs as she did hers. “I will wait until you fly back to me.”

Back home.

“What will you like to do now? It is a very good evening for looking for dead animals. I have perfect raccoon in my car as a gift for you.”

—

Siobhan grinned, feeling as if she had truly won something; feeling something melded to its rightful place. She felt more like herself than she ever had in forty-two years. Siobhan perked up. “Oh, I love car raccoons.”

And with her acquaintance, a vampire, she could think of no better way to spend their time together than a hunt for dead animals in the mud. In Ireland, it would all be different; they would see. Everyone would see, finally, the correct Siobhan.

#love jojo love metzli this thread made me hungry #that's my new poem #writing #s2 #c: metzli #domestic abuse tw #heavy in your arms

9 notes · View notes

mysecretlittlelibrary · 2 years

Text

Weekends Ft. A Flower

Pairing: Dilf!Bucky Barnes x Teacher!Reader

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: literally none

Genre: just your regularly scheduled fluff

Summary: A weekend date with your boyfriend turns into an afternoon with his daughter too

***

You hum along to the music you're playing as you drive to Bucky's house for the afternoon. You'd made plans earlier in the week and you're honestly just excited to see him.

"What are you doing Saturday?" Bucky asked, on his call with you after work like most days.

"Probably just some grading. Nothing interesting planned." You hummed as you crawled into bed for the night.

"We should go to the aquarium. Steve told me they've expanded in the last year or so."

"Really? I think the last time I went to the aquarium was on a field trip we had a couple of years ago. I'd love to go. You live closer to the aquarium than I do so I'll come to yours and we can leave from there."

"Sounds great, how's 2 o'clock?"

"Perfect. I'll see you then." You smiled.

When you pull into Bucky's driveway it's just after 2 when you'd planned to meet. You take a moment to adjust your sundress and knock on the front door. A few moments later Bucky pulls the door open looking a little frantic.

"Hi! Sorry- nice to see you." He smiles with a huff.

"Hi, is everything okay?" You chuckle.

"I'm sorry, I should've called about this- Steve was supposed to take Lily out for the afternoon but his car broke down and he didn't let me know soon enough that I could take her down there so she's still here, up in her room." Bucky explains, running his hand through his hair.

"Well, since we're just going to the aquarium, we can bring her along if you'd like. I don't mind her spending the afternoon with us unless you'd rather reschedule for when someone can watch her." You offer.

"Really? You don't mind? It isn't weird to bring my daughter on a date?" He chuckles.

"I don't know if it's weird or not but who cares? I mean I like Lily, so if she wants to come along bring her." You smile. Bucky lets out a relieved sigh and leans forward to kiss your cheek.

"You are the best. I'll go get her, come on in, make yourself comfortable." Bucky says. You step inside and shut the door behind you as Bucky runs upstairs. It takes a few minutes for Bucky to come back downstairs, this time with Lily in tow.

"Y/n!" She squeals rushing up to you.

"Hello little flower!" You say lifting her into your arms.

"Hi!" She smiles.

"Hi."

"Daddy said we're going to the aquarium." Lily says as you put her back down.

"We are! Are you excited?" You ask her.

"Yes. Uncle Stevie was supposed to hang out with me but his car is broken apparently." Lily tells you.

"Yeah I heard but now you get to spend the day with us so, it could be worse."

"Alright we should get going ladies." Bucky says. Lily grabs your hand and practically tugs you out the front door. Bucky helps Lily into her car seat in the back of his car while you slide into the passenger side. Once Lily is settled, Bucky gets in and pulls off.

"How is school so far Lily? Do you like Mr. Gatlin's class?" You ask her. Although the year started a few weeks ago, you haven't actually talked to Lily about how fourth grade is going for her, especially since her teacher is new to the school.

"I like Mr. Gatlin. He's funny. There's a boy who sometimes tries to mess with me in class so Mr. Gatlin moved him away from me." Lily says with a shrug.

"A boy is messing with you? What boy?" Bucky frowns.

"Was he in my class with you last year?" You ask.

"No he was in Miss Conner's class. Uncle Steve thinks he likes me." Lily says.

"You told Uncle Steve before you told me?" Bucky glances up in the rearview mirror at her.

"Yeah daddy you overreact." Lily says.

"And uncle Steve doesn't?" Bucky scoffs.

"Lesser of two evils." She shrugs.

"Lesser of two evils? What've they got you reading Lily, Animal Farm?" You chuckle.

"What's Animal Farm?" She tilts her head.

"A book you won't need to worry about until at least sixth grade. On another note, uncle Steve shouldn't be telling you this kid likes you because he's picking on you. That's never okay and it's good that Mr. Gatlin isn't encouraging him." You say.

"And if it continues, kick his ass." Bucky winks.

"Or don't because that might get you suspended, especially if you doesn't hit you first. But you can and should still enforce boundaries around this kid." You tell her.

"I do. That's why Mr. Gatlin moved him. I told him I wasn't comfortable sitting next to him." Lily says proudly.

"Good girl." Bucky smiles as he pulls into a parking spot at the aquarium. You get out of the car and wait for Bucky to help Lily out and join you at the front of the vehicle. Lily runs ahead of the two of you to the ticket stand, already talking to the man at the desk before you meet her up there.

"I take it you're the parents?" The man looks at you two. Bucky chuckles as he answers.

"Yeah, can we get two adult tickets and a child's ticket." He tells the man as he grabs his wallet.

"That'll be $32.50." Bucky hands the guy his card and after a few minutes the guy hands its back along with our tickets.

"Alright let's go." Bucky says.

"Time to see the fish!" Lily says marching towards the aquarium entrance.

"Lily! Remember your dad has your ticket, don't go too far ahead." You call after her as you and Bucky walk trail behind. When you get into the aquarium, you let Lily decide your path through the different habitats. She dictates that you have start with the turtles. From there you see some tropical fish, then frogs, following the her decided path through the jellyfish and deep sea fish. Lily stops to read all the infocards when you pass a series of crabs and then she insists you go through the shark tank where she tries see how many of the sharks she can name.

"I had no idea you were so into sharks Lily." You muse.

"My friend Dylan at school really likes them." She says absentmindly. "Daddy make sure to take lots of pictures here so I can show him okay?" She turns to him.

"Oh- alright sweetheart." Bucky pulls out his phone and takes a picture of as many sharks as she can get close to. You even help by hoisting her up on your shoulders to get closer to the ones she wants pictures with that swim near the top of the tank. You're in the shark area long enough to catch them getting fed which Lily asks Bucky to record for her. When she's satisfied with her pictures and videos she runs off to the nearest map to make sure you've seen everything.

"Thanks for letting her come along with us." Bucky says to you quietly.

"You don't have to thank me. I know you're a packaged deal, that's never bothered me." You shrug.

"I mean, you're a teacher- I can't imagine after spending five days a week with kids you wanna spend one of your two off days with another. Who expects to be looking after a child on a date?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I love Lily. Plus, all I expected was to spend time with you. I'm getting to do that and Lily seems happy so- two birds one stone." You smile at him.

"Have I told you how amazing you are?" Bucky's eyes hold such adoration you're almost caught off guard. In the almost six months since your first date Bucky has been everything you could think to ask for in a partner. Considering how reserved he was when you met him you're honestly surprised with how easily he seemed to trust you.

"Alright! I think we saw all the important things, except the gift shop which is up those stairs." Lily announces walking back over to you. Something tells you his trust in you has something to do with the little girl currently beaming up at you both.

"Did you wanna hit the gift shop Lily?" Bucky asks her.

"We gotta dad!" She tells him.

"Maybe we can find you a shark plushy for this Dylan friend of yours." You smile nodding towards the stairs.

"Wouldn't it be weird to give him a gift?" She throws a look over her shoulder as she walks up the stairs in front of you.

"It doesn't have to be. Friends give each other gifts all the time. At least, me and my friends do." You shrug.

"Well, if I see something he'll like I'll think about it." She says assuredly. You giggle to yourself.

"Do you think she likes this boy?" Bucky whispers as you walk into the gift shop. Lily's run off to look around on her own while you look through the overpriced knickknacks with Bucky.

"Well, it's certainly possible. I think fourth grade is a pretty normal time for kids to start exploring crushes." You shrug picking up little things and putting them down.

"She shouldn't be exploring anything." Bucky frowns.

"I didn't mean anything by it Buck- come on, the most they'd do at that age is hold hands. He might kiss her cheek, but it's probably all innocent, they're kids. Plus you don't even know if she likes him. She's probably just excited about a new friend." You laugh a little.

"But-"

"I'm starting to see why she told Stevie about the boy bothering her in class and not you." You joke.

"What do you mean?"

"Bucky, you look ready to lock her away like repunzel at the prospect of her liking a boy which you're only considering because she's taken an interest in sharks cause of a classmate." You muse. Bucky sighs.

"I just want to protect her."

"She's nine and so is he. The only thing she needs protecting from right now is falling off of the monkey bars or scraping her knee on the blacktop not boys." You tell him. "If it makes you feel better, I can talk to Mr. Gatlin about it?" You offer.

"Would you?"

"Of course, if it would ease your mind." You nod.

"Do you know this teacher of hers anyway?"

"Mr. Gatlin? Not well, I mean he's down the hall from me, but I've only spoken to him a couple of times. He seems nice enough. He's friendly, salt and pepper hair, nice smile- the others seem really charmed by him." You chuckle.

"And you aren't?" Bucky asks.

"He's good looking but my eyes are focused somewhere else." You smile with a shrug. Bucky places a kiss against your temple at that.

"Are you getting anything from here?" He asks you after a few more minutes of walking around.

"I don't think so. Nothing really grabs me for more than a couple of seconds." You shrug. He hums and nods.

"Lily!" Bucky calls out and his daughter pops out from behind a shelf.

"Yes dad?" She tilts her head.

"Anything you wanna pick up or can we head to lunch?" He asks.

"Oo let's get lunch." She says skipping over.

"So nothing caught your eye then?" You ask her.

"Nope. Can we go to that burger place with the really good milkshakes dad?" Lily asks grabbing his free hand.

"Sure princess, I think there's one up the street actually. We can walk to it from here." Bucky says. The three of you leave the gift shop and then the aquarium to find the restaurant in question. It doesn't take you long, it's actually only a block away so within minutes you're inside looking at the menu and placing your order.

"So Lily, do you have a favorite shark? Or are you not that into them to have a favorite?" You ask her while you wait for your food at a table.

"I like hammerheads. I think they look funny." She says and you laugh.

"They do look funny don't they?" You muse. Eventually, your food is called and Bucky grabs your trays and brings them back to you and Lily.

"Do you have a favorite shark?" Lily asks you.

"Oh I don't know enough sharks, I think whale sharks are pretty cool. They're really huge ones with spots." You hum.

"Did they have one of those at the aquarium?" Bucky frowns.

"No I don't think so." You shake your head.

"They didn't." Lily confirms.

"Would you ever swim with sharks Lily?" You ask.

"You can do that?!" She gasps.

"Well yeah, some people do it all the time." You tell her.

"No thank you. Sharks are cool when they can't bite you." She shakes her head furiously.

"Don't encourage my daughter to do life threatening things." Bucky jokes with you.

"No worries, she's not interested. I agree, they're much cooler when they can't bite you." You smile at her munching on a fry. You chat through lunch with both Lily and Bucky until food is done and eventually Lily starts to get antsy to go home at which point you head out and start the drive back to Bucky's house. When you get there, Bucky takes Lily into the house while you get out of his car and toss your bag into yours.

"Hey, sorry we had to cut it short-"

"Bucky, don't apologize for having to be a dad. To be honest she lasted longer than I expected. I thought for sure she'd tap out as soon as she stopped eating." You chuckle.

"I hope you had a good time today." He says. You lean forward and place a kiss on his cheek.

"I had a wonderful time." You tell him quietly.

"Yeah?" He blushes shyly.

"Yeah." You nod with a giggle.

"Cool- me too." He nods. "I'll uh- I'll see you soon then?"

"Of course you will." You smile.

"Good- great. Call me when you get home." He says.

"Okay. Have a good rest of your day." You tell him.

"Yeah, you too." He steps back enough to let you get into your car and watches you drive off. Only once your car is completely out of sight does he go back inside with a content smile on his face. Bucky's not sure he'll ever get tired of the light feeling in his chest he has every time he goes on a date with you. Every single date leaves him simultaneously thinking he could fly and yearning for the next time he can see you. A small part of him worries he's far too attached so early in the relationship, but with how well you do with Lily he can't help but imagine you as permanent for the both of them. How can he not want that when you treat his daughter so well? It's probably too soon to say this out loud but he's definitely falling in love with you and on your drive home you find yourself thinking you're well on your way to saying the same.

***

Tagged Users: @marvel-fandom23 @alana4610 @marvel-wifey-86

Anthology Masterlist

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky #marvel #dilf bucky #There is no right way anthology #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes

245 notes · View notes

spice-and-fire · 1 year

Text

hello!

best exotic tea in gatlin fields has been receiving a few weird calls lately, so i just wanted to answer them all right here, right now: no, we do not have bagels, and no, i have no idea what is going on at the art walk.

we do have a lot of great teas for sale, so if you want some tea with your bagel, come visit us. thank you. that is all!

#‧͙⁺˚･❀ starter ❀･˚⁺͙‧#wickedstarter

37 notes · View notes

mortemoppetere · 2 months

Text

TIMING: current LOCATION: a pond in wicked's rest PARTIES: @closingwaters & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: teagan makes good on her offer to help emilio with his problem. CONTENT: mentions of past parental death, sibling death, & child death

Lucio had picked up on the first ring. Breathless, like he’d run to answer, like he’d been afraid if he were a second later, he’d have been met with the dial tone. It wasn’t an unfounded concern. Emilio had spent half an hour staring at his phone before dialing, another fifteen minutes with his fingers hovering over the ‘call’ button once the number had been typed in. This was the first time he’d been the one to reach out to Lucio since learning of his uncle’s survival and, if things went the way he hoped they would, it would be the last.

On some level, he wondered if that was unfair. He hated his uncle for saving his life. Some might call that cruel, he knew. Some might say that Emilio was being unreasonable, that Lucio deserved a second chance. But God, Emilio couldn’t look at him without feeling the dried, crumbling blood beneath his own fingernails. He couldn’t hear his uncle’s voice without hearing his daughter’s screams, couldn’t have a conversation with him without bodies flickering in the corner of his vision.

There wasn’t a world where Emilio could have a relationship with the man who’d raised him without being reminded of the man who’d denied him the chance to raise his own daughter. Not when those men were one and the same. It wasn’t good for him, for whatever was broken in his head. He was backsliding, falling back to where he’d been two years ago. And he didn’t want that. He wanted to get better, to be better.

So he dialed the phone, and Lucio answered. On the first ring, breathless and full of hope. And Emilio ached a little, but it was necessary. It was what he needed.

He arranged for both Teagan and Lucio to meet him in Gatlin Fields. Near a pond, which he thought might make Teagan feel a little more… secure. Lucio wouldn’t attack her, not if he thought it would piss Emilio off, but he figured she might want the added level of security, anyway. Emilio stood at the edge of the water, absently fiddling with a loose string on his shirt. It was one of Teddy’s. He hadn’t told the ex-demon where he was heading, hadn’t wanted them to ask to tag along because he would have said yes if they’d asked and he didn’t want them here for this. It was a shitty thing he was doing. He knew that. It was the kind of thing his mother would have been ashamed of, the kind of thing that would make Rhett hate him even more if he ever found out, the kind of thing that would make his friends frown even if they wouldn’t say anything about it. He was punishing someone for saving his life. He was punishing himself for being saved. But there was nothing else to be done.

Lucio arrived first. It wasn’t much of a surprise, given how eager he’d been. He approached carefully, hands at his side. Emilio tensed at the sight of him. He didn’t used to. The change was something Lucio noticed, and he swallowed and looked away. It was funny — this was the man who used to be a safe place to land, used to be the one opening the door to the shed where Emilio had been locked away for hours or days or weeks or years or lifetimes and letting him back into the sun. Now, given the choice, Emilio thought he might pick the damn shed.

“Mijo,” Lucio greeted, and Emilio flinched at the word. Lucio noticed that, too, seemed to hesitate a little. “What’s this about? Why are we here?”

There was a flash of Flora’s corpse at the edge of the pond. Emilio didn’t let his eyes dart to it, though it was a near thing. Instead, he forced himself to look over his uncle’s shoulder at an approaching figure. He moved past Lucio in favor of greeting Teagan with a nod.

“I didn’t know how to tell him,” he said lowly. His voice was small, and he felt small. He felt like that fucking six year old kid, just waiting for someone to let him out of the shed. There was a reason, beyond giving Teagan the security of the water, why he’d chosen to do this out in the open. The walls couldn’t close in on him if there were no walls at all.

“Milio.” Lucio spoke from behind him, and Emilio tensed. “Who is this? If — If you’re going to kill me, I’d think you’d do it yourself. I’d think you’d at least give me that.”

—

Helping a hunter wasn’t ever a gesture the nix ever conceived doing. It felt like a betrayal to her family, in a way, but there was something to be said for a man like Emilio. Though given the title of a slayer, he modified the teachings he was taught from childhood, enforcing the idea that the beasts he was meant to hunt were people too. And they were, all of them. Even those like Teagan who spilled blood for the sake of nature or their calling. It was never black and white, from what she had learned and had been living within. It was for that reason that she found it so easy to help the man take care of his own blood without spilling any of it.

Out of every hunter Teagan had met, Emilio was, by far, only of the only that stood in the grey area, and she wanted to stand there with him. By a pond, of all places, which made the nix’s stomach flutter with gratitude. He understood what she could do mere feet away from it, which meant she had his trust and permission to do what she needed if things went awry. In doing so, she thought it was only fair to give hers to him to keep the balance, and she hoped he could see the resolution and determination in her eyes as she walked up to stand next to him while the other stood ahead.

“Well ya could’ve told a lady a warnin’. Now I gotta explain myself.” She greeted quietly with a playful roll of her eyes, trying to relieve some tension and then standing quietly. There was something in the man’s eye that didn’t quite sit right with the fae, making her stomach sink and her nerves burn. Her instincts were rarely wrong, but they were forged in the fires of a past she could hardly let go of. Perhaps, Teagan thought, relying on them at that moment wasn’t the best course of action if she was going to venture towards healing. Ideas to make one particular warden pay, be damned.

“Not here to kill, don’t ye worry. And you don’t gots to know my name either. Just…a friend.” She sniffled, patting her eyes dry as she made her way toward to water until her heels touch the edge. With her hands raised as a gesture of peace, Teagan paused just before urging the water to lap across her feet as a way to reassure herself. As long as the water was near, she was safe. They were safe. But Teagan didn’t think Emilio’s uncle had any intention to attack. He seemed all too keen on mending their relationship. If there was one to be saved at all.

“Anyways, go on, then. Don’t mind me. I’ll just be back here until ya need me.”

A friend. Was that what they were? Emilio didn’t feel the need to correct the term, didn’t feel like he should deny it. A short time ago, he would have. Months ago, just after that shit at the lake or Teagan’s encounter with Ren that had sent her spiraling backwards in her own attempts at growth, he would have been quick to speak up. Even to Lucio, even when it didn’t matter. Emilio’s stubbornness would outweigh his logic every goddamn time, and he knew it. But that desire to reject the notion of friendship didn’t exist here the way it had back then. He didn’t know if it was because of the heaviness that had settled over everything since his uncle’s reappearance or if he really did consider Teagan a friend now. He liked to think it was the latter, but maybe the former was more likely. Old dogs and new tricks didn’t go together, after all.

Lucio continued to eye her warily, eyes darting between her and Emilio with a question curving into his brows. “You need a friend here for this? I don’t recognize this one.” Which meant he hadn’t found anything about Teagan when he’d been digging into Emilio’s life, hadn’t seen any presence of her in his contacts. It made sense. Until just a few weeks ago, he was pretty sure she’d had him blocked on most of her accounts.

“Yeah, well, you scared all my other friends,” Emilio bit out, trying not to think about the messages he’d gotten while his uncle had been making his rounds. He’d scared Emilio, too. He could still feel a phantom stutter of it in his chest, like his heart hadn’t yet caught up to the fact that he wasn’t in danger.

(What a stupid notion. He was always in danger.)

Glancing to Teagan, he nodded his head. She’d wait. She’d let him do what he needed to do, and then she’d help him close the chapter. He felt a surge of gratefulness that he didn’t dare voice, and he turned back to Lucio. His uncle watched him expectantly, glancing down to the water at Teagan’s feet and the slightly unnatural way it was moving.

“She’s a nymph,” Emilio confirmed lowly. Lucio let out a sound of quiet surprise.

“I doubt Everett would approve of —”

“He’s not here,” Emilio snapped, anger and grief swirling together in his chest. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?” Lucio looked almost apologetic, and Emilio continued before he could voice an apology that he didn’t want to hear. “I need you gone, tío.”

“I told you, I don’t —”

“No. I need you gone. With you here, it’s like —” He cut himself off, hands trembling as he brought them up to push the hair off his forehead. It was sweaty, in spite of the cold. He let out a slow, shaky breath. “I held her, you know. After, when I found her in — in that damn room. I held her, and there was no heartbeat. It took me weeks to get the blood out from under my nails. And you — You’re here, and I can feel it sticking to my hands. I can feel the weight of it. So I need you gone, Lucio. And if you give a shit about me, the way you say you do, you’ll give me that.”

A silence stretched over them. Even the lapping of the water at the edge of the pond seemed muted, somehow. Finally, Lucio spoke. “What do you need her for, then?”

“For you to promise.” He glanced to Teagan, offering her another nod. “You promise. She makes sure you stick to it. And — And we all go on with our fucking lives. You walk away, and I stop seeing my daughter’s corpse around every corner.” It was saying too much, he knew. It was telling Teagan something that so few people were aware of. But she was here, and she was giving him this. She could know if she wanted to know. She’d earned that much.

“You know this won’t stop that,” Lucio said. Emilio only shrugged. It had to be better, didn’t it? It had to be better than carrying on this way.

—

Emilio’s partial tale felt all too familiar, stoking a pain that never quite went out for the nix. She knew, if only a little, that the slayer had experienced great loss, but she’d never cared enough to ask. Or maybe she respected that heavy burden enough to leave it alone. Regardless, Emilio’s story was a tragic one, and it intersected so closely to Teagan’s that she couldn’t help the hitch in her breath as he spoke. Whoever he held, whether it be a friend, a lover, or child, they were important, and he was reliving that awful tragedy over and over again.

Teagan knew a thing or two about that. She’d held dead bodies, too. In arms much too small to keep them fully wrapped in an embrace. She felt the blood caked in her clothes, heard the screams until they faded into an endless silence. Even in that moment, she could, and she was surprised to feel sympathy for a hunter that knew exactly how that felt. The water reacted in earnest, a few ripples turning into large laps against the edge of the pond. With a swallow, a tear cascaded down Teagan’s cheek and she quickly wiped it away, looking at Emilio with a somber and apologetic look before looking at his hands.

How tired were they? And how many lives had they taken? Did they feel the same as hers? Mentions of a promise forced Teagan back into the conversation, and she shook her head and blinked her thoughts away. Musing would have to wait.

“Mind the words, dear.” Stepping forward, the water loosely followed, never thinning too much to remain near her feet. “Every corner. You’re causing more harm than good here, and by the sounds of it, he’s done letting you harm. A little too good at that harming, aren’t ya?” Teagan knew her tone had a little too much attitude, as if she were defending a friend, but that was exactly how she wanted it to be heard. She was a protector. They both were. It just so happened that Teagan was taking the reins that time around, and she was happy to do it. Her. A hunter killer.

The tides really have changed.

“So,” Teagan cut to the chase, not letting herself get too preoccupied with her thoughts. “Promise me you’ll leave come morning, and you won't come back.” She took a small step forward, eyes darkening as they locked with the man’s. “Promise me you won’t come looking for him in this town again, or in any place he decides to live. Because…” She scoffed, shaking her head, “You’ve already destroyed his life once. Don’t go on being daft and ruining it again.”

Lucio looked stricken, and Emilio wondered if it was real or not. There was a time when he wouldn’t have doubted it at all, a time when he’d taken everything Lucio said and did at face value and accepted it all as the truth. As a young boy growing up without a father, he’d found it easy to allow his uncle to slot into that empty space, hadn’t questioned it at all. Lucio would never lie to him, because Lucio loved him. Lucio would never hurt him, because Lucio was on his side.

And then, the streets were filled with blood and his daughter was dead in his arms and his uncle stood in the middle of it all with apologies that solved nothing and good intentions that led them both into Hell.

Funnily enough, he believed the look on Teagan’s face without the same swirling of doubt in his gut. Teagan looked empathetic, and even though Lucio had been on those bloodstained streets, even though he’d lost the same people Emilio had lost, he found Teagan’s empathy far more digestible than his uncle’s. Whether it was simply because she hadn’t been present for the massacre in Mexico or because she’d been in his position when it was her family who was slaughtered was hard to say.

Lucio looked at her, too, eyes darting over her face like he was trying to puzzle out what her expression meant, what her tone implied. He’d never been good at reading people. He’d never needed to. Elena was the one who’d unraveled intentions and viewed situations with a critical eye to plan their resolution; Lucio was the steady hand. Teagan’s expression was a mystery to him, Emilio knew. He didn’t have the tools to understand any of it.

So it was no surprise when his eyes shifted back to the more familiar variable, searching for a chance to meet Emilio’s gaze. Emilio refused it, focusing on a spot in the distance instead. “I never meant for any of this, Milio,” Lucio pleaded. “You have to know that. I’m sorry. I loved her, too. You know I did.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emilio choked out, clenching his fists so tightly that he felt his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. “It doesn’t matter what you meant to happen. She’s dead, Lucio. They all are. And you — All you are now is a reminder. A reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to me. And I’m fucking tired, man. I’m tired of being reminded. You said you wanted to help me? This is how you do it.”

It was quiet, for a moment. Lucio kept looking at Emilio, and Emilio kept looking anywhere else. Then, with a defeated exhale, he turned back to Teagan. “I’ll do it,” he said quietly, “if you promise me something, too.”

“That’s not —” Emilio’s protest was silenced by a sharp glare from his uncle, that old lesson of speak when spoken to flooding back over him and filling his lungs, choking off any further words he might have wanted to say. He felt like a child again. Funny how good Lucio was at making that happen.

Looking to Teagan again, Lucio tilted his chin up. “You promise me… You promise me you’ll look out for him. Don’t let him… Don’t let him die for my sins. You care about him, too. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. So… promise me you’ll do everything you can to make sure he’s okay, and I’ll do what you’re asking me to do.”

—

Teagan was baffled at the amendment the man was requesting, and she grit her teeth to prevent herself from reacting harshly. Rolling her shoulders, she shook her head with a few disappointed tuts. “Why are you lot so horrible at weaving words together? Not just that, boyo, but you lost the right to request anything a long time ago.” She inhaled deeply, a little shakily as she found herself actually considering the proposal. That in itself was a feat for someone like her, someone who’s vengeance was toward anyone like Emilio. Her heart raced, at odds with itself as it ran in circles trying to find the right place to take a rest.

Taking the man’s amendment would be stupid, what with Emilio’s self-sacrificial nature. No one could protect him from himself or his need to reunite with his family without taking another way out. Still, there were other things he could be protected from, and it could be done. Teagan just had to alter the request slightly so that the smallest of injuries wouldn’t send her careening into death’s arms. Because she always saw worth in protecting, and to her surprise, once again, she wanted Emilio to fall beneath her arms. He was her friend now, and maybe it’d take a while to consider him someone she loved, but she did care about him, and by the Waves, she understood what he needed.

“Promise me you won’t come looking for him again or contact him, and I’ll be there to help him and protect him from death as best I can, when I can. Can’t stop him from being himself.” Teagan shuddered, a tear falling that she didn’t realize was brimming in her eye. The man was a blurry mess of colors and blobs, and for a few moments, she kept quiet to wrap her mind around the fact that she was doing this for a hunter. One she actually wanted to keep from harm, though she knew that would be like trying to keep her from the water.

“Deal?”

Lucio’s insistence at getting something out of the deal was hardly surprising, though Emilio doubted it would be accepted. Teagan owed him nothing and owed Lucio less. He half expected her to laugh, or to simply walk away, and he prepared himself to argue his uncle into complacency. He needed Lucio gone, and if this option didn’t work, all he’d have left was the knife in his pocket. He didn’t want it to end that way; he didn’t think Lucio did, either. It was a good bargaining chip, a decent threat. Do this, or I’ll kill you. Wasn’t that the only thing either of them ever really understood?

But, to his surprise, Teagan didn’t leave. She didn’t demand that he talk sense into Lucio, either. Instead, she wove together a promise, and Emilio let out a small sound of protest. “You don’t have to do that,” he said quietly, looking at Teagan. “I’ll get him to agree either way. You don’t have to do that.”

“You’ll get me to?” Lucio sounded half amused, the way he used to when Emilio was a kid going on and on about how he knew he’d be able to kick Rhett’s ass if it came down to it, or insisting that he had no idea who’d kicked a hole in the wall of the shed. Back then, that fond amusement in his uncle’s voice had filled him with warmth. Now, like everything else, it only ached. Emilio shot him a glare, but the world felt too heavy for him to put any kind of heat behind the expression.

Lucio looked away, settling his gaze on Teagan instead. He seemed to consider her for a moment before nodding. With one last glance to Emilio, he spoke. “Okay.” He was looking at his nephew as he said it, though the word was clearly meant for Teagan. “Okay. I promise. Give me until the morning to get gone, and I’ll leave. I won’t reach out to my nephew again, and I won’t look for him. But…” He looked back to the nymph now, a hint of curiosity in his expression. “This won’t prevent him from reaching out to me, will it? If he chooses to.”

“I won’t,” Emilio bit out. “I won’t choose to, so it doesn’t matter.”

Lucio paused for a moment before sighing. “Okay,” he said again. “It’s done, then?”

—

Of course Emilio would want to argue. Whether it was to keep Teagan from doing something stupid or to keep himself from having someone take care of him, she wasn’t sure. Regardless, she stood firm, quieting Emilio just as quickly as he protested. “It’s my decision.” The two men went back and forth again, and it wasn’t until Emilio’s uncle finally complied that Teagan inserted herself back into the conversation again. “It won’t, but it’s as he said, it doesn’t matter so long as it’s his choice.” She rolled her eyes and backed away, water following closely again. The negotiation was at its end, and if Teagan was reading Emilio correctly, he needed his uncle gone from his sight as soon as possible.

“It’s done.” The pond lapped with increasing force, idling for just a brief moment. An eerie silence fell around the trio, and as a smile grew on Teagan’s face, the water struck Emilio’s uncle. Not with enough force to hurt. Just a little push for him to leave. A small sentiment, considering how the nix’s and slayer’s first interaction went. “Now leave. If you’re not gone by morning, who knows what’ll happen to ya. Hope you don’t got too much to pack.”

Sauntering back over to Emilio, Teagan patted his shoulder, offering a slightly amused smile. She trailed along the edge of the pond, landing herself a few feet from the two men in an attempt to give Emilio the space to give whatever goodbye he wanted. If there was going to be one at all. At this point, Teagan wouldn’t be surprised if Emilio left his uncle on the ground in a sputtering mess to get the water out of his mouth. Alone. Just as he had left Emilio after his horrendous mistake.

There was no kind of outward sensation accompanying the bind. No physical feeling, no tangible proof. There hadn’t been any when Siobhan bound him, either, hadn’t been any way of knowing that it had been done beyond the knowing. Even so, as Lucio made his promise and Teagan confirmed that it was done, Emilio felt a rush of relief wash over him so thoroughly that it felt like a physical thing, like the waters of the pond Teagan stood at were rushing over his shoulders and washing the blood off his hands at last. His shoulders slumped, and he nodded.

Lucio took a step away from the water, looking down at his feet and swallowing. “I won’t change my number,” he said, trying to meet Emilio’s eye. Maybe it was childish, the way Emilio refused to raise his gaze and allow it. Lucio stopped trying after a moment, sucking his teeth. “If you ever wanted to talk, I won’t change my number. I — I love you, Milio. I mean that. It won’t change. So I won’t change my number, and you can call me. Okay?”

Emilio didn’t respond and, after a moment, Lucio took off. To pack his things, maybe, the way Teagan suggested he do. The moment he was gone from view, Emilio released a breath, letting himself take a step backwards. He trudged over to Teagan, hands stuffed in his pockets out of view as he fiddled endlessly with the ring on his finger. He could feel his hands trembling, but the rest of him was, too, so what did it matter?

For a moment, he stood beside Teagan in silence, looking out at the water. The waves lapped around their feet, and he wondered how much of it was her and how much of it was nature. He closed his eyes, listening to it. He thought it might be peaceful; he didn’t know for sure. Peace wasn’t something he was familiar enough with to recognize. “You —” He broke off, inhaling shakily. “You told me you owed me a favor, once. After the shit with Arden in that barn. This was it. We’re even. You don’t owe me anything, I’ll say whatever I need to say to… get rid of that. This was…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Thank you. For this. I know — I know what it means, saying that to you, but I’m saying it. I mean it. I appreciate it.”

—

The man continued to babble, and there was no sense to them, as if he’d lost all of it to the conversation he’d had with Emilio. Or had it left him a lot sooner than that? Perhaps, if Teagan knew how long ago Emilio had lost everything, she’d be able to give an estimate in years, but that mattered very little right then. Next thing she knew, she and the slayer were standing alone by the pond, and she had to stop herself from scoffing at the show of gratitude. Friends didn’t need to express that, but Teagan understood the sentiment, especially after how strained and uneasy their relationship was. She chose to ignore it, anyway, linking her arm with Emilio’s in a show of compassion.

“You hear that?” Without saying a word, the nymph gestured for Emilio to close his eyes again. She’d seen his attempt to listen to Mother Water, and she hoped with a little help from her, that he’d be able to hear what she was offering. After what he’d been through, Teagan felt like he deserved to know what that peace was, and how to listen for it when he was alone. “Water is your friend now, and it’s always been a part of you. No need to fight it. There’s even a bit of water in that whiskey you like so much.”

She chuckled lightly, clearing her throat. “But really listen now, okay? He’s gone, and this is what you’re hearing now, after all of that. He’s gone and you can let yourself relax next to the one thing that holds memories far longer than you and I will exist. In some way, the cycle continues, but it’s the bend that you have to focus on. Hear it? Hear how the water trickles and bubbles and treads against itself?” Teagan gave Emilio’s arm a squeeze, closing her eyes with him as she guided them both through the sounds. She could feel the water’s strength thrumming against her skin, and the pull of its love in her chest. Emilio couldn’t feel it, but maybe, just maybe, he could hear what she meant. “The bend has many directions, and water always flows. It’s peaceful, that’s what it is. Focus on that, and know that you can go anywhere now.”

It still felt like the world was closing in. Like his lungs were constricted, like he was locked in something so much smaller than that training shed, like he was bleeding out on the living room floor. How long would it take for the healing to feel like healing? Teagan’s family had died over a decade ago, and it was still etched into her skin. How many times would Emilio have to relive that day? How many more times would he wake up on that living room floor?

Teagan’s arm linked with his, and she didn’t mention the thank you. Emilio didn’t know if that meant she hadn’t bound him; it was hard to care much about it. After today, after what she’d done for him, there were certainly worse people to be bound by. He tried to listen to the water, tried to imagine it the way she was saying — something that was a part of him, a part of the whiskey in his glass and the people in his heart. There was some comfort in it, even if his chest still felt tight. Even if the world was still closing in.

He nodded along as she spoke, even if he suspected it made more sense to her than it did to him. Naturally, Teagan understood water and nature far more than Emilio ever could, and he’d never pretend to believe otherwise. Still, it wasn’t completely incomprehensible, what she was describing. And the fact that she was taking the time to say it, to try to offer him some kind of comfort? That meant a lot. “I’m going to… hang here for a while,” he said quietly, and it came out hoarse. “You don’t have to stay. I’m all right. I just… need a minute.”

—

The emotion in Emilio’s voice was all Teagan needed to know that he’d listened for what the water offered, understood what he had now, if only a little. It was a lot to experience, and for someone who wasn’t connected as she was, he certainly seemed to wade the settling waves and be tethered to them. As much as he could without being a nymph, anyway. Seeing that is what allowed Teagan’s heart to accept his request to be alone. Because she’d had to listen and wade many times before, her entire life, really, and she knew Emilio had to do the same.

Much like him, or exactly like him, she’d had to listen for the bend while she accepted her new life, her new place with fewer siblings and more grief than she thought possible. Teagan let herself be swallowed by it as she rolled and tumbled within, and she was disappointed to admit that she didn’t allow any room for peace like she urged Emilio to search for after letting the man who essentially killed his family leave. That realization burned like acid in her throat, and it trickled down into her stomach until nausea hit her like a truck.

“Okay.”

Emilio let go of a murderer in some way, but she could not, and maybe she never would. There were too many to allow to live, and closure wasn’t something Teagan knew how to find in that bend she listened for. Not yet. But maybe if Emilio had let go and chose to find a path that suited him better than the weight he forced himself to carry, then she could too. Eventually. For the moment, Teagan didn’t let herself linger in her head or in Emilio’s space, and she walked away feeling a little heavier, but appreciated knowing the slayer let her take a piece. He wasn’t so bad. For a hunter.

#closingwaters #teagan: what the water gave me #wickedswriting #child death tw #sibling death tw #parental death tw

8 notes · View notes

dirtwatchman · 4 months

Text

PARTIES: @dirtwatchman and @ariadnewhitlock TIME: Mid-September WHERE: Slumberland SUMMARY: Caleb and Aria go apple picking at Slumberland. Aria gives him some news that is very upsetting but the two talk it out. WARNINGS: Talks of Aria's kidnapping but it's mostly just soft.

There was one thing that Caleb always looked forward to during the fall season and that was his annual visit to the apple orchard in Gatlin Fields. He’d made it a tradition in the years since he’d found the place. Sure, Slumberland wasn’t perfect with the random sleeping bodies littering the orchards on occasion and the lack of seasoning as simple as salt but it was one place where he could always enjoy the smell of fresh apples. With his dulled senses he’d never dreamed that he’d be able to enjoy that smell again but the minute he stepped onto the farm the sweet scent always filled him with a happiness he didn’t get very often. It was a nostalgic thing, the longing for normalcy after becoming anything but always satisfied while walking through the rows of trees ripe for the picking. The only thing that could make it better was company and he had the best person joining him this year.

Aria had been in his life since she was born, her father having been a very important person to him, and he often made it a point to spend time with her when he could. Especially after what they’d thought was her death almost a year ago. When she’d agreed and had even been excited to head to the orchard with Caleb, the zombie had been elated. He hadn’t seen her outside of the hardware store in a month at least and his enthusiasm for the trip was definitely showing, a rare sight for anyone when it concerned him.

“How many apples are we picking today?” They were walking through a row of the trees, a basket in his hands while they searched for the best place to start. “Do you want to make anything with them or is this trip all for my benefit?” Questioning eyes cut over to the blonde, accompanied by a gentle smile. Caleb was joking with her but in the back of his mind he did wonder whether she truly wanted to be here. It never went away, that nagging voice, and always made him question even the simplest of things.

She’d known Caleb from the time that she was born, because he’d known her parents since they were kids, or at least since they were teenagers, and given that Ariadne had been born when her parents were only just about twenty, Caleb had been in their lives then, and remained there to this day. She supposed that it made sense – her parents weren’t the sort to have superficial friendships, which was a trait she’d liked to think they’d passed on to her (though they’d both had far more friends in school than she had).

“As many as I can get, I think.” Ariadne nodded. “Can we get more than one bag? And oh, I want to make stuff – cookies or crumble or any sort of thing. With you, maybe? Or with my partner. I’m still not too much of a good cook. Baker. Whatever.” She offered him a small smile, too, hoping he’d know that she meant what she said. That she really loved hanging out with him whenever she could, however much she could. “Also, we have go get cider donuts, right? Lots of them. They smell the best and taste the best.”

Her excitement made him smile, Caleb truly happy to hear that she wanted to be there. He worried about Aria a lot these days and just wanted to be there in case she needed him. He'd had his person to rely on while growing up and even though her parents were nothing like his foster parents had been he knew that sometimes it was easier to talk to someone who wasn't...well, a guardian. ”We can do as many bags as you want. I'd be happy to get twenty if that's where you'd like to land.“ Humor laced his tone, only because he didn't think she'd really want that much, but he was willing to go that far if she did.

The suggestion for them to cook together had his smile slipping a little. Caleb had loved to cook and bake when he was alive but it was a little hard to do when he couldn't actually taste much to be able to get a feel for how the dish was going. It was possible, of course, but harder. She didn't need to know that though. ”Yea, we could definitely work on something. I think my specialty is pie, though. Maybe your partner knows the crumble better? They're really good at baking, right?” He hadn't actually met Aria's partner but he'd heard a little about them from the blonde. “Or am I making that up?”

Stopping under one of the apple trees, Caleb looked up at the low hanging fruit, taking one in his hand but leaving it on the branch. “ Think this tree looks pretty good, what about you? Think the apples are ripe enough?” He plucked the one in his hand from the tree to hold out to her before he answered her question. “Oh, no contest. Can't leave here without the donuts. Maybe we can get a few boxes and they can last a little bit without getting stale on us.”

“I do dance, not weightlifting, Caleb,” Ariadne giggled. It was easy to be her happier self around people like Caleb and Oliver, people who’d known her from the time she was absolutely tiny. So even if some other things felt especially heavy right now, going apple picking with Caleb felt light and good. “So I don’t think I could even hope to carry twenty bags. Plus, that might mean less for others, and I don’t want to take away from what others want or need.” She never did.

Ariadne looked over to him, watching him carefully. “Pie’s good, and yeah – they’re really good at literally everything. They’re actually the best.” She glanced down at the ground, smile quickly spreading across her features. “You’re not making that up. They can cook and bake and – yeah. You should meet them sometime. I think you’d like them a lot. If you like me, which I think you do, they’re like, the literal best ever, better than I could ever be, so…” she neglected to point out that part of what made Wynne so much better than her was the fact that they weren’t undead and hadn’t killed somebody.

Caleb didn’t need to know that, though.

“I think those look perfect! I am always tempted to eat some of the apples on the way, even though I guess you’re technically not supposed to.” Ariadne grabbed an apple of her own, carefully placing it into a bag. “Good. Yes, I am in support of that. Mom and dad said I should bring some home to them, so we’ve gotta get boxes!”

”Oh, excuse me, how could I forget?“ Laughing along with her, Caleb brought a hand up to playfully tap his forehead. ”Twenty is out of the question, gotcha. You just let me know when you're ready to stop then.“ Again, he had to smile at Aria's words. She had always been such a caring person which was something he very much admired about the girl. Not everyone got to have that in their lives so he considered anyone who knew her to be lucky. Of course, with who her parents were, he shouldn't have been surprised. ”The orchards look pretty bountiful this year. But I can see your point.“

Watching her talk about her partner like that, it warmed him. Caleb was so glad that Aria had someone to feel so passionate about, someone she cared for unconditionally. From the way she talked about them he could tell that they cared for Aria just as much. ”Everything, huh? And they haven't made you apple cider donuts yet? I'm gonna have to get onto them.“ Trying his best to look stern, he almost turned his head when a smile pulled at his lips. He never was good at pretending, usually wearing his heart on his sleeve which got him in trouble often. As he reached up to pick another apple, he raised an eyebrow at her words. ”Wait, you only think I like you? You know you're like family to me, right? I love you, don't forget that.“ Another apple was added to the bag before he looked over at her. ”So I'm sure I'll love them too. They sound just as amazing as you are.“

He made note of her parents wanting some of the donuts, keeping it in the back of his mind so he didn't forget on their way out. ”Consider it done. And you should eat one, if you want, I don't think they're going to complain about one apple.“ Caleb reached for a higher branch, trying to keep the lower ones for her to get, before he looked over at her again. The zombie grew a little more somber before he asked his next question. ”How have you been lately? I know you have Wynne and all but everything else is good, right?“

“Yes, I know that when I look like how I look, it’s very confusing about whether or not I’m a dancer or a weight lifter.” Ariadne grinned. “I’ll let you know so long as you also let me know if you’re all done and ready to stop.” Because she certainly didn’t want him to overdo anything on her account. She might have been a monster now, but that didn’t make her a spoiled brat. “Then we’ll just have to come back!” She looked out at the other trees, labeled with different species of apple, most all of which she wanted to try and get.

She offered Caleb a shrug. “In fairness, we haven’t been together during the fall yet, since we’ve only been dating since July, and I just like to see all the sorts of things that they come up with, and everything they do is good, so…” Ariadne knew Caleb was joking around, but she couldn’t help but defend Wynne at any possible sight of them not appearing to be totally wonderful. Again, she was fully aware of the joking nature of Caleb’s reply, but she also maybe wanted more excuses to talk about just how wonderful Wynne was. “You’re like family to me too. Super cool uncle status or something, I figure. Which is a very good role to have. At least I say so. They are more amazing than I am, and I can’t wait for you to meet them.” Wynne deserved to know as many good people as possible.

“Okay, okay.” She grabbed another apple off one of the trees – Macoun – and took a bite into it. “Yeah, that’s worth it. I’m still giving them an extra dollar when we get back to the store, though, probably.” His next question made Ariadne’s stomach turn, briefly. “Uh.” She began. “Well… how much have my parents told you about what happened to me recently? Because I was, well, uh, kidnapped kind of for a time but then I’m all better now.”

”Just can't help the confusion, look at those arms. Arms of steel. In fact, why aren't you holding this?” Caleb indicated the bag in hand holding all of the apples they'd picked so far before moving it out of her reach so she didn't get the idea to try and take it from him. He was joking but he knew her well enough that she'd most likely feel bad for letting him hold onto it. “I promise, if I'm ready I'll let you know.” Not likely. He could be out here all night for all he cared, it wasn't like he slept. “Two trips to Slumberland this year? You won't hear me saying no, this is one of my favorite places. You know I fell asleep out here once? Woke up very confused but I guess I just tired myself out.”

Caleb shot Aria a knowing look, aware of what she was doing. He didn't blame her one bit, it was always nice to be able to gush about a person that was cared for and she could go on as much as she pleased. He only cared that Aria was happy. “Alright, alright, I'll give you that. But you have to bring me one of these crumbles if they make them, yea? If only to prove how good they are at baking.” He wouldn't admit it but hearing Aria call him an uncle type was very uplifting. Sure, he's always considered her and her family like his own but he'd never really believed they reciprocated that thought. Confirmation was nice even if he’d continue to question it. “I don't know about more amazing, Aria, but I'll maybe consider an equal amount.”

'Kidnapped.' As soon as he'd heard the word the bag of apples slipped from his hand and he turned to fully face her. Her parents hadn't said anything to him but he'd been really busy lately and hadn't had much time to stop and chat. “I'm sorry, what? What do you mean you were kidnapped? What happened?” And who did it? Who would want to harm someone as sweet as Aria? It was like hearing about her death all over again, the worry sprouting in Caleb’s chest and spreading to overtake anything else.

“I don’t think —” she twisted her lips around briefly, wanting to apologize before Caleb moved the bags out of her reach and she realized, more fully, that he was joking. Which, of course he was, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t still want to help him. Ariadne looked over to him, “okay, deal, but you have to actually really let me know, if you do want me to carry them. Maybe I can see if I can go on pointe in boots in the middle of an apple orchard. I won’t, obviously, that’s not proper form, but I wonder if I could…” Her face brightened again at his question. “I mean, maaaybe. We’ll have to see. Also no, I didn’t know that you’d fallen asleep here. That sounds like a good place to nap, though.” Not that she could do that anymore. Which she wasn’t going to focus on. Or was, at least, going to try to not focus on.

Ariadne nodded enthusiastically at his comment. “Yeah, yeah, for sure. You should meet them sometime, though. They’re super awesome, which I said, and … yeah. I know I also said already that you have to meet them, but I can’t have them not knowing my favorite people in town.” Especially given how Wynne had wound up meeting her parents. She’d prefer that they met other people under nicer circumstances. “I’ll let you try some of the crumble, I promise I won’t eat it all. And fine, equal amount, but you only get to say that ‘cause you’re you.”

Her expression dropped at his next comments. “I – yeah. I –” she still hated talking about it. Never wouldn’t hate that, she supposed. “I was out walking at night and a guy with a beard grabbed me and locked me in his van and tried to uh, starve me to death. ‘Cause of how I don’t eat normal food always anymore. So he kept me in the van and then I got rescued but he wanted me to die again, I guess, and he was really really mean and also bad at science.” Ariadne looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“As impressive as that would be, let's not break an ankle today. It still hurts even if it heals pretty quickly. Don’t worry though, I’ve got this.” He said it matter of factly, not wanting Aria to think she needed to lift a finger to help because she didn’t. Even if they got multiple bags, Caleb would insist on carrying it all himself anyway. “The nap was so good that I ended up with smushed apple all over me. I guess I rolled over a few times in my sleep but never realized I was crushing the ones I’d already picked. It was a sight to see, that’s for sure.” The looks he had gotten while heading to the bathroom to clean up were humiliating at the time but he could look back and laugh at them without wanting to completely bury his head in the sand now.

“Just let me know when you’d like to do a meet up and I’ll be there…if I’m not working. You know I work odd hours sometimes. You like them, I’m sure I will like them as well.” Again, a warmth bloomed in his chest at her words and Caleb gave her a faint smile. “I’m holding you to that promise. If you eat it all you’re gonna owe me big time.”

Starve her to death…because she had to feed on nightmares or because she was technically already dead. It wasn’t like Aria hurt anybody, not intentionally anyway. She was so sweet to everyone she came across, too soft for the world, and the situation only reminded him of his childhood. A bully picking on their prey didn’t deserve to be breathing and yet the two of them were the ones no longer requiring air in their lungs. “You don’t have to apologize, Ariadne.” Something he liked to remind her of. He never required an apology from her, one had never actually been warranted. Caleb ran a hand through his messy curls, rage starting to build to join his concern. “Did you happen to catch his name? The guy with the beard? And do your parents know about this?”

“Fine, fine, no broken ankles, I swear.” Ariadne held her hand up. “Only because I love you.” Like an uncle of sorts, or some cool older brother. Though maybe it was more fair to say uncle, given that he was friends with her parents, and even if they were on the younger end of parent-age, uncle was better. He was her Caleb. That was that. It was simple, and he’d known her when she was a toddler, and she felt safe around him, and that was what mattered most, ultimately.

“Yes! I will, absolutely! I know you work odd hours, but that’s fine, we’ll make sure that it works. That much I certainly have faith in us for. Or in. Or whatever – point is, I trust you and me to make stuff work, because you’re important to me.” She offered a small smile, similar to the one’s she’d given him when he’d come over to her house and she was still shy about talking to people. Not that she wasn’t shy now, but she wasn’t shy with him. “You should hold me to that promise! I like keeping promises, and I wouldn’t lie to you! I mean, I wouldn’t lie at all, or I’d try not to, but especially not to you.”

She wanted to cry. “Okay, okay, if you say so.” Her gaze focused on one of the further apple trees. “I – my parents know I disappeared, yeah, but not all the specifics because they’re still hazy on… what I do, how I do it. I – he never told me his name.” Inge had told her, after, but her head was spinning right now. She didn’t want Caleb to get hurt. To be responsible for his death. “He’s – he’s the meanest man I’ve ever met, ever.”

“I love you too, kiddo.” The urge to reach out and ruffle her hair like he had done when she was younger was strong but Caleb resisted. She wasn’t a little girl anymore and he was sure that Aria wouldn’t appreciate being treated like one. Nevermind calling her ‘kiddo'. He’d never stop with the affectionate nickname unless she really started to have issues with it. It wasn’t meant to be derogatory in any way, in fact he only started calling her that because he had always been awkward around children and it had stuck.

Even through his anger at what she was telling him with the kidnapping, he couldn’t help the adoration that joined the emotion at her little rambling. She certainly did have a way of making him feel like he was worth having around. “Trust me, I will make it work. I can’t wait to meet the person that puts that smile on your face.”

It seemed that challenges like this would start popping up for the rest of their lives. The two of them were stuck at the age they were when they died but her parents were still aging forward and Caleb was more than willing to keep an eye on her for as long as he lived. He did hate lying to them about things like this but it was choice whether she told them or not, he wouldn’t betray that trust. But it did make him want to take on their role in her life, be a protector, even if the danger was long gone. “Aria, if you ever see him again let me know, okay?” What he would do, he didn’t know, but he wanted to do something. Anyone willing to hurt her deserved a fate worse than death. After all, you could live when you weren’t breathing and that wasn’t enough for whoever had done this to her.

But Caleb could also see that this was upsetting her and he didn’t want to taint their outing together even more. He was willing to drop this for the sake of having a good time. “Which apples did you want to go to next? I think we have enough of this kind.”

#Thread #Thread: Aria #Apple and Spice #tw kidnapping

9 notes · View notes

declinlalune · 8 months

Text

Prevention || Andy, Kaden & Emilio

TIMING: current. LOCATION: gatlin fields. PARTIES: @chasseurdeloup @mortemoppetere @declinlalune SUMMARY: andy, kaden, and emilio pay the hunter who attacked alex and alan a visit. CONTENT WARNINGS: sibling death mentions, child death, suicidal ideation.

Andy figured that the hunter whose name she didn’t even know would be expecting them. Or, at the very least, be aware of their arrival. Maybe he would expect Andy to come groveling, to explain that she’d been wrong. But that was not her intention. After he had practically hunted down Alex and Alan, finding out that the former– and her sister was a wolf, Andy had no choice but to do her best to drive him out of town. She couldn’t let what happened with Alex, Leah, or Nicole happen again. She wasn’t willing to chance it. Andy had seen the look in his eye the day she had dropped him off on the opposite side of town. She’d known that look; had seen it in her parents.

She looked over at her company before giving them a firm nod. She did her best to keep her hand from trembling as she reached up to knock on the door. After Emilio had given her the address in Gatlin Fields, she had made it a point to scope out the premises. He lived alone, and he lived at the far end where there were no other houses. It was lucky for them. Andy waited a moment before knocking again. Finally, she heard shuffling from the other side of the door. It swung open and she stared ahead. The man looked as disheveled as she’d remembered him with a salt and pepper beard, his crows feet more evident without the glasses he usually wore. He opened his mouth to speak, but Andy pushed him back, hand colliding with his shoulder. She hadn’t anticipated it, the anger she felt upon seeing his face. But she remembered Alex’s tears, the way her wound had looked– how it bothered her still. It’d only been a few days since her sister had arrived home in disarray.

Her hand went from his shoulder to his throat. She stood a few inches shorter than he, but it was obvious she caught him by surprise. He spluttered as his back collided with the wall. Andy tightened her grip. “You are going to leave. Do you understand?” Her voice shook as she spoke and a hatred so deep she hadn’t experienced since before her parents had passed sunk into her.

—

He didn’t know if the plan was a good one, but he didn’t know what else they could do. Hunters, when they had prey in their sight, were ruthless things. Emilio would know. How many times had his single-minded focus ended with something dead at his hands? He liked to think himself ‘better’ now, with his code and the way he stalked his prey before he killed it to make sure the things he was slaying ‘deserved’ their fate, but he knew he still wasn’t a good man. The only good hunters, he figured, were the ones who gave up the life entirely.

People like Andy.

He glanced over at her as they stood outside the door, noting the tension in her shoulders. He couldn’t say he blamed her. The way Andy looked at Alex was so much like the way he’d once looked at Flora. And wouldn’t he have done anything to keep her safe? Hadn’t he planned, once, to do exactly what Andy had done, to pull his daughter away from the life that he’d always known would get her killed and raise her outside of it? Andy had succeeded where Emilio had failed. She’d protected her sister in a way he’d been unable to protect his daughter. She’d gotten out of this life.

And the man behind that door had dragged her right back into it. The door opened, and he couldn’t fault Andy for the rage radiating off her. He couldn’t blame her for the way her hands trembled, the hardness in her voice. This man deserved every ounce of it. Emilio entered the house, standing behind her as a silent but intimidating presence. Not the tallest one in the room, but shoulders squared and eyes burning, even as the rest of his face remained a blank mask. His expression said I’ll do what I have to. It always did. He hoped it would be enough to intimidate this man into doing the smart thing and leaving town. He didn’t know what any of them planned to do if the guy said no. He didn’t think he wanted to find out.

—

Kaden didn’t hesitate to join her when Andy said she was going to confront the hunter who shot Alex. As much as he managed to blame himself for what had happened, he wasn’t about to pass up a chance to chase off the actual cause of all this. As far as he knew, that was the plan – to chase the guy off. Emilio was with them so he wasn’t going to be surprised if this all ended in violence but Kaden hoped that this wasn’t going to go anywhere beyond that.

That hope seemed pretty foolish as soon as the door opened and Andy charged the guy into the wall. He deserved it and Kaden didn’t feel bad about that but… something left him unsettled as he lingered in the doorway, the last to trail in behind Emilio. He’d never seen Andy like this. Sure, he’d seen her fight and train way back when; he’d seen her tap into her anger, but she was never like this, full of pure, seething hatred. She looked more like Keira in that moment than his cousin.

It didn’t feel right.

Kaden wanted to reach out and pull her away, deescalate things just a little in the beginning. But he knew better. This wasn’t some bullshit hunter tif or even a hunt – this was about Alex. And he couldn’t deny that he had the urge to beat the hunter pinned to the wall into a bloody pulp himself.

He wasn’t going to question her. Not yet. He clenched his jaw and tightened his hand into a fist, waiting and letting Andy decide how to handle this. This was her sister, it was her call. Kaden just shut the door behind them, looking for any weapons nearby. Shocking – there were knives on the table by the door, a gun lying on the stairs, and probably other things, too. Kaden gave a nod to Emilio and started to grab the weapons in reach, pocketing them to make sure that they didn’t encounter a surprise from the ranger.

—

With her fingers pressing into the man’s throat, Andy shifted, forearm coming to secure itself against his neck. She hadn’t fought in a long time. She hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass. She stayed fit for security, and because it made it easier to bear all of the weight on her shoulders, but there was a difference between being skilled and being strong. She knew that. It had been driven into her at a young age.

She heard Kaden and Emilio begin to pick up what she could only assume to be the weapons lying around the foyer and the rest of the house. She didn’t dare turn her attention from the man whose face was beginning to turn red. “I told you to leave the last time I saw you.” Andy forced a tone of neutrality; steady and even. If she could convince this asshole that she could keep calm, then maybe she actually could. She and the two behind her could see him out of town, making sure he never returned. But would that be enough? Would he not spread that the Durand children had made it to Wicked’s Rest and that one of them was a werewolf? She couldn’t be sure.

The man continued to splutter beneath her hold, his own fingers digging into Andy’s arm. She refused to give him reprieve. “You shot my sister.” Saying it out loud and in front of him made it all the more real. “She did nothing to you, and you hunted her down.” The man blinked at her, face bloating from lack of oxygen.

“De– deser–ved it.”

—-

Kaden didn’t have to say anything — the nod was enough for Emilio to understand what he was asking. It was funny, almost; back in that magic shop, when Kaden had had no voice with which to speak, the language barrier between them had been too wide to cross. But now? It was simple. Violence, he knew, was a language every hunter spoke fluently. Collecting weapons, tucking them into his pockets, that made sense to him in a way differentiating between two salves never would.

He kept an eye on Andy as he moved about the living room, trying to determine if she needed backup. She was competent, he knew, but she didn’t hunt regularly. The man she had pinned against the wall did. He was out hunting as recently as a few nights ago, out hunting Alex. The very thought filled Emilio with a bitter anger. Alex didn’t like him much, she’d made no secret of that. But she was still a fucking kid. A kid who hadn’t deserved what she got.

Satisfied that there was nothing else in easy reach, Emilio walked back towards the two hunters against the wall. He saw the man’s face turning red, bordering on purple. “Andy,” he said gently, the first word he’d spoken since the gruff greeting he’d given when they first met up. They couldn’t have a conversation with the hunter if he passed out from lack of oxygen, after all, and a conversation was what they were here for.

—-

With all the weapons they could see pocketed or tucked away, Kaden turned back to the ranger and his cousin. Her anger was palpable, he could have seen it even if it wasn’t spreading across the face of the piece of shit she had pinned against the wall. Emilio had already spoken up, but Kaden reached out and touched her shoulder. “Let up,” he said, eyes fixed on the connard who shot his cousin. They didn’t need to kill him. Probably better if they didn’t. But he had the fucking audacity to say that Alex had deserved it and it was tempting to pull Andy away again, but this time it was so that he could clock the guy in the face himself. “Only a little,” he added.

He didn’t trust this son of a bitch for anything and reached into the man’s pockets to pull out the knives he kept there, unclipped on from his belt, and then reached down to pull up the hem of his jeans to check for any weapons. The hunter had enough oxygen left to kick out at Kaden who managed to twist away just quick enough that the foot caught him in the shoulder and not the face.

Fuck this.

Kaden pulled out one of the larger knives he’d just taken off the hunter from its sheath and jammed it down into the man’s foot, blood bubbling up and gushing out through his boot. He didn’t give a shit about the screaming or the pain shooting through the bastard, he dug the knife in deeper, far as it could go until he was pretty sure the blade was close to the floor if not lodged into it. “Bet you’ll stay in place now. You should probably listen to her if you don’t want the other foot pinned down, too.” Some part of him knew he was trying to be better than this, that violence wasn’t what he wanted. But the rest of him knew the truth – Kaden was made for violence, born for it, and then immersed in it. It would always find him. So for now, he might as well embrace it while it could do some good.

—-

Emilio’s voice cut through the focus she drove into keeping the hunter pinned to the wall, and then it was Kaden’s. Had she not heard his voice first, she might have turned around to shove him away. Andy stared up at the hunter beneath her hold, her own fingers going numb from the anger and fear that burrowed into her. She hadn’t experienced this since she had picked up Alex and ran from the wolves that killed their parents. Reflection was an odd thing.

Finally, she took a step back. Kaden started to remove the weapons from the man’s belt, the waistband of his jeans, and then– the man’s foot was coming out to connect with her cousin’s shoulder. The hunter looked pleased with himself, but not for long. A blood curdling scream poured into the room as Kaden jabbed a knife into the ranger’s boot. Slowly, his blood began to escape through the seams, streaming towards her own feet.

The hunter continued to gasp, his hand now coming to his throat. He pulled at the neckline of shirt, seemingly looking for some way to take in more air. Andy simply watched as he buckled beneath the pain of both oxygen deprivation and the knife in his boot. He was kneeling now, and Andy half expected him to pass out from the pain. Maybe that was better. They could get him tied to a chair, ask him the questions they needed.

But his voice, low and guttural, all the while heaving for breath, cut through the silence that had built after Kaden thrust the knife into his foot.

He looked past both herself and Kaden to Emilio who stood behind them. “You don’t look familiar. You’re just going to let them do this to me?”

Andy grit her teeth. “Shut up.” Even if she wasn’t sure how much would be too much in Emilio’s book, he had come with her– had promised to have her back. Kaden, too. She had to trust that neither of them would feel pity towards the ranger now pinned to the ground. “I told you to leave, and instead you went after her.” The man blinked, his own teeth chattering presumably due to the pain that swarmed him. “She wasn’t the only one. You and me, we take out monsters– why are you protecting one?” Andy grabbed the collar of his shirt, near his shoulder, holding him upright slightly so that he would need to put more pressure on his injured foot. She knew it hurt like hell.

—

Somehow, Emilio was the level-headed one here. It would have been funny if it weren’t so jarring. Andy was still pinning the ranger to the wall, Kaden was putting a knife through his foot, and Emilio was standing, hands in his pockets, fiddling with the knives he’d collected from around the room.

He’d been in Andy’s position before. It was seared into his mind with everything else that had happened that day in Mexico, tattooed onto the backs of his eyelids. His uncle hadn’t looked so different than this ranger did now. Most people, when they were begging for their lives, got the same kind of way about them. Eyes wide, lips slightly parted, searching for anyone who might stop what they thought was going to happen to them. Lucio had been met with a knife to the gut for his troubles; this ranger was lucky in comparison. He was lucky it was Andy who got to decide what happened to him. Andy, who’d retired from hunting for a gentler life, who’d given up everything to protect her sister only to have Alex thrust into harm’s way anyway because this man decided she should be.

He probably thought they were here to kill him; Emilio would let him continue to do so. It was easier to get someone to do what you needed them to do if they thought the alternative was dying. If they offered this man a choice between death and getting out of town, Emilio would bet he’d choose the latter. He didn’t strike the detective as the ‘die for your cause’ kind of hunter. Not if he was here going after fucking kids.

Those wide eyes met his, and Emilio rose his brows, pursing his lips as if he was considering it. “I’ll let them do a hell of a lot worse, if they want to,” he replied flatly. “I can think of a few better places to stick that knife. You keep running your mouth, maybe I’ll show you.”

Glancing over, he offered Andy a nod as if to say this is your show. I’ll follow your lead.

And then, the hunter went and ran his mouth again. It was hard not to think of the vampire he’d killed on Monty’s farm, the one the old farmer tried to save.

You killed children, he’d said, because maybe a part of him had wanted the vampire to make it make sense.

No. We killed hunters.

What was the difference between this and that? That vampire was part of an attack that left children dead. This ranger shot a kid in the woods. Both tried to excuse themselves by insisting that the people they’d hurt had been monsters, in one way or another. Emilio’s blood was roaring in his ears and, if Andy hadn’t been holding the man, he probably would have punched him. Instead, he kicked the hilt of the knife Kaden had left in the guy’s foot, eliciting another scream.

Okay. So much for being the level headed one, then.

“Simplemente cállate ya,” he hissed lowly. Just shut up already.

—

Kaden could feel his blood boiling, rage threatening to consume him at any moment. He inhaled deep as he stood up, standing behind Andy. She was already fueled by anger and she had every right to be. But that meant that he had to try and pull back, bury his emotions for the time being. He wasn’t sure he could think clearly, but he needed to maintain as much perspective as he could while Andy owned this confrontation.

“You got one thing right. We take out monsters,” Kaden said, eyes boring into the piece of shit pinned against the. “Looking at one right now, too.” Even though his words didn’t falter, he couldn’t help but feel like a fucking hypocrite. The difference between Kaden and the hunter against the wall was nothing more than a few years time, specific circumstances and twists of fate. He knew that. He was just as much of a monster as that man was.

The hunter grit his teeth and tried to keep from wincing in pain, from showing weakness. Kaden wasn’t srue why he bothered in this company. They all knew pain and they knew it well. There was no point in pretending it didn’t bother him. Though Kaden supposed it was as hardwired into him as it was the rest of them. “You’re a bunch of fucking idiots, the whole lot of you. You can kill me but it’s not going to stop those monsters you’re shielding from killing,” the asshole said before spitting at his current adversaries. Kaden wondered if it was because that was the best he could manage under his current conditions or if he was trying to make a distraction.

—

Both Emilio and Kaden made a show of what kind of monster this man was – of faux promises to show him the other side of this; of an eternal darkness. But deep down, Andy knew it was for show. She didn’t take Kaden for the kind to kill a hunter, no matter how angry he was, and she didn’t know Emilio well enough yet to determine whether he would out of solidarity, or if the code he followed led its way back to what all of theirs should. She didn’t care, really. The anger that she felt knew no bounds. She thought of Alex’s face, and she tried to conjure up an image of Alan she wasn’t quite sure was right.

She listened to them as they spoke, spitting insults back and forth, a palpable anger filling the room. It danced along her skin, the electricity from it all. She stared at the man ahead of her, his head lolling to the side as she shook him by the shoulder to get him to look up at her. “You chose this, you know. You could have fucked off after recognizing me, but you chose this.” Because hadn’t he? The only reason he was now in this position was because of the choices he had made when approaching her with Zane. She bit the inside of her cheek, gaze searching for some unfound thing– that perhaps he’d learned his lesson, but his expression darkened in response to her words. Andy felt sick.

“Only thing you chose was to be on the wrong side of this.” She rolled her eyes, a bitter annoyance coming to creep over the initial anger. This was the same rhetoric that her parents had drilled into her; that she’d learned at the hunting camps. Andy had come away from that sick and twisted devotion with hardly any blood to stain her hands. She didn’t particularly want to ruin her streak now, but the look in the hunter’s eye told her he wouldn’t stop.

“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone? I told you I wasn’t who you thought I was.” The man grinned then, face contorting with a certain kind of pain Andy felt beneath her skin. “You’ll learn soon enough. Only a matter of time before that sister of yours kills somebody you care about, or you.” Andy applied more pressure to his shoulder, reaching up to his neck once again with her opposite hand. She pushed her fingers into his skin. “You don’t know shit about her, shut the fuck up.” She pulled him forward slightly, slamming him against the wall again. In doing so, she brought her foot up to slam down on the knife. It went further into his foot and she felt bile rise in her throat at the sound. Tears wet her eyes as his scream pierced the air.

—

It was familiar, the things he was saying. Emilio suspected he wasn’t the only one in the room who recognized it. Hunters tended to spout the same kind of shit no matter what it was they were hunting; the things they killed were monsters, and the people who went against them for it were just as bad. He remembered his mother gripping the back of his neck, forcing him to look at the vampire she’d caught and chained up for ‘practice’ as a kid, the way her fingers left bruises in his skin. Don’t look away. Don’t give this thing the privilege of fooling you into thinking it is human. Had this ranger had a similar hand gripping his neck? And how much did it matter? He, Andy, and Kaden had all gone through that training, and not a single one of them would have done what this man had to Alex. There was only so much you could excuse.

(It was hard not to think about Rhett, with that thought. It was hard not to think about how much more you could find excuses for when the person you were excusing was someone you loved instead of a stranger, when the hands doing the hurting were the same ones that had lowered your daughter into a hole they’d dug for her in the ground so that she could rest.)

Emilio grit his teeth, and he wished the ranger would take his advice and just shut up. He wished he’d stop talking and listen, wished he’d see the proverbial light and atone for his sins even if only in the tiny way of agreeing to leave town and never come back. But Andy was angry, and he was beginning to wonder if that was even an option anymore. Emilio had felt that anger. He’d built a home in it, locked all the doors. It was such a hard thing to move out of.

One thing was certain — the conversation wasn’t going anywhere. It was a useless back and forth. The ranger said something to hurt Andy, and Andy responded by hurting him back. How long would they keep doing this? How many more times would he drive this knife home?

Not moving his cold glare from the ranger’s eyes, Emilio inclined his head. “Andy,” he said, soft tone not quite matching the look in his eyes, “this isn’t why we’re here.” Then, with a harsher tone as he spoke to the ranger, “We’re giving you a chance. Leave town. Don’t come back here. Don’t tell anyone what you know. And you won’t have to see any of us again.”

—

It was clear to Kaden that at this point that this was starting to do more damage to Andy than to the hunter. Anger still coursed through his own veins and he hated to admit it, but he didn’t mind seeing the connard writhing in pain. In that moment, he wasn’t sure he’d mind seeing the man dead. The thought made his stomach churn and shocked some of his anger away. The world was a little clearer – he wasn’t going to be the cause of any more death. Not if he could help it.

Emilio told his cousin that it was time to back off and he was right, but Kaden knew better than to assume Andy was capable of pulling herself away. This was her sister. This was Alex that he nearly killed. That was her whole world. She wasn’t going to walk away if she was left to her own devices. Gently, Kaden put his hands on her shoulders and started to pull her back from the man. If the son of a bitch tried anything, he knew that the slayer would step in and make sure that didn’t fucking happen.

“Come on. He’s not worth any more of your time,” he said to her in a hushed voice as he tightened his grip on her, ready to pull her back with more force if she resisted. He knew it didn’t matter how quiet he was, every person in that room could hear him. But he needed Andy to walk away. For her sake. Alex needed her. She couldn’t get lost to this, to the violence and anger, everything she had escaped. It was too late for him. Andy still stood a chance.

—

Emilio’s voice cut through the man’s scream, and then she felt Kaden’s hands on her shoulders. She could have jumped out of her skin if she hadn’t heard his voice. Andy’s fear swallowed her most nights, but she made no move to show just how bad it had gotten. The nightmares were easier to keep quiet about. She’d gotten good about not screaming into the night. But now that this man was ahead of her, a lazy grin and pinched brows with a promise to come back for what he’d already tried to take from her, she couldn’t just let go. No part of her could just let go.

She shrugged out of Kaden’s grip, shooting a glance behind her towards him. Momentarily distracted, she felt herself shoved forward as the hunter shot out his hand to push her backwards. A sickening squelch, and then the smell of blood– Andy noticed that the bloodied knife was now in his hands. The hunter stumbled forward, slashing the knife through the air towards herself and Kaden. She stumbled backwards, elbows connecting with Kaden’s chest. The hunter lobbed towards them, his bad foot now dragging behind him. “I’m not going anywhere, and now neither are you.”

How diabolically villainous of him, Andy thought. She quickly jumped to the side, moving away from his knife as it caught the tail end of her shirt. “Fuck OFF.” She twisted around, grabbing a nearby chair and swinging it at his legs, which caused him to fall to the side, crashing back towards the wall he’d been using to keep himself upright. Another wail left him and this time it contorted with a rage she’d seen in her father. There was some distance between them now, but as she stared across the space, her vision blurred with the tears that brimmed her eyes and his face slowly warped into the man who’d tried to turn her into a monster– against herself, against her sister–

Andy surged forward, one foot coming out to connect with the knee of his bad foot. He buckled. She grabbed the knife from his hand, struggling to get it out of his grip, slamming his wrist against the wall. The knife clattered to the ground and her hand sought out his throat again, fingers pinching the skin. “You’re going to leave, and I am never going to see you again.” The man’s lips were purplish now and his eyes bugged out of his head, unblinking. He slammed his fist against her ribs, which in the shock, sent Andy stumbling to the side. It’d been awhile since she’d taken a hit, she wasn’t quite used to it the way she was years ago.

—

Kaden did what Emilio couldn’t quite bring himself to do, touched Andy’s shoulder to help ground her. It was a good move; one he thought was probably far better made by Andy’s cousin than by him. He liked to think he and Andy were friends — she’d asked him here, after all — but there was such a difference between friends and family, wasn’t there? The latter had far more of a right to bring Andy back to herself with a touch than the former ever could.

But she shrugged out from under that hand, and Emilio wondered if she was too far gone to back off now. If she felt anything like he had in Mexico, with Lucio apologizing and Flora’s blood on his hands, he had no doubt that no amount of soft words or hands on shoulders could pull her back to Earth. And his uncle had been someone he loved, had been apologetic; this ranger was none of that. He was still going, still sticking to his guns, still trying to fight.

Emilio tensed as he moved forward, readying himself to take the man down again, but Andy beat him to it. That chair crashed against his legs, Andy kicked at his knee, and he was on the ground with her hand around his throat once again. “Ay, pendejo,” the slayer scoffed, rolling his eyes. “What do you think you’re going to do here? You, bleeding, against three of us? Count your losses.”

But hunters were stubborn things, weren’t they? This man was no exception. His fist shot out and slammed against Andy’s ribs with a solid thud, sending her stumbling backwards and freeing the ranger from her grip. His eyes darted around the room before landing on Emilio, rage burning through his expression as he shot forward. It caught the slayer off guard, just a little. It probably shouldn’t have; it wasn’t as if this was the first time Emilio’s big mouth had gotten him into trouble. He had no doubt that the ranger would like to make it the last… but given the guy’s bleeding foot, that just didn’t seem like it was going to happen.

At least, not until the pendejo scooped up that bloody knife again.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Emilio groaned.

—

Kaden should have expected that Andy would shrug him off. That didn’t make him feel any better about this situation. “Andy, let’s g–” His words were cut off by the force of his cousin slamming into him. When he caught his balance, he saw that the hunter had grabbed the knife and was threatening the rest of them. Pathetic. Not that he could say he wouldn’t have tried the same if the roles were reversed. Kaden pulled out another one of the knives he’d collected from the place earlier, but it looked like Andy had it covered for now. Still, he wasn’t going to let his guard down, even with the piece of shit lying on the ground and his cousin once again cutting off his air supply

“Andy,” he said more forcibly this time, stepping over to her to once again pull her away. He needed her to leave. He needed to get them out of there before she did something she couldn’t take back. Because even if this guy deserved it, she didn’t deserve to carry his blood on her hands for the rest of her life.

Her body flung to the side, away from Kaden, as fist hit ribs. Kaden watched the ranger’s eyes, saw where he was looking, and knew where he was headed next. The knife. He was too far away and the bastard got to it first, lunging at Emilio with the weapon in hand.

Kaden pivoted and reached out to grap the man’s collar, yanking him back and slamming his body back to the ground. He stomped his boot onto the guy’s wrist, the one holding the knife. It clattered onto the ground and he kicked it away with his other foot. “We’re leaving,” he said, definitively, eyes darting over to Andy for a second, hoping she heard him just as clear. He paused and almost walked away, but he couldn’t resist. Kaden swung his leg back and punted the hunter’s side. He was tempted to continue, to beat this man to a fucking pulp, but he needed to get Andy out of here. “You’re leaving, too. Got it?” With that, Kaden stepped away and went back to help Andy up.

—

Once Andy steadied herself against the ground, she turned back to witness the ranger scrape up the knife from the floor and try to charge Emilio. Maybe he saw it easier to get closer to the door. She moved to help, but Kaden stepped in first, hand reaching to the back of his shirt, yanking down, and then– another scream, this time more guttural, more angry. The knife fell away and the man lay on the ground, good hand coming to grip the now broken one. Andy stared at him, imagination running rampant. She knew the look in his eyes, had seen it every time she closed her own. She saw her parents in him. Andy hated him for that, and for what he had done to Leah, Nicole, and Alex. How many others would suffer? Could she just turn her back?

Kaden was at her side again, guiding her into a standing position. She stood next to him, gaze unmoving from the dark blue of the man who lay on the floor. He grinned up at her, gums and tongue bloody. Spit and rouge ended at her feet as he leaned up. Andy watched him carefully, heart hammering in her chest. Her fingers trembled and her tongue felt numb. She hadn’t felt like this since the night she took Alex and ran. She should leave now, and she knew that. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t done. That once out of town, he would tell everyone he knew in Wicked’s Rest about her and Alex, and any other shifter that they’d been seen by. Anger and contempt had branded her, and there was no escaping it. Not now.

“You don’t think I won’t send somebody else after you? After her?” The ranger’s voice shook slightly as he blew his nose out onto his sleeve. “You started this. Remember that.” Andy shook her head, working through the number of things she could have done differently. She could have driven him out of town after the situation with Leah and Nicole, but she hadn’t thought he’d come back around. Because of that, Alex now had a bullet wound in her hip. It could have been worse, and it still could be. Andy’s fingers twitched as she looked down at the knife. The glint of it mirrored the man’s chin, and his five o’clock shadow. It was fairly clean, despite his appearance not being so. It lay on the ground a few feet from both herself and the ranger, but that didn’t matter.

It only took Andy from his threat to the decision of not wanting to bury her sister or any of her friends to dive for the knife. She forced herself to ignore the pleas that would come from either Emilio or Kaden, plunging the knife into the man’s chest.

As she felt the knife sink into flesh and between bone, Andy saw his face meld into that of her mother’s, the sinking feeling in her gut only spreading as it slowly warped into her father’s. With her blade in this man’s chest, she was killing that part of her that had been connected to her parents. She twisted the knife, any pleas distant to her now. The man’s blood covered her hands, her forearms. She pushed the blade in deeper, tears welling in her eyes. She wanted to be safe, and this man had ruined it. She wanted to live a life disconnected from who she was supposed to be. She hadn’t been given the room to be anything she wanted. “I gave you a chance,” Andy whispered, voice distinctly venomous. She ripped the knife out from between his ribs, blood coming back to splatter over her face.

He gurgled beneath her weight, his hands desperately reaching for her neck. They fell short, landing at his sides. Andy watched with a sick sense of satisfaction as the light left his eyes. Her insides felt jumbled and the knife felt heavy in her hands. She stayed over top of him for a moment longer than needed, just to make sure he was actually dead. For a moment, she forgot about the other two behind her despite their movement and voices.

—

Emilio tensed as the ranger came at him, but he knew he wouldn’t have to do much more than that. It was a familiar feeling, walking into a situation with people you knew would have your back if things went south. His siblings might not have always had his best interests at heart, but they’d been willing to fight for him against whatever undead things they’d gone up against together. Rhett, too, had always looked out for Emilio. After two years on his own, he’d never imagined he’d add anyone new to that list, but here was Kaden, yanking the ranger back and throwing him to the ground. Here was Andy, looking furious in a way that was probably mostly for her sister, but might be a little bit for the other people in this room, too. And it was a nice feeling.

It was also a fleeting one.

Because the ranger was on the ground, his chest was heaving, his hand was broken, his foot was bleeding, but he still wasn’t giving up. Wasn’t that how all of them had been taught, after all? To fight and fight and fight even when you knew you’d lost? He could have walked away. He could have gotten the hell out of town and never come back, and they would have let them. The three of them, Andy and Emilio and Kaden, they were people of their word. They gave that ranger a chance, gave him a fucking shot.

And he didn’t take it.

He was too proud, too stubborn, too stupid to know when he’d been beaten. He was on the floor, and he was still slinging threats. He was still making a goddamn promise to come back for Alex, for Andy, for anyone else who stood in his way. A single-minded focus. And, as it turned out, a deadly one.

Part of him knew what was going to happen just a split second before it did. Part of him saw the way Andy’s expression shifted and recognized it, understood that it must have been the same look that had crossed his face before he’d shoved a knife into his uncle’s gut and left him to bleed out in the streets of a town that used to be safe. He took half a step forward, let out a little gasp that was almost a protest and almost an encouragement, but he was never going to be fast enough to stop it. He didn’t think anything would have been.

Speeding bullets, he thought, had nothing against someone doing everything they could to protect someone they loved.

A knife found a chest. The sound was deafening, that little squelch of blade slicing through tissue and organ. Emilio thought they’d probably all hear it for the rest of their lives. The world hung suspended for a moment, and then Andy spoke and broke the spell. The ranger stilled, and his body didn’t turn to dust. There were no horns, no fur, no inhuman parts marking him as something the three of them had been taught to fear. The light left his eyes, he fell silent, and that was it. That was the end of it.

A silence fell over the room, and Emilio was afraid to break it. He looked from Andy to Kaden to the dead ranger on the floor, and he willed his heart to stop pounding as if there was any hope of that.

—

A flash, that was all it took. A flash and Andy was gone from his side, knife in hand. The moment to stop her came and went like a strike of lightning. Kaden turned back just in time to see the knife sink deep into the man’s chest. It wasn’t for him, it wasn’t his flesh, it wasn’t his blood, but he felt the blade pierce his heart all the same.

The knife was the lightening, the screams of anguish and the sickening squelch of flesh and blood was the thunder. And just like that, it was over. A life was gone. Where there had been four, there was now only three.

Kaden wanted to feel relief, wanted to feel some sort of security at the very least after all of this, but looking into the ranger’s glassy, dead eyes, he couldn’t find it. All he could see was some sick reflection of himself staring back. A version of him that could have been – no, that was him not that long ago.

He didn’t know when he’d ended up on the floor, when his knees had buckled out from under him, but they had. “Andy,” he said for what felt like the thousandth time that night, his voice hoarse, disconnected. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t move, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the body. That could have been him. Maybe that should have been him. How many families would do that to him if they knew he was responsible for the death of their loved ones? How quickly would Andy have driven a knife into his own chest? Into Keira’s?

He could feel his stomach churn. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen death, far from it. He should be used to it by now. But maybe that was what had him reeling: the fact that this was so fucking familar. That even though he tried to escape it, to find some way out of the cycle, death clung to him. He couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if he never came to town, if all he did was bring more death with him.

It didn’t matter now, he’d never know. Neither would that ranger lying on the floor.

—

Andy leaned to the side, eventually dragging herself off of the ranger. There was so much blood. She wondered if the wolves stared over her parents’ bodies like this, or if they’d been too focused on other things. Not that it mattered. To them, she and Alex deserved it. It had been awhile since she recalled that night. Of crashing through the brush with Alex in her arms, hand clasped over her sister’s mouth to thwart the screams. They hadn’t been followed. They’d been allowed to leave. Andy believed that, even now. Because as she sat on the floor next to the man whose life she just took, she would have done the same for him, but he’d become a threat too loud to ignore. She couldn’t let him hurt Alex, or anyone else. Never again.

There would be more like him, and Andy knew that this could not happen again; their blood on her hands. But she had to do something in this moment, and bleeding the life from him had been the only solution. She heard Kaden’s weight shift, and then her name– it sounded like her cousin was bleating. Andy smoothed her hands against her knees, fingers trembling incessantly. Her legs wobbled as she got up and the only sound that filled the room was the knife clattering to the ground. Droplets of blood hit her shoes and she looked down at them. This could have just as easily been her, or the two behind her. She’d stopped him. He wasn’t going to back down. She had to.

Andy began to rub her hands against the clean parts of her clothes, before she looked up to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was covered in the man’s blood. It was not a delicate thing; it was spoken with rage. Andy swallowed back the bile in her throat and she clenched her jaw. She could do this, just for a moment longer. Get through this. One step, grab his arms, pull him towards the back door. They’d have to bury him, or toss him into the brush so that he could become a meal. Andy did nothing at all, however. She stood over the ranger, her heart now a dull thud compared to the beating of Kaden’s and Emilio’s. She didn’t dare turn around. “We have to…” She’d never done this before. She was the only one in the room who had never done this, and suddenly she’d become the worst. It was a human life, after all, and a hunter one at that. “Bury him. We have to bury his–” She sniffled and ran a hand across her nose, more blood coming to mask the smattering of freckles that usually dotted her features. “I need help.”

—

There was blood on the floor and, for a split second, this living room became another one. For a flash, the part of Emilio’s mind that functioned as a time machine sent him hurtling backwards to another time, another place. The ranger’s body shrank into something smaller, the walls turned another color, Andy and Kaden disappeared. His breath hitched, his hands trembled, He shoved them into his pockets, digging his fingernails into his palms and squeezing his eyes shut. Here, not there. Wicked’s Rest, not Mexico. The blood on the ground was not that of anyone he’d known, wasn’t that of someone he’d been meant to protect. What was more, it wasn’t blood that was on his hands. At least, not physically. Perhaps he deserved some of the weight of the blame for coming here in the first place. Part of him must have known how this would end, after all. Didn’t it always end like this? Didn’t every story Emilio ever told end with someone bleeding out on the living room floor?

But Andy’s voice dragged him back into the present, back into a moment that wasn’t worse than the one his mind so often carried him back to, but might not have been much better, either. Someone was still dead. There was still a knife covered in blood, still a corpse already beginning to cool. Kaden was on the ground, and Emilio hadn’t seen him fall but he understood the inclination to do so. Andy was trembling, and Emilio thought he might have been, too. The ranger was still, was staring at nothing, was long gone. Emilio thought, in a moment of hysterical uncertainty, that he might have been the luckiest one of them all. At least for him, this was over. For the rest of them? This was the beginning.

He checked back in, tried to keep his mind in place. He was needed here, in the now. There was nothing to be done for that other living room floor, nothing that could change that situation. But this one was still unfolding, still growing, still changing with every passing heartbeat. Andy was saying something, though it took Emilio a moment to process it. It was as if her words hung in the air before crawling to his ears, as if they sat in his head for a moment before being translated into something he could understand. They came only in snippets, but it was enough for him to know what needed to be done, anyway. Bury. Help.

He latched onto it, because it was the only thing he could do, wasn’t it? He couldn’t scoop the ranger’s blood back into his chest, couldn’t mend the wound left by the knife. He couldn’t even wash the stains from Andy’s hands; they’d always be there. Emilio would know, wouldn’t he? He had matching ones, even now, tattooed into him. His hands still felt red, even when they weren’t. He could still feel the blood drying there, even years after he’d washed it all away. He couldn’t save Andy from that, because no one could.

But he could do something about what came next. Couldn’t he?

“I’ll do it.” He was hoarse, unsteady. “Bury it. I’ll bury it.” It instead of him, because wasn’t that how he’d always been taught to separate himself from things? The dead became objects instead of people, even if they were still walking and talking, because if they were anything more, he wouldn’t have been able to function. The ranger was not a ranger — it was a corpse. And wasn’t dealing with corpses the only thing Emilio had ever known how to do well? Wasn’t that what he’d been born for? “I’ll bury it,” he said again. He looked to Kaden. “You — You can take care of any fallback with the police.” Though he doubted there’d be any. Hunters didn’t tend to be the sort of people anyone missed, did they? This ranger’s family, if he had any, would assume he’d died fighting a werewolf or some other kind of shifter. They’d never guess the truth. A hunter killing another hunter was a jarring, unheard of thing. “And…” He turned to look at Andy, eyes darting from the blood on her hands to the blood on her face to the blood on the floor. There was so much of it. He felt his mind faltering again, and he shook his head roughly. “You need to clean up. You need — Burn the clothes. We all have to burn what we are wearing. Don’t take them back to your cabin. I’ll — I’m going to get rid of it.”

Disposing of the dead. That was his job. Wasn’t it?

—

I need help.

Kaden couldn’t help but laugh. She needed help, huh? She needed help. That’s what he fucking came here to do and the only thing to show for it was a dead fucking body splayed out on the floor in front of them. Fucking rich to claim that now she needed help. Now after he tried to pull her away, tried to help her out before this fucking moment.

He stood slowly, his body shaking. He was thankful Emilio was there, ready to help. Because Kaden was done helping. “Good. You bury him.” Walking was difficult, but not as difficult as the thought of looking at Andy right now. “Cause I’m not.”

Kaden braced himself on the doorframe, using it to keep himself upright. All he could do was nod along with what Emilio was saying, eyes pinned to the floor in front of him. The path ahead was clean. For now. Wouldn’t last. “Got it,” was all he said before walking out the door and to his truck. He’d deal with the rest later. But he couldn’t stay there one second longer.

—

Andy did her best to listen to Emilio. His voice sounded distorted– a version she had heard once, but this time it was beneath something heavy, something she couldn’t lift up. He volunteered to bury the body, but Andy had no intention of letting him do it alone. She almost looked at Kaden for help, but the look on his face– the way he avoided eye contact with her. It reminded her then, too, of a father she’d buried long ago. She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. For what, she wasn’t sure. To keep quiet, maybe. She nodded, letting his statement draw over her. She’d gone too far.

But he didn’t get it. This was her sister she was protecting. His sister would sooner put a knife through his gut than protect him from anything, or so she assumed. Andy listened to Kaden as he left the cabin. The plea for him to stay built in her lungs, but ultimately dissolved into nothingness. What would the point be? She was good at doing things alone. The one time she thought she didn’t have to, the one time that it wasn’t just her at fourteen with a seven year old against the world, and somebody was still walking away.

But Emilio was there. Emilio had offered. He had told her to burn her clothes, to clean up. She shook her head. “I’m help– helping you.” Andy struggled to get the words out at a deep icy feeling began to spread throughout her. She looked at the body, at the person who had tried to take everything from her, and no remorse could be found. Shock, sure – at the measures she had taken, but wasn’t it necessary? It was him or Alex. Him or Leah. Him or Nicole. Him or the rest of them in this cabin. It could have been Kaden or Emilio’s body on the ground for them to bury, only perhaps they would have done that properly. She didn’t care what happened to this man in whatever afterlife he had believed in, because though Andy’s anger had driven her forward, she knew that she had given him a chance.

Andy wrung her hands together, the blood sticky and defiant on the palms of her hands. “Tell me what to do.” It would have been the first time she’d done such a thing, aside from the beasts her mother taught her to put into the ground after she’d refused to end them– the quick strike of her father’s blade, the blood– this was similar, but she was no monster. She had to protect what was dear to her, and she’d done that. If Kaden couldn’t see that, it wasn’t her problem. Still, Andy shook as she approached Emilio. “Tell me what to do.”

#para: prevention #para: kaden #para: emilio #child death tw #sibling death tw #suicidal ideation tw #wickedswriting

12 notes · View notes

wickedsrest-rp · 1 year

Text

NAME: Prickly Pear Acres

Location: Gatlin Fields

Prickly Pear Acres is a farm that sits closer to the Allgood Death Pit than most would be comfortable with, but it still manages to flourish in spite of the grim environment. Unknown to the general public, the farm is run solely by the undead: zombies make up the farm’s payroll, and there are certain perks for those that would otherwise feast on people. Blood and brains are supplied to the staff any time an animal is sent to slaughter—it is the owner’s mission to help his fellow undead find less harmful ways to make it through their cravings. Not only that, but being a farmhand for a more old-fashioned company provides them with a place to live and consistent, honest work.

The farm has an assortment of Holstein and Jersey cows, bulls, and steers, East Friesian and Awassi sheep, and a smattering of Alpine, Nubian, and LaMancha goats. The cow, sheep, and goat milk is sometimes used to make cheese, otherwise it is pasteurized and sold to local businesses.

There’s also some horses for driving the cattle to pasture, three cattle dogs, a cat, a handful of chickens, one very ornery donkey and an equally stubborn mule, and two catoblepones that help guard the herd.

Pretty much all the animals on the farm were a rescue of one type or another.

The farm is pretty large, having several sizable pastures for turning out the grazers in rotations. There are multiple barns for all the livestock to stay in during the colder months, one main house where Monty lives, and about a dozen smaller cabins where farm hands are permitted to live if they need a roof over their head.

There is a tatty bogle off on one far side of the property that has always been there. Attempts were made to remove it, but it… resisted those attempts. Now everyone just leaves it alone.

#locations #character location #gatlin fields #general use #prickly pear acres #lodging

5 notes · View notes

stainedglasstruth · 11 months

Text

EMERGENCY NOTICE

There have been reports of individuals being seriously injured while visiting the town border on Memorial Road in Gatlin Fields. Officials are asking that you avoid the area while they are investigating the issue. We are all grateful for your cooperation while this issue is being dealt with. Stay safe, Wicked's Rest!

#oops i forgot to post this after the regan convo #lets pretend i posted it sooner #also is this a starter? idfk

19 notes · View notes

muertarte · 5 months

Text

TIMING: Last Night

PARTIES: @amonstrousdream @wonder-in-wings @muertarte

SUMMARY: In the interest of sharing information to take down Chuy, Parker offers to meet Leila on the outskirts of town to supply her with information and weapons. Then Metzli shows up and things get dicey.

WARNINGS: Emotional Abuse

The line where Gatlin Fields turned into the Pines seemed obvious, sometimes. It also could’ve been considered eerie, the way some patches cut harshly between a flat piece of terrain to a sudden choking of trees, bunched together in their cover. The space, despite the oppressive threat of the trees looming in select spots, was expansive, stretching as far as the eye could see with a couple of buildings in the distance. It was there that Parker had told the mare known as Leila to meet. Outside of town was vague at best for a meeting location but the Warden didn’t like his back being to open spaces, for some reason - the tree line was there as an unspoken comfort to him. He also knew astonishingly little of mares and despite what Leila had said about ensuring that he wouldn’t be fed on, he had no way of knowing if she would hold her end of the bargain. Nor did he know what she meant by ‘fed on’ in the context of a ‘nightmare’. She said ‘no sleepiness or nightmares’. Parker didn’t dream; did she possess the power to change that? He still didn’t like thinking back on the first week of August, of the night terrors that he insisted didn’t belong to him, waking him up and keeping him awake otherwise. ‘You’re getting off-track.’ The Warden blinked just once, looking up from his phone as he had sent Leila the coordinates as he pulled up to the spot. Now he was outside of his car, eyeing the myriad of tools and weapons that he’d gathered, both out of knowledge accrued and intuition collected neatly in the back seat.

The Warden was leaning against a tree, staring forward at the Fields, his unfamiliar hands on his familiar utility belt as he waited for the undead to arrive. As he did so, he managed to keep any uneasy thoughts in his head from lingering longer than a few moments. He wasn’t sure what she already knew or if any of this would even matter but nonetheless, people tried, he supposed.

—

Leila felt like she had a rock in the pit of her stomach.

She’d always been a bit of an anxious person, however much she tried to mask it. Little worries that usually amounted to nothing, and could be put to rest once proven to be just that. But the situation at hand was not ‘nothing’. An elder vampire who seemed to actually be her partner’s master, who stole their emotions yet again, who seemed to want nothing more than Metzli to suffer through life. These were not nothing. These were very real problems. Chuy, Master Jesus, posed a very real threat to a fragile happiness that had finally entered Leila’s life. Not to mention, posed a very real threat to Metzli’s actual life.

She was afraid to admit that some piece of her had become used to being the giver of fear, not the owner of it.

All the mare could do was focus on the moment. And the moment required stumbling through the trees, avoiding any signs of Gatlin-Field-goo as she tried to track down the exact coordinates Parker had sent. Tree, tree, another tree, a bit of field, boulder, tree… Not Chuy, no sign of Elder Vampire in her midst… not that she could tell if there was anyhow… Her phone bleeped out directions that she hardly even heard.

The sound of autumn leaves crunching underfoot gave her arrival away before she could say anything. The man stood with his back against a tree (probably the wisest thing, given the problem they currently faced) and his hands on his belt. Focused. Good. Focused was probably a necessity considering the problem they faced.

“Parker?”

He wasn’t sure how long he was there. Then again, it wasn’t as though he were in a particular hurry, even if he could glance up and see the clouds swelled with rain above. Parker wondered if rays from an overcast, stifled sun provided the same cover of day as a normal, clear day; he may not’ve known a lot about vampires and true, they didn’t have the benefit of the cover of night but as far as he could gather, vampires could see in the dark anyway and they still couldn’t tolerate sunlight. Hopefully. In any case, the Warden remained there until he could pick up the faint sound of someone walking through the dead leaves and, hoping he could hear the direction it came from and assuming that it wasn’t a vampire, he turned his head to regard a woman. Shorter than him, which was to be expected, with soft skin (that he could’ve sworn seemed to carry a shimmer to it in the glimpses of light that made it through the canopy) and an expression on her face that Parker couldn’t instantly recognize despite his ability to read lies. “Leila, I presume.” He replied with a small nod of his head as he did a cursory glance over her physical appearance, though it wasn’t to judge how she looked on an aesthetic level - he was trying to gauge if she looked like a fighter. If she could hold her own in a physical altercation. Were mares given enhanced strength? She didn’t look particularly… adept. But then again, Parker knew better than to assume a woman’s love and fury couldn’t at least provide ambition in a fight. The Warden pulled away from the tree, standing at his full height as he regarded the mare. “I suppose we should start by… finding out what you know about vampires, elder or otherwise.” He spoke slowly, but concisely, and with his flat affect ever-present as he kept his blue eyes on her.

—

She could feel those blue eyes picking her apart inch by inch. Analyzing. Appraising. A piece of her wanted nothing more than to shrink away from that gaze, but instead, she stood as tall as she could, chin held high. “You presumed correct,” Leila forced a grin to her face for just a moment, though it felt… wrong. Wrong for the matter at hand.

Despite knowing that the man meant her no harm, she couldn’t help but feel a little wary. Not a slayer, no, but adjacent. The only thing that kept her from running away entirely was the knowledge that Metzli trusted him, and that Parker had the information that might be able to help save them. With a sigh, Leila walked closer to the man in the clearing. What she knew about vampires? With a frown, she rummaged through her knowledge of Metzli and of Cassius, trying to piece together everything she possibly could about vampires.

“I know that vampires are made, or sired; I know that they obviously need blood, I know that a sire has power over their spawn- can control them, to some extent. I don’t… I don’t know how to get rid of an elder vampire. Permanently. Which might be what I need. In this particular circumstance.”

__ Either she didn’t know as much about vampires as he thought or there really didn’t seem to be as much to them as the vastly expansive variation of fae. ‘Course there ain’t as much to ‘em. Bloodsuckers. You remember what I said; undead are strong but stupid and simple.’ Parker supposed that was true to an extent; the elder must’ve been really bored if this entire mess involving Metzli was possibly worth anything to him. The hobby, if one could call it that, sounded more akin to what fae did on average. Petty, vindictive, willing to ruin someone’s life (or… unlife, in this case) because it humors them. And yet, Parker found himself wondering who would actually end up being hurt in all this. And what the point was, if there was one. It wasn’t his business, though. Metzli was nice to him while they still had emotions and even if his own life wouldn’t change from the result of whatever would happen, Metzli had a lot of friends that probably would be effected. The Warden flexed his four-fingered hand absently, his brow twitching ever-so-slightly as the sensation still felt more than a little strange. “From what I’ve been told, they’re notoriously difficult to kill.” He stated. “My source notified me that there are only a handful of ways to do so.” He motioned for her to follow him to his car that was parked nearby. “They said that elders can be decapitated or immolated.” Parker explained, unlocking the car so that they had access to the back seat which, now that one was looking at it, held an array of weapons - there were several daggers, a few cans of what appeared to be hairspray, and a couple of traditional wooden stakes. The most obvious and notable thing, however, was a small and streamlined flamethrower. He wasn’t sure what she would have a preference for and as he spoke, he reached into one of the many pouches on his thick belt and pulled out a lighter. “They also suggested that if you can find their coffin or resting place and burn it, the elder will follow suit.” He glanced over to Leila. “Can you touch holy items?” He asked, realizing that he knew nothing about mares.

—

Oh, God, she hated it.

A car full of tools to destroy something other than mortal, other than human. Stakes. So many wooden stakes. Her stomach dropped, and her eyes went wide. Daggers glinting in the daylight. Tools for death. For people like her, like Metzli, like all those she cared so much for. Leila set her jaw, trying not to let the wave of long ingrained fear creep onto her face. A mask of adamant. No fear. For Metzli, she would not be scared.

The flamethrower was what caught her by surprise. “Just the coffin…?” She paused. A tremoring hand reached out towards the flamethrower, as if it were something to be both revered and feared. If elder vampires were so dangerous, then perhaps the proper approach to their destruction was something a bit more stealthy. A sort of oblique move in the chess game that would be freeing her partner from the vice grip of someone so cruel and so dangerous. A distraction, perhaps…

It took a moment for the mare to pull herself out of the rabbit hole of her own thoughts. She was about to respond that yes, it was perfectly fine for her to touch something holy, when a loud thud cut her off. Brown eyes went wide with fright as she jerked back, away from the car, away from whatever had descended on their planning.

—

Master had caught wind of the subtle plans, whispers deciphered with a little prying. Under his thrall, nothing could be hidden, and Metzli, try as they might to resist, gave away what information they’d given to their friends. At his command, they were stripped of what little connection they had left, tossed outside to hunt.

It wasn’t hard to figure out where Parker and Leila were headed, a simple question answered out of trust and love. Metzli took advantage of this, something they would’ve never done under any other circumstance. Loyalty was something they put a lot of weight in, always utilizing honesty and despising any sort of lie. But they weren’t themself. They weren’t Metzli. Instead, they were Chuy’s pawn. His foot soldier that he took pleasure in showing everyone what their place was, while also relishing in seeing them destroy everything they never should have had in the first place. Little by little, Metzli would do so, and Leila and Parker were only the start.

The vampire landed on the trunk of Parker’s car with a deep thud, leaving an indention. Red eyes bore into their friend and their girlfriend, teeth displayed in a visible threat to back away. “Leave.” Metzli barked, a deeper part of them forcing the feral side to be satisfied with a simple departure and abandonment of the plan. “Or die.” They added, looking to the sun that only just then began to warm their skin. Little pinpricks of pain that would turn into sizzling if they didn’t finish the fight quickly.

Whatever answer had been sitting on the tip of Parker’s tongue for any question she would’ve asked, any acknowledgement for what she would’ve stated hadn’t left his mouth as there was suddenly something denting the hood of his car. Instinctively, quickly, the Warden snatched one of the stakes from the backseat of the vehicle and held it as though he would a dagger, his other hand balling into an uncertain, four-fingered fist as he crossed his arms over his chest protectively. The man had barely moved into a defensive position when a voice promptly commanded that the two-person party either leave or die and blue eyes found the face of the source of the instruction. Despite it all, despite seeing that the figure that was on his car was some corrupted husk of Metzli, complete with red eyes and domineering fangs, Parker found himself spiking with irritation. A culmination of thoughts that tugged on his mind more frequently ever since he made that promise to Cass for… whoever’s benefit, he didn’t even know anymore. He was irritated that the hood of his car now had an ugly indention in it. He was frustrated that he couldn’t seem to get any time to himself or with one other person without something going wrong. He was annoyed that while shit like this was happening, he was the one being attacked by a slayer without provocation. He was irritated that he could do everything right to the best of his abilities and still be caught off-guard; where did the vampire even come from? And he was bluntly, inappropriately upset at Metzli, though some part of him knew that he shouldn’t have been; it wasn’t their fault. It was never anyone’s fault. It was always a passing around of excuses, half-assed explanations, empty threats. Blame games. Mind manipulation. Foolish promises. Whining about being too weak to take control. It happened all the time with fae. This though, this getting involved in something he had no experience in, something that wasn’t his job, his incessant need to… help, for some reason, that was Parker’s fault. He owned it. The thing that irritated him most, as he stared unblinkingly at the one-armed vampire, was himself. ‘Sure do change your mind quick, don’t you?’ He could feel Walker patting him on the back with a gentle sarcasm. It wasn’t fear that this was going to happen. The hunter always had this scenario in the back of his mind; the stakes he brought weren’t for the elder. If it was fear that Metzli’s master wanted, he wasn’t going to find any in the Warden. No, instead, just annoyance, a brief inflammation of emotion before he could properly address what was really wrong and attempt to fix it, shutting it down in favor of a mechanical realization that he might need to fight the vampire. “Leila, what do you want me to do.” Though it wasn’t inflected as such, Parker asked the mare for instruction as he kept his steady gaze on Metzli. If Leila would rather have evacuated, that could be arranged despite Parker’s hating to be told what to do. He also knew that Leila was much closer to the vampire and the last thing he wanted was to be attacked by both of them just in case Leila was under some impression that it was Parker’s choice to attack first.

—

It was funny how a face could elicit so many emotions and memories all at once.

For instance, whenever Leila looked at Metzli, she thought of the first night she met them, how after the looming threat of the slayer that had chased her to the gallery had been dealt with, the pair of them had stood there staring at each other, red meeting red. She thought about every single time their frame had graced the door of The Party Thrifter, of evenings where neither one could seem to draw themself away from the other, of the first time she caught a glimpse of that subtle, almost smile- like it was a secret thing, a rare treasure…

As she stood staring up at them now, standing atop the car, she tried to find that same person, only to discover that Chuy had stolen her Metzli away. Her heart rose into her throat. She could see their lips moving, and yet she could not hear their voice, all noise replaced with a sharp ringing. The white-hot pinpricks of tears threatened to overwhelm her completely, but Leila swallowed them down before they had the chance to make their escape. No. Not giving Chuy the satisfaction.

Parker’s voice broke through the ringing. What do you want me to do? Hell, what did she want to do? She didn’t want to hurt Metzli. That wasn’t even an option in her mind. Leila would have rathered die a million times over before she would ever lay a finger on the vampire she’d come to love so much. And yet, there was a warden, and there was a trunk of tools designed for the killing of vampires. And there was Metzli, looking more feral than she’d ever seen them. Staring at the two of them like they were nothing but bodies to be taken out of the way. What do you want me to do?

“Don’t kill them, don’t…” The words were strained, hoarse. She stared into red eyes, frozen like a deer in headlights.

___

Metzli could feel Master nearby, watching as if what was occurring was some sort of show designed for his entertainment. A movie where the final girl was really the killer all along, something he’d directed and ensured the moment he commanded Metzli to attack. But really, even he knew words would hurt worse than any wound could. It was obvious in the way such a dangerous hand could be accepted on a cheek with ease. Which made the next command all the more satisfying to make.

Tell her you don’t love her.

The words echoed in the vampire’s mind, voice lodged in their throat as it crawled its way up with a choke. They winced, tremors overtaking their body as the lie threatened to make a break to Leila’s ears. No. Metzli found an inkling of resolve, their hatred for lying winning out. No! Eyes squeezed shut, forcing stars to form behind their lids as they struggled to fight back against the deathgrip Master had around their mind. It was the first time Metzli had been able to cross such a feat, and they took advantage of the opportunity by making a half-hearted attack. If anyone was going to be attacked, it had to be Parker. Leila stood no chance against their strength or, most of all, her heart.

With a tackle, Metzli sent the pair into a tumble, utilizing their advantage of height to wrap their limbs around Parker tightly. They knew he’d be more than a worthy opponent, hunters having a proclivity for lithe and agile combat. Unfortunately, that knowledge made it all the more difficult to retrain Metzli’s more monstrous side. Master Jesus used this to influence their need for blood, for the hunt that made a meal so satisfying. They shoved Parker away to make an attack, pouncing as they unsheathed their knife and cocked their arm back to send the blade into its new home in Parker’s chest.

It was obvious that Leila had never gotten into an altercation like this before, especially against something or someone that she felt so strongly about. As Parker stood there, coiled like a tightly-wound spring, eyes dancing as his mind raced with possible angles of attack, Leila gave only one order: don’t kill them. And as the seemingly simple instruction joined the small, but fervent collection of voices in his head giving him different pieces of advice - ‘don’t underplay its strength, it’s still a vampire’ from his father, ‘look for an opening for its heart’ from his mother, ‘whatever you do DON’T GET BIT’, an especially obvious tip from his brother, the Warden realized that… well, duh. He didn’t want to kill Metzli, either. He didn’t want to kill Metzli, he thought as the vampire tackled him, though not fast enough for him not to be able to react and he did so by tensing his body in preparation for both the collision of their bodies and crashing to the ground. Their limbs around him probably would’ve been more useful had there been a more significant height difference but as it was, he could only act defensively. The brief pain of hitting the ground was there and gone in an instant as he got pushed away instead, sliding along the dead, grassy dirt. The display of strength was acknowledged, but not appreciated or admired as Parker, blue eyes seeing the knife being unsheathed and, going by the trajectory of the attack, where it was being aimed, responded by bringing the stake that he had grabbed up to catch the blade. The wood splintered under the strain but was surprisingly stronger than Parker initially gave it credit for. Ultimately, it was to redirect the blade so that if it did make contact with him, it wouldn’t be somewhere so sensitive. He had to think about things like this, he had to think about the mechanics and the allocation of strength; by asking what Leila had wanted him to do, he had put himself at a disadvantage, one he was sure the elder vampire wasn’t allowing for in Metzli’s fighting. He couldn’t go for what felt most natural, despite not being a vampire hunter. He had been trained to utilize any weakness he could, aim lethally, strike to gain the upper hand. The blade encased in the wooden stake drew closer to his flesh, though it was safely redirected so that if it made impact, it would’ve been with his shoulder instead. Parker used this time to maneuver his other hand down so his four fingers could slip themselves into his familiar, spiked iron knuckles. With a burst of strength of his own, coming to some semblance of a conclusion that he could use the uneven weight distribution from the vampire’s missing arm to his advantage, he pushed back against them and swung the iron knuckles, aiming for anywhere on their arm. Don’t kill them. Though he couldn’t be sure they would offer him that same grace.

—

They winced.

She’d watched it happen, unable to tear her eyes away from the vampire who stood atop the now-dented car watching both mare and warden as if they were prey. Metzli winced in those mere seconds before they launched themself at Parker like some great wild cat, before the world seemed to tilt sideways. They were fighting back, they must be, in their own little way. Which meant…

Leila swore, scrambling to get back to the car while her eyes scanned every inch of the woods for a sign of the elder vampire. He couldn’t control Metzli from too far away, could he? Which meant the coward was lurking somewhere nearby, determined to torment the vampire they made by forcing them to hurt those they cared about.

Find a solution, find a solution… Parker needed to get up and away from Metzli so the pair of them could get the hell out of there, preferably with the car. Which meant Chuy needed a reason to want Metzli to stop what they were doing. Which meant… oh, this was very stupid. Without a second thought, shaky hands caught up the flamethrower and Leila wheeled in the opposite direction.

Here was to hoping…

—

Parker’s strength was enticing, making Metzli’s fangs ache with the need to bite, to sink into flesh and consume the energy that made the hunter’s movements so agile. Bite. Bite. The vampire weaved around the knuckles, movements desperate for the blood flowing erratically from Parker’s heart. He could sink his iron weapon into Metzli all he wanted. Blow after blow, they continued to attack, hunger rising with each ounce of exertion that they exhibited.

Metzli bent backwards with a final dodge, snapping back upright with enough speed to quickly swivel their body around Parker’s. They used the momentum to send him careening to the ground, using the advantage to pounce and place themself above the hunter to go for the bite. A sense of satisfaction began to creep up Metzli’s arms, tingling like a pleasant march of ants as they made eye contact with their…friend.

They paused, piercing blue eyes sending a message behind their own. Moments shared together, holding hands and discussing organisms. Sharing food and finding comfort in a person who experienced the world in a similar way, with no judgment to be found. Metzli swallowed, a sharp pain swelling into their mind as Master’s anger rose. Falling back, they gripped their head, just barely catching Leila running off with some sort of mechanism.

Follow. They wasted no time, giving chase and catching up with Leila in an instant. She was pushed to the ground unceremoniously, whatever she was holding clattering to the ground. Metzli simply stared, unable to do much else as a flurry of commands swept through from Master. They know. Do not let them get me. Kill them now.

Silently, they stepped in front of Leila as she remained on the ground, putting themself between her and Master Jesus. They found they couldn’t go past that, no matter how angry Master became. The punishment they’d most certainly receive was nothing in comparison to hurting people they knew they loved. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t feel it anymore. Metzli knew it was there.

The motions towards his heart, his vital organs and major veins were deflected each time, giving way for being nonlethally stabbed, lacerated and knocked around. Parker could take those, just as he knew that Metzli could take whatever he offered in return. And yet, as they fought, though he didn’t want to admit it, he felt that the vampire was getting stronger as they exchanged blows. Maybe it was placebo, maybe it was something else in his mind, something small that he didn’t want to acknowledge. Whichever it was, the Warden was caught just off-guard enough by a deft movement of the vampire that he crashed into the dirt once more, not able to move quite fast enough to keep the vampire from landing on him and positioning themself at an advantage. His heart pounded in his chest from the exertion of their fight, feeling his blood churning as it started to get to work to mend his broken flesh and as his breath was knocked out from the fall, eliciting a sharp gasp for air, Parker’s eyes met Metzli’s. They were wide, pupils shrunken to black pin pricks as they were facing up, confronted with the light that was suppressed behind mottled gray clouds that lingered in the sky, steely blue mixing with blood red. And there was no fear in them as he could only mentally prepare himself for what felt like was about to be a pair of glistening fangs in his neck. No, Parker’s eyes locked with Metzli’s and they carried something unfamiliar with them. It wasn’t sympathy; Parker didn’t understand what that felt like. It wasn’t fear, as previously established, nor was it longing, which was reserved for when he found a particularly desirable set of wings. It wasn’t even necessarily regret as he found himself at another disadvantage, despite how well he thought he was fighting. Blue and red looked at each other and for a fleeting moment, something inside Parker’s own mind recognized that the creature on top of him wasn’t just a creature, despite how animalistic and unfamiliar they were. It was Metzli. And he wondered in that fleeting moment if maybe Metzli, who was likely inside the shell somewhere, looked back and saw Parker. Looking past the Warden, past what made him worse than a hunter in their words. Whatever it was that was shared between them gave the vampire just enough pause and as the latter pulled away, Parker scrambled back and to his feet once more, ignoring the throbbing pulses that coursed through the checkpoints on his scarred body. A cursory glance at his surroundings coupled with Metzli’s abrupt departure told him that Leila had evidently gone off into the woods brandishing the flamethrower he’d brought. Smart girl. …At least to an extent. Though it might’ve been in his best interests to disengage, feeling something of a phantom pain of fangs that never entered his neck, Parker pursued the vampire who pursued the mare, stopping just short as the two nonhumans found themselves relatively face-to-face this time, albeit with Leila on the ground and Metzli standing their ground - wherever this master was, he must’ve been somewhere behind the vampire. He remained silent, looking between the two for a moment before his sharp eyes scanned the woods behind them, almost ast though he’d be able to see the master wretch comically peeking his head out from behind a tree.

—

The ground came rushing up to greet the mare, knocking the wind out of a body almost as old as the trees as she crashed into the roots and detritus of the forest floor. The blowtorch clattered away. Leila could only pray that the damned thing hadn’t broken in her fall. Metzli towered above her, a giant amongst the trees. Red eyes hard and unblinking. Placed firmly between herself and the deeper woods. She was right… She had to be right. Chuy was close.

She wanted to scream at the elder vampire. Let him know his days were numbered as he cowered away in the shadows, swallowed up by the trees, using the person she loved most as a pawn. That she would not mourn him when his coffin turned to cinders, to ashes, to nothing. When Chuy became nothing. The very word Metzli used to describe themself so many times. But Leila bit her tongue, swallowed her rage. It did no good. The elder vampire could not know that they were coming for him, could not know the day, the hour, or the means of his demise. And neither, unfortunately, could Metzli.

Leila inched away from the vampire as her hands sought out the little flame thrower in the mess of leaves. She did not move her gaze from Metzli, not even for a moment. Dark brown boring up into red. I will fix this, her hand found metal amidst the leaves. We will find Chuy and we will free you. Slowly, slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, taking a few steps back. Hopefully, Parker was moving his ass and getting the car ready to outrun a vampire. Words lodged themselves in her throat, begging to be let out. But promises were left unsaid, vows and threats to elder vampires remained firmly locked away. The four words that left her mouth were none of the above, and yet she tried to say so much with so little.

“I love you, Metzli…”

She could only hope the message was heard.

Leila reached for the weapon, sending hackles raising in an instant. There was no chance of fighting back against instinct, Master’s wishes to eliminate any threat toward him. Metzli leapt, knife at the ready and thrown back to send down with unrelenting force. There was fatal purpose behind their movement, powerful and unbecoming. Every ounce of it dissipated the moment Leila’s eyes locked with Metzli’s, a split-second decision guiding their blade into a different home; the earth. It sank next to Leila’s head, a mere inch from her ear.

Kill her.

They couldn’t. Not even when their mind was lost, killing Leila was too difficult. Metzli’s heart took over, somehow receiving their partner’s message. With no music or sound, it still managed to bend them with the swell of internal screaming, until the barrier shattered with the vibrations of the love they had for those closest to them. Never had Metzli been enough, but in that moment, they didn’t have to be. They didn’t have to be anything else but a mindless soldier adhering to the commands of their heart. They didn’t fight, they didn’t attack. They just stared, leaning in slowly until they gently bonked their head against Leila’s.

Kill her!

The voice was a distant echo, muddled and distorted until the decibel of Master’s anger broke through. Metzli growled, baring teeth. Though they weren’t sure if it was toward Leila or to the man a few yards away. It didn’t matter, regardless. Master was angry, and he pulled the chain, forcing Metzli to rise to their feet and back away into the shadows of the trees as they looked to Parker and then to Leila, wordlessly.

If one were to look closely, there was a glimmer cascading down Metzli’s cheek, expression still blank. But eyes never lied.

If the blade had found its home in her chest, she wouldn’t have been upset. At least, not for herself. The knife sank into the earth just beside her while red eyes bored into her soul. It’s okay… The words that filled her mind were not for her. Could not be for her. No part of Leila was okay- there was so much hurt in her chest, threatening to swallow her up. And yet… It’s okay. A promise for Metzli, wordless though it might have been. That they would be okay.

That was what mattered, wasn’t it?

It took all her strength not to evaporate into a puddle of tears the moment the vampire’s forehead met her own. They were fighting so hard. Chuy, the coward, was almost definitely cursing her very existence from wherever he was hiding. A small, hiccuped whimper lodged itself in Leila’s throat, tears escaping despite her best efforts.

The moment was over as swiftly as it had arrived, returning to the snarling, rage filled present. Don’t go, don’t go… Her heart was breaking all over again. Her Metzli melted into the shadowy depths of the forest. “I love you,” She managed to croak once more as shade took more and more of the vampire away from her again until they were nothing but red eyes staring back in her direction.

In that moment she knew only one thing. There would not be rest for her until Metzli was free.

It was the sensation of an alien watching an equivalent of human interaction and intimacy, an exchange of ultimate… love between the vampire, who even Parker could tell was grappling with liberty from the iron grip of their master’s claws on their essence of being and the mare, an undead anomaly that the Warden knew shockingly little about. He remained nearly motionless, considering that he wasn’t sure if he would’ve been able to keep himself from attempting to either kill Metzli or circumvent them in favor of finding this master had the vampire actually killed Leila right then and there. His body was tense, as it usually was, blue eyes absorbing as much information as they could as limbs moved in an instant, bodies closing in to each other. But the attempted attack turned into a deliberate miss. A touch of skin, underneath which the two minds of two animated corpses felt their neurons fire in response to one another. An admission of love, and a sensation Parker knew was shared between the two undead but was completely foreign to him. He recalled a conversation he had with his mother, long ago, about why she loved father. ‘It started because of obligation.’ She explained softly, as she watched him rotate his hand slowly, a centipede dancing on his fingers. ‘But now I’m having trouble thinking of a time before I loved him. When I see him, my heart swells. He is my anchor, keeping me from drifting off. A light when my head is full of darkness.’ A light when one’s head was full of darkness. Parker wondered if that’s what Metzli felt at that moment, before getting to their feet and retreating into the shadows, looking not unlike how they looked the first time the Warden met them with their supply of blood. Affiliation was a strong thing. They retreated and, without taking his eyes off of theirs, he addressed Leila. “We need to leave.” He said calmly, his tone betraying nothing that might’ve been running through his mind. Back to the car, where he could drop Leila off at her desired location. Back to the car where they could discuss their findings in more private detail. Back to the car where the rest of his vampire-hunting tools were.

Yet he couldn’t explain why his heart was still pounding.

—

The mare’s gaze stayed fixed on the spot where Metzli had once stood, even after the red pinpoints of light had been swallowed up by a dark she knew too well. She hardly heard Parker’s voice above the din in her mind, and it took a moment for her to reply. “We’re fixing this…” The words were not meant for the warden, rather, they were Leila’s lifeboat. She made so many promises to Metzli- but this one, this one needed to be to herself.

Slow feet dragged a resentful body away to the car and the safety it provided, but her eyes stayed utterly fixed on the inky shadows of the forest and the spot that the vampire had stood.

#wickedswriting #writings #at a cruel angle #bloody ink #leila and metzli #parker and metzli #emotional abuse tw #c: leila #c: parker

7 notes · View notes

howdy-cowpoke · 1 year

Text

Some of my employees seem to think we should run a petting zoo with our younger animals during the spring. Not sure how I feel about the idea, though I know there's plenty of ways to do it ethically. Mostly I just want as few visitors to the farm as possi It puts us all at risk Thoughts? Concerns? Would you come all the way out to Gatlin Fields just to have some baby goats jump all over you?

#. chat ;

44 notes · View notes

ironcladrhett · 6 months

Text

TIMING: Immediately following 'Fade to Black' LOCATION: Gatlin Fields, near the Flat PARTIES: Parker (@wonder-in-wings) and Rhett (@ironcladrhett) SUMMARY: Parker receives an alarming call from Rhett and he goes to help. CONTENT WARNINGS: Medical blood (brief type mention), suicidal ideation, eye trauma

—

“...Rhett?”

“Werewolf got me. Probably got ‘bout twenty minutes afore I bleed out. Bring supplies. It’s safe now. Send you the coordinates in a sec. Somewhere near the edge of the Flat.”

Parker wasn’t the type to drop things when he was surprised, afraid or angry. Indeed, his ability to maintain his composure under incredible duress was something that even his father acknowledged was a strength of his, even if his mother knew that it could just as easily be a weakness in the right (or wrong) circumstances. So when Rhett called him, breathing heavily, still managing to make himself coherent and told the younger Warden that he’d been attacked by a werewolf and that he was approximately twenty minutes from dying, Parker said nothing in response and if Rhett hadn’t hung up first, he would’ve.

The coordinates were received and promptly entered into his phone as Parker swept through his house with a purposeful stride, collecting the large medical bag that had just about everything one could possibly need for any medical emergency. Well… almost everything. As Parker raced down the dark streets of Nightfall Grove, sharp blue eyes darted up at the archaic sign of the neighborhood apothecary and he debated very briefly about running in, grabbing whatever looked the most familiar to what Jonas had offered him that day for his reaction to Blue and throwing a hundred bucks at the cashier but ultimately, the risk and reward wasn’t great enough - he literally didn’t have time for an altercation or distraction from anyone that would’ve wanted to give him grief.

So, he headed straight to the coordinates that Rhett had supplied, only allowing one set of instructions to pass through his mind: Keep Rhett from dying. He refused to entertain any other, less logical notions or consider any other possibilities; they had no place in his mind. They never did.

Fortunately, if there was fortune to be found in the call or coordinates he received, Rhett was relatively close to where Parker lived so the younger Warden got there as quickly as he possibly could’ve, running lights and taking tight turns until his bloodstained hatchback took him out to Gatlin Fields, much closer to Serpent’s Flat than he’d have liked with its acrid stench and domineering presence looming in the distance. It took a little longer than he’d have liked due to the black pits of ooze that periodically dotted the road and surrounding fields, causing him to circumvent the most direct route.

—

The warden sat backed against a tree not far from the cave entrance, looking like he’d been to hell and back… and might be on his way down one last time. Four long gashes had been sliced across his face, from where the werewolf’s claws had gripped beneath his jaw and behind his ear to wrench him to the ground. The second from the top had gone right over his left eye socket, mangling the blind eye beyond saving. His face was almost entirely red, short beard stained a dark scarlet as the blood pooled among the hair before dripping onto the shirt he wore. One that had been similarly shredded, three much more shallow claw marks starting from his collarbone and ending just above the waist of his jeans. His left leg was mangled, soaked red and broken in several places, more dead weight than anything at this point.

On the ground about ten feet from where Rhett sat were clear signs of a struggle, and a pool of his own blood that streaked its way to his current position. Slightly farther from him than that was another significant bloodstain—one that was not his own. It dripped off in the direction of town with two pairs of footsteps, leading him right to the fae if he cared enough to pursue it. He did not. Not that he could, anyway. He was on death’s door, his breathing shallow and ragged, gaze upturned toward the sky. He wondered if Parker would get here in time, and then wondered what would happen if he didn’t.

There was some guilt there, for the things he’d be leaving unfinished. This business with Mariela and his daughter, properly smoothing things over with Emilio… but, he supposed, then he at least wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout of having attacked the two young’uns that seemed to be fond of Alan. And vice versa. Ugh.

Lost in thought, feeling more tired than he ever had, the sound of a car engine in the distance made his brow furrow. Ah. Perhaps he’d survive this after all.

He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

The most he could do to acknowledge Parker’s arrival as the warden hurried over to him, bag in hand, was to slightly turn his head in his friend’s direction. And god did he look like a horror show.

—

The smell of blood mixed with the stench of the flats as the Warden scanned the environment. A cave entrance, a sparse dotting of trees. Obvious signs of a struggle, upturned earth, blood that sprayed the ground. His eyes found two blood trails and he opted to follow the one that led him to Rhett. Or… he could only assume it was Rhett; the pirate was virtually unrecognizable with all the sets of gashes he’d acquired from the werewolf - and it was definitely a werewolf, Parker could tell as even the stray hairs that remained at the crime scene, sticking to the opened wounds on Rhett’s body were enough to irritate his sinuses.

The younger Warden approached the other, dropping to a crouch as he quickly assessed the level of threat each injury presented. Marks on the face, deep, wide, profuse. A shred of stiffness and hesitancy as Parker examined the eye that, while still able to move around normally before, had been completely ruined by the attack. He moved downward where he saw the decidedly more superficial claw marks on Rhett’s chest - they were long but Parker didn’t think they were the cause of the bloodloss. They’d scar but they weren’t Parker’s primary concern so he ruled them out of his plans for emergency operation. Now those blue eyes went down to Rhett’s left leg, bent out of shape, disfigured, with exposed flesh and bone and muscles.

Could it be saved? Could Rhett be saved? The understanding that death could come for anyone at any time and that it was ultimately futile to try to deny it was a recurring ideology spread across hunters, no matter the subtype or generation. And yet, Rhett had used what little strength and energy he had to call Parker, of all people. The younger Warden didn’t pride himself on being the one tasked with pulling a man from the brink of death - he’d done it once before. He could do it again. Rhett calling him was a nonverbal indicator though of what, Parker didn’t think about.

“I’ll need to dress the wounds on your face.” Parker started first, speaking clearly, swiping his nose with the back of a wrist absently as he started to set up his medical bag. “Your eye… is beyond repair; I can extract it or you can keep it if you’d rather but that might cause complications in the future.” He was being clinical but making sure that he was being loud enough that Rhett was able to hear him from wherever the Warden lingered on his lifeline; Parker refused to believe that Rhett would die here and now. From his interactions with the pirate, until just now when he was assessing the damage to Rhett’s body, Parker almost got the childish impression that Rhett couldn’t die.

Asking for Rhett’s blood type seemed futile - Parker had the means for a transfusion but he wasn’t so dumb as to assume that getting more blood was better than just fixing what he could. “I also need to set your left leg. I assume you don’t want to lose it but…” He faltered before clearing his throat. “I have anesthesia.” He offered, reaching down to pull the fabric off from around Rhett’s ruined leg so he could properly apply a tourniquet. “One of my needles will knock you out for a couple of hours.” He licked his lower lip, moving his head so he could catch Rhett’s dark, lifeless gaze.

“What do you want me to do?”

A pause, a new plan that formulated in his mind. One that Parker very rarely considered when he or other hunters were in danger and injured. “Rhett, I should take you to a hospital.” The word itself tasted unusual on his tongue. Parker was ambitious but he understood his limits pretty well. And this… whether he liked it or not, this was outside of them.

—

The options were grim, but not unexpected. The eye was as good as gone, and the leg would be too, if they didn’t do something about it quickly, but… while he worked up the energy to respond, breath hitching in his throat a few times, Parker offered a different solution entirely.

He’d never been to a fucking hospital, a fact that he assumed Parker knew, judging by the general hunter mentality regarding those places. While his accelerated healing might raise some brows, he didn’t think he’d be there long enough for it to really become a problem, and… well. There was only so much that two wardens could do all on their own in the wilderness.

“Set it,” he wheezed. “Close me up so I—so I can make it there.” A beat as he caught his breath. “No anesthetics.” If he did die at some point during this situation, he didn’t want it to be while he was knocked out. He wanted to feel every second of it. He was fading as it was, feeling lightheaded and slightly confused, which was about as good as it was going to get for setting his shredded limb. None of it felt good, but Rhett was relatively quiet throughout the process, not wanting to complain and slow his friend down. He lost consciousness twice, but the next painful task would wake him up again with a throaty groan. Who knew being stabilized would be such a pain in the ass?

Finally, the deed was done. He was as good as he was going to get, out here at the Flat. Next came perhaps the most challenging part—loading him into the vehicle to get him over to WR General Hospital. He couldn’t stand, so Parker had to carry him. Something he might’ve complained about were he not on the brink of death, but it was the farthest thing from his mind right now.

Once they breached the doors of the emergency room, however, all that changed. The swarm of strangers trying to ask him and Parker both questions as they laid him out on a stretcher and poked him with needles to get him hooked up to IVs rubbed him very much the wrong way, and the warden lashed out like a cornered stray. He began to regret his decision to allow this, but now that he was here, they didn’t seem keen on letting him leave.

A doctor told Parker that Rhett would need emergency orthopedic surgery to save the leg, and advised the younger warden to head home after giving his contact info to reception, telling him he’d be contacted once the man was stable and set up in a room, but the procedures to repair his leg and remove the eye would take a while.

And a while it did take—it was ten hours later when the man finally came out from under the anesthesia, blinking awake in a quiet hospital room, bleary-eyed and confused. Squinting felt strange, and he lifted a hand to his face to feel the bandage secured over his left eye socket, as well as the stitches covered in dermabond that lined his face. A nervous glance downward did confirm, however, that he still had two legs, and the warden released a sigh of relief. At least there was that.

—

He knew it was unfair to expect a coherent answer from the dying Warden as Parker himself was torn evenly in two by what he could’ve and should’ve done. Even as he waited for a response, the logic in the younger man’s mind told him that if nothing else, before anything else, he needed to tourniquet the leg. Fortunately, Rhett’s eventual response, tinged with blood and borrowed from a set of lungs that weren’t working properly, reached the side of Parker’s hearing that could acknowledge and process it correctly.

No anesthetics. Set the leg. It was going to be the first of many tribulations but all things considered, though he didn’t have to be, Rhett was a surprisingly docile patient. Parker still had the ability to work in silence, with or without the plaintive moans, grunts and curses from whoever or whatever he was working on. It took several different movements and a lot of cracking that no one should’ve heard due to how unnatural they were but, as Parker placed the straightest branch of the tree that he could find against the leg and wrapped it in a thick bandage, it was set. Enough. The bleeding had largely ceased thanks to the tourniquet and putting the bones back into the leg where they were supposed to go and Parker cleaned his hands with one of the many rags from his medical bag, casting a glance at his shoddy handiwork before looking over his shoulder at his car which wasn’t too far away, to a normal, mobile person.

Rhett was anything but, though, and with another useless sniffle (seriously, Rhett couldn’t have been attacked by literally anything else?) and the instructions in his mind, Parker lifted the older Warden, collected his medical bag and carried the both of them to his car. Usually, he would’ve asked for permission but he was more than willing to be complained at, later - something told him that he would’ve looked forward to it. Rhett would complain at him later, once he was properly fixed.

The following checkpoints of that night wanted to be something of a blur, an automated mind that ran on autopilot as he drove to the emergency services. He did, however, remain sharply cognizant of where they were and never quite lost track of where he was or ultimately what was going on, though he found himself getting very irritated very quickly by the wave of questions, concerns and explanations circulated between everyone. It was a bear attack. His name is Everett Tangaroa. Here is my information. It probably wasn’t a good idea to– Well, that last part about anesthetics was something they had to learn the hard way.

The older Warden was whisked away, leaving Parker with the knowledge that he’d have to undergo an emergency surgery, that Parker was advised to go home and get some rest, that they’d let him know when they were finished and if something unexpected would happen and that they’d do everything they could to save the man. Parker didn’t have the heart or the patience to explain that he didn’t look the way he did because he was crying for Rhett.

But… as he went back out to his car with one more comment saying that the police would contact him if they had any questions or reason for suspicious activity or foul play, Parker wondered if he would’ve cried if that was the last time he saw Rhett. Now that he was laying in the back of his hatchback, considering just sleeping there until he was contacted about any updates, he felt his hands shaking. His breath, already coming to him with difficulty through a stuffed up nose, was more shallow than he wanted it to be. Were the tears in his eyes because of the residual werewolf hairs that now lingered in his car or was he actually… afraid for Rhett?

He sniffed again, pulled himself out of the back of the car and ultimately decided to go home, clean himself up, get some sleep - he’d been rational so far, it was foolish to stop now because of some childish fear that the man he’d only known for a few months was in critical condition and that Parker might find himself without a pair once more. Rhett wasn’t his brother. Rhett was his friend. And Parker wasn’t used to those anymore.

Maybe this was why.

Sleep was uneasy, hearkening back to those couple of weeks when he was tormented by nightmares that didn’t belong to him, nightmares that didn’t belong. And he kept his phone as loud as it could be and very near to him, waiting for something, anything. The second he received a call saying that Rhett was stable and moved into a room Parker could visit, he was dressed and out of that door, on his way, heading up the elevator and now lingering in the doorway to Rhett’s room, where he saw the proud Warden covered in gauze, bandages, an elevated leg and hooked up to the machines. He paused for a moment before rapping his knuckles on the wood. “Rhett.” He called, his tone carrying an uncharacteristic gentleness to it.

—

His hackles had raised the moment he’d been put on a stretcher and wheeled into a small room in the ED where his injuries could be more closely examined, anger and fear peeking through the haze of blood loss. He snapped at the nurses and doctors that were trying to help him, arguing with them as loudly as he could and generally making their jobs as difficult as possible. He didn’t know why, it was just an instinctual reaction. But at least Parker was there, speaking with a few people, trying to give his best account of what’d happened and what all he knew of Rhett’s injuries. But, in the frantic rush to get the warden stripped, sedated, and on his way to the operating room, he lost track of his friend. Suddenly he was moving down a hallway, which—how had he gotten here? Where was Parker? Not understanding the procedure for these things, the sudden sense of being very alone filled Rhett with panic. He tried to shout, but nothing came out. His body wouldn’t respond to him, finally laying still on the stretcher.

Seeing the bright overhead lights as they passed through another set of doors, Rhett realized he was in the operating room. Those big, circular lamps overhead looked just like the shit he’d seen on the telly. The voices around him were muffled and he felt sleepy, but fear kept his one eye open. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, and now they were moving him from the stretcher onto a table in the center of the room, and for some fucking reason, Rhett felt certain he was going to die.

But of course he hadn’t. The memory that he had a feeling he wasn’t supposed to have was just that—a memory of something that’d been successful. Because he wasn’t in the operating room anymore, he was safe in a much softer bed, in a dimly lit room with a window that looked out over Deersprings. His thoughts were jumbled again, his mind confusing the past for the present and vice versa. He felt strange and floaty and disconnected, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the drugs or whatever the hell was wrong with his head.

A voice snapped him out of his distant stare out the window and he turned his head, struggling to make out who it was in the dark. The voice was familiar, though, and he thought about it for a moment.

Ah.

“Parker?” His voice was hoarse from all the screaming he’d been doing, both before and after the procedure. Evidently, he was not peaceful while he slept, but at least he’d been still. He lifted a hand off the bed and rested it on the guardrail, extending it palm-up toward his friend as he entered the room. “Hey. Hey, mate.” It felt silly, but he said it nonetheless as Parker reached his bedside. “Thank you. I… you did it. You got me here. Probably saved my life.” He’d take the other’s hand if it was offered, giving it a squeeze that was nowhere near as strong as what Parker was used to. “Thank you.”

—

He was aware, at least aware enough to recognize that it was Parker that stood in the doorway for a moment before slowly making his way over to the side of the bed. The latter approached with a measure of hesitance; throughout the entire ordeal, the younger had all but pushed his own latent fear (or strong disdain, he’d probably tell you) of hospitals by the wayside in favor of making sure Rhett was taken care of. Now that the immediate danger was over, now that it was quiet (if only because Rhett had obviously rubbed his voice raw) and relatively calm, Parker felt out of place. Neither of them belonged there, he felt, not with their accelerated healing, the hunter genes either flat-out rejecting or at least diluting the effects of anesthesia and medication. Neither of them, engineered and constructed as they were to withstand pain and heal quickly so they could go out and do it again, belonged at the hospital with the gentle staff, compassionate hands and a genuine want to help.

Parker understood the sentiment from the other side of a glass pane. It wasn’t that hunters weren’t deserving of help, it was that oftentimes there wasn’t a way to. And as he drew closer to Rhett, sharp blue eyes dancing over the multiple bandages, tubes and sterile colors, hearing Rhett say his name and offer a hand, presumably for the younger Warden to take and to tell him ‘thank you’... None of it felt right. Timidly, Parker placed his hand into Rhett’s, feeling the texture of calloused skin send an involuntary spike of discomfort up his arm but he knew to expect it.

And for a long moment, Parker was silent. He wasn’t sure what to say, now that he was able to think about what he wanted to say instead of what needed to be said. He wanted to apologize for leaving Rhett, wanted to apologize for taking him to the hospital in the first place when he knew that Rhett wasn’t keen on the idea. He wanted to make light of the situation, which was strange for him but he was learning that levity was a useful tool - remaining serious the entire time, while having its benefits, wasn’t appropriate bedside manner. Rhett wasn’t a robot like he was; he was a person with strong emotions, a flare of anger and passion, the ability to laugh when he heard something that he liked.

But Parker also didn’t want to make a poorly-timed joke. Unless… Would that have been what Rhett wanted? The Warden was only a couple of years younger than Rhett but he felt so much more ill-suited for things like this. He swallowed the knot in his throat and he took his eyes off of Rhett, casting his gaze out of the window as he held Rhett’s hand, returning the gentle squeeze with his own. He’d held hands with Metzli at their request and it was a similar feeling: Nice. Calm. Connective.

“It’s–” He stammered before clearing his throat. “I knew you’d make it.” He changed trajectory. “I’m… I see that you got to keep your leg.” Parker looked back to Rhett slowly. “It was… not supposed to bend that way.” There. A joke. A light one, to gauge the other Warden to see if that was what was needed.

—

As if realizing himself, the warden gently withdrew his hand after a few beats, clearing his throat. He’d blame it on the drugs trying their damndest to keep him docile, he figured. Still, what Parker had said did draw a laugh out of him, and he used the now-free hand to scratch at his head, looking at the limb that was lifted into the air. “Aye, yer right about that,” he agreed with a grin, sighing and angling his head to look at it from a slightly different perspective. There was no cast, but the whole thing was bandaged all to hell. He wasn’t sure what they’d done—he vaguely recalled someone coming into the room earlier to explain it, but he couldn’t remember what they said. Something about… metal plates? Anyway, didn’t matter. He’d heal a hell of a lot faster than they expected, and to that point—Rhett looked down at the various lines coming from him and the sensors attached to his chest and grunted impatiently, beginning to peel them off and pull them out. An alarm or two went off as he did this but he paid it no mind, instead looking at Parker expectantly.

“Oi, figure out how to get the baby rails down, wouldja? We gotta get outta this joint.”

Two nurses came hurrying into the room to see what was happening and very quickly started trying to talk him down, but the warden was determined as he wiggled his bad leg out of the sling and continued fussing with the railing of the bed.

“I know, I know, I hear ya! Listen, I’m fine, and I’m gonna go home now n’ finish healin’ up there, ah’right? Where’s my things?” He shouted over their protests, growing more irritated by the second. “You wanna help me, get me a damn crutch ‘er somethin’.” They were bewildered, unable to physically stop him from leaving, but understandably very concerned about him eloping from the hospital against medical advice.

“Sir, please, you need to rest, you’re not even fully recovered from the—”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me, Penelope,” Rhett interjected, reading the name off her badge. “I ain’t never been a sir. Listen here. I respect ya, I do. Both ah’ya. But I got places to be n’ estranged children t’meet and I sure as shit ain’t doin’ it here in this hospital room. So. If you would kindly get me a god damned crutch…”

—

The younger Warden was relieved when Rhett, who had since withdrawn his hand and letting Parker’s go back to his belt in its comforting location, laughed at the comment. He was much less relieved, however, when the pirate abruptly started disconnecting him from the wires and nodes that were monitoring his body. “Negative.” He said at first in response to Rhett’s request to have him assist with the rails; Parker didn’t like it either but it didn’t seem like a good idea to start causing problems for the staff and potentially undoing the repairs that’d been done to the man by leaving for whatever reason.

Of course though, it was Rhett they were talking about and the older Warden was a fighter to the very end. The room went from calm to much more energetic and frantic rather quickly and while Rhett was yelling at the nurses, talking over one another and him and him yelling back to do this or that or the other, Parker managed to navigate through the confusion of bodies and movement and he grasped the lead physician’s arm as the latter entered through the door. “If I may have a moment.” He said before pulling the two back into the hall, temporarily leaving the poor nurses with Rhett’s unsightly temper.

“If you keep him here, he’ll do this at every available opportunity.” He tried to explain, keeping his stare on the doctor. “I know how it sounds, we know he’s still injured but please let him go.” Parker was almost positive that this was as far from standard protocol as possible, though he obviously didn’t know anything about any hospital protocol. He was also notably nervous even as he stood a full few inches over the head of the doctor. “Please. He’s… this is for your safety.” Because ultimately that was what it was; even in his weakened state, Rhett still had considerable strength and if they carried on the way they were going, despite Parker wishing he would just… not, someone was going to get hurt, someone who didn’t have accelerated healing. “You have my information, you can send me the bill. Just please give the man a crutch and let him come home with me.”

It was a little bit of a lie, to be sure, but after the physician couldn’t help but hear the circus erupting from the room and looking at the intense gaze in Parker’s eyes, he nodded in reluctant agreement. Without missing a beat, Parker exhaled and turned to go back into the other room, again doing his best to work around everyone until he was able to place his hand on Rhett’s shoulder forcibly. “Rhett, we’re leaving. Calm down. They’re bringing you some crutches. Then we can go.” A wheelchair would’ve been better, but Parker knew none of them could afford to be choosy when Rhett was pitching a fit. He spoke closely to Rhett, clearly, making sure his voice could be heard among the commotion; he supposed his mother’s insistence for formal vocal training wasn’t completely wasted, after all. Though he had to keep himself from collapsing under the newly-acquired observation of the nurses, who seemed to fall largely silent and regard him with an authority that he neither owned nor even wanted.

—

He’d gotten himself all worked up arguing with the nurses, finally figuring out how to lower the guardrail and watching it drop with a loud, satisfying clunk. “Ahaaa, there, see? Ya can’t fuckin’ hold me!” Stupid. He was behaving like a child, but sometimes that wasn’t really all that surprising.

“Mister Tangaroa, please do not try to stand,” nurse Penelope begged him, moving up close as he swung his legs over the edge of the hospital bed, groaning in pain.

“Oi, no, that’s my shitbird father!” Rhett hollered, waving a dismissive hand at her as she tried to gently press on his shoulders to keep him in place.

“Everett,” she barked, making him pause, but only for a moment. The other nurse, Dakota, was hovering anxiously between Penelope and the door, gaze dancing between the altercation in front of them and the visitor that was slipping out into the hall with Dr. Florman, unsure how best to help without manhandling the patient in a way that wasn’t quite legal. It was only their third week on the job, for heck’s sake! Rhett scoffed and shrugged away the concerned healthcare worker’s hands, scanning the room for his clothes. They had to be here somewhere, right? Even if they were tattered to shit.

“Where’s my stuff?! I need my stuff!”

“Th-they had to throw out your clothes, sir,” Dakota piped up nervously. “They were tattered and soaked in blood—”

“Damnit, all my clothes are like that! Fuck. Get me some joggers ‘er somethin’, then. Go on! I ain’t walkin’ outta here with a bare arse!” Dakota didn’t even want to argue, just nodding and scurrying out of the room, past the visitor and the doctor with a fearful look in their eyes. Penelope still wasn’t having it, arguing right back that he needed to stay put. That was when Parker returned, putting a hand on Rhett’s shoulder to get his attention. It took the older warden a moment to respond, but he did eventually look up at Parker and fall silent, giving him a small nod. And perhaps, since he’d stopped yelling long enough to make eye contact with his friend, Parker might notice that behind all the chest-puffing was a man who was very much still afraid.

Dakota returned with sweatpants in hand, just in time to hear the news from the doctor that they’d be letting the patient leave against medical advice. They gently set the pants on the bed next to the belligerent man, regarding Parker quietly before leaving the room again to get the requested crutches. Rhett picked them up as quick as he could, slipping them on with some fussing before standing up on one leg to tug them up around his waist. He held onto Parker for support until the crutches were delivered, reaching behind his head to untie the starchy gown they had him in and letting it drop to the floor.

“My phone,” he said as an afterthought, looking at Parker. “Did you end up with that, ‘er is she back at the cave?” It wasn’t a pressing matter, but he’d need it sooner rather than later. For right now, his main concern was getting the fuck out of that building. Crutches acquired, the injured warden led the way out of the hospital room, glaring at the rest of the staff and patients that’d congregated near the nurse’s desk to gawk.

—

If there was ever a set of circumstances to prove to Parker just how human Rhett was underneath the bravado, yelling, and character role he’d set for himself, it was this one as the younger Warden kept his gaze steady and his hand firmly connected to his shoulder. Grounding technique, it was called as he’d since done a modicum of research when he found himself wanting to help the pirate with the latter’s problems with dissociation. At least, that’s what Parker thought it was.

In any case, he did see the fear in Rhett’s eyes, a trapped animal in a scenario outside of his control and lashing out in the only way he knew to regain it. Parker couldn’t know how he himself would’ve reacted in this scenario - assuming he’d ever have allowed himself to be carted to a hospital or even been mauled by a werewolf to the point of needing an emergency operation - but he did understand Rhett’s recalcitrance. He couldn’t fix or change what had happened and he knew better than to assume that he could change the future, so he only did what he could do in the present, ever-flowing and malleable as it was. Fortunately, Rhett did seem to calm down, if only long enough for the nurses to retrieve the things he asked for.

A shoddy addition of pants and a longer wait than he was sure Rhett wanted on set of crutches later saw the two slowly leaving the hospital as Parker kept his vigilant eyes on the pirate’s hobbling visage, making sure that if the latter faltered that he’d be there to provide additional support. “I did. I’ll return it to you once we’re out of the establishment.” He suggested, wanting to fall silent once more, wanting to ignore the multiple pairs of eyes that stared at them, at Rhett’s Frankensteinian gait as the duo continued their departure. “My vehicle is a short distance away. I’d offer to go pick it up and meet you in front but…” But they both knew that Rhett could’ve been missing both of his legs and he still would’ve insisted on making the trek himself. “It’s not that far.” He ended up saying instead.

—

There was a lot of angry grumbling beneath his breath as they left the facility, mostly in response to all the attention they were garnering—it wasn’t every day you saw a heavily bandaged patient half-naked and hurrying his way out of the hospital as quick as he could hobble, still groggy from anesthesia. Add Parker, a stoic but clearly concerned party into the mix, and it was something worth staring at.

Rhett was starting to remember how much he hated people in general.

It wasn’t until they were on the elevator and headed back to the ground floor that the man seemed to relax (just a smidge), heaving a sigh and banging the foot of one of the crutches against the wall idly. “Right,” was all he said in response to Parker bringing up the car, his gaze fixed on the floor, brows furrowed into a permanent scowl.

The elevator dinged, and the pair stepped out into the lobby. Rhett’s hackles shot right back up but he kept his head down, just trying to make it through those fucking doors and get away from all… this. There was a surface lot a short distance from the main entrance, and upon Parker’s instruction, followed him in that direction. It was fairly brisk outside, and the shirtless warden shivered and came to a slow stop. “Hang on, hang on,” he breathed, feeling lightheaded again. This unstable state seemed to irritate him and he muttered another curse, squinting his eye shut and leaning onto the crutches to lift his hands to his face. The heel of his palm dug into his good eye, while the other, covered in bandages, was only permitted a soft touch. “Just… need a sec. Fuck. Can’t catch my goddamn breath,” he complained. The world felt… soupy. Or… well, that wasn’t a good word for it, but it was all he could think about. Soup. Fuck, he was hungry. Hungry, and the world felt wrong. Fake.

“What if I ain’t awake?” The fear came from nowhere, but it was one that plagued him more often than he let on. Usually based on nothing, but after that attack? Rhett glanced at Parker, then down at himself. “This is stupid. Don’t make sense. Why’re you here? How the fuck am I alive?” His heart rate increased and he felt… mournful. “It’s fiction, it's just like fiction. Can’t be real. Just a fuckin’ story.” With a weary, dramatic groan, Rhett pushed the crutches away from himself, sending them clattering to the pavement. He wobbled on one leg but managed to stay upright, at least for the moment—like he was waiting to actually wake up. Or for things to just go black, because he was obviously dead, right?

—

They were almost gone, they were almost out of there and away from the scrutinization of the healthcare workers. Soon they’d be in Parker’s car where they could fully relax, ease the tension from off their shoulders. Parker could offer to take Rhett back to his place where the pirate could sit in a comfortable chair and eat homemade clam chowder (something Parker didn’t grow up with but ever since he moved, he rather liked it so it entered his list of foods he was willing to make for the week). They could make small talk, Rhett could share more stories or maybe explain what the hell had happened to place him near the Flat covered in werewolf scratches.

Soon enough, they were outside and while he wasn’t sure if Rhett would appreciate it, Parker welcomed the nip of the chill on his skin - normally, he wasn’t one for the cold and it took him longer than he would’ve admitted to acclimate to it, especially coming from somewhere as humid as Louisiana, but given the unintentional pressure placed on him from this whole ordeal, it was, well, a breath of fresh air. They were close but Parker was more than willing to pause when Rhett requested it–

Then he felt his stomach drop, tension coursing through and stiffening his body when Rhett started… doing whatever it was he was doing. An episode? An existential crisis? The effects of coming off of anesthesia? He’d done some surface-level research on what he took an educated guess about what Rhett struggled with but psychology was something that was to be observed but not touched; there were far too many variables that Parker didn’t have a fundamental grasp of nearly enough of those variables to be able to make a call on what the right action to take would be.

Maintain touch as a grounding technique– no, don’t touch someone because that might make things worse– ask them about things they could see– wait no, you should ask how you can help but keep in mind that they may not be able to tell you– well it depends on the person, really since everyone reacts to things differently– just be empathetic–

‘Parker, you sunova bitch, you don’t possess empathy.’ His brother’s voice rattled in his head for a moment as the conflict of information with an underlying fear at his inability to know what to do to effectively help Rhett had the younger Warden dumbly reach down to collect the crutches and tuck under one of his arms. The other hand, without provocation and probably with the wrong directive in a mechanical brain, reached out and placed itself on Rhett’s shoulder once more; firm, steady, squeezing it with what he thought he hoped was a familiar sense of pressure to keep Rhett from falling into the abyss.

“Tell me what you see. Where you are. What you feel. Anything.” That selection of instructions was probably not what was needed but dammit, that was what Rhett could either take or leave. Parker wasn’t a therapist. He wasn’t even a person. This was a machine trying to tell a human that the life simulation did indeed exist, even if they’d never seen it for themselves.

—

Blood roared in his ears and he squinted his eye shut, flinching under Parker’s touch but not pulling away, considering the questions he was being asked and finding himself lacking in answers. “I don’t know,” he wheezed, shaking his head and grabbing hold of the man’s arm to steady himself. “I—” He opened his eye again, letting it dart over the scenery around them, trying to ignore the darkened edges that framed everything like a tunnel. His breath was coming in quick, deep gasps but he tried to focus, gaze wandering over objects he saw every single fucking day and not being able to put words to them.

Where was he, then, if he couldn’t say what he saw? “Outside.” Duh. “The…” Rhett glanced over his shoulder at the tall brick building behind them for a moment before twisting back around and shaking his head. He wasn’t trying hard enough. What did he feel?

“Sad. Scared.” Unless Parker meant physical, in which case— “... sidewalk.” Under his bare feet, no less. Okay, okay. Just… “I knew them,” he breathed, finally letting his attention jump to Parker’s face. “The… werewolf.” He dropped his voice, even though they were alone. “And the—the nymph. I knew them. I didn’t kill ‘em, but I knew ‘em, n’ now… now…”

He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of living with the consequences of a botched job. Another failure at the end of a long line of them, but this one was different. This one had, in a way, become more personal. They had mutual friends, mutual acquaintances, and how severely was this going to fuck that up? It was the sort of thing that would normally drive him out of a place, but he couldn’t leave here. Not now.

His heartbeat was slowing back down, the panic subsiding as the numbing realization that he’d really screwed the pooch on this one set in. “My brother, he… can’t know. He can’t.” That was it, wasn’t it? Rhett had just managed to start the long, agonizing process of patching things up with Emilio, and something like this would rip the bandage straight off. No… something like this would take their relationship out back and shoot it. Emilio had a thing about young adults, some protective instinct that he couldn’t seem to ignore, and Alex and Cass, well… fuck. Fuck.

“I can’t—I gotta lay low fer a while, mate,” Rhett managed as he came back into his senses. And standing in front of a hospital looking half dead was not laying low. He cleared his throat and reached for the crutches, taking them back and seeming to shrug off the episode with relative ease. “M’fine. Let’s get gone.”

—

What started as standard answers quickly turned into something more exposed, revealing emotions, feelings, thoughts that Parker knew were usually locked behind the facade. In the dark of grasping for anything, the something that Rhett had shared, whether intentional or not, stung of personal value and vulnerability.

Not only was a werewolf involved but a fae was too. Somewhere in the depths of Parker’s mind he could’ve sworn a couple of dots might’ve been connected but that was a vein of thought that could’ve been tapped into at a later time. For now, Rhett was afraid. He was afraid and the emotion somehow looked wrong, yet perfectly natural on the pirate’s bandaged face. He was afraid of the implied intimacy of the ordeal, Parker knew that well - it was the reason why he never asked for names. A name meant connection, which only served to humanize things that either couldn’t or shouldn’t possess it. People named their computers, their cars, pets.

And Emilio couldn’t know. The reason was irrelevant to Parker; Rhett said that his brother couldn’t know and that was enough for the younger Warden. “Okay.” He replied at the end of the newly-acquired information. It was only one word but it carried a tone with it, mysteriously missing its flat affect or blunt delivery. He had a directive, he had a line of logic to follow now, a thread to find Rhett in the dark and a problem he could provide solutions for. “I have a spare room,” he offered as he held the crutches out for Rhett to take when the latter mentioned needing to lay low. “...If that would help.” Casting a quick, blue-eyed glance over the withering figure of the other Warden, as though he’d mysteriously sustained another injury during his episode, Parker led the way to his car.

—

While the van offered mobility, it was recognizable. He’d have to paint over the mural and change the plates. And as much as he didn’t love the idea of being in one place for any significant amount of time, he really didn’t see a better alternative. Emilio’s apartment was a no-go, and not just because of the black ooze—certain people would think to look for him there, people who were going to be pissed when they heard about this. If they heard about this. Tracking down the werewolf and the fae to finish the job wasn’t entirely off the table, but Rhett had a feeling that he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of overpowering that mongrel for a while—plenty of time for it to rat him out to whoever it felt needed to know. There was always the bunker, though a few people knew of its location as well, and he couldn’t be sure all of them were trustworthy. In fact, he couldn’t be sure that anyone was trustworthy.

He looked over at Parker as they resumed the trek to the car, scowling. Paranoia was a disruptive mistress, but he tried to reason with himself that he could trust Parker. Of anyone, he could probably trust Parker the most. They were both wardens, both… different in a way others didn’t always understand, and the man had come to his aid. Had helped him when it would have been easier to let him die and pay the price for his mistakes. He’d come back, even after Rhett was no longer his perceived responsibility, to continue shouldering that burden.

Yeah. He could trust Parker. But no one else.

“Sure,” he muttered, still trying to deaden his emotional vulnerability, hating that he’d gone through even a small episode in the other warden’s presence, but figuring there was nothing to do about it now but move on. “Just—can’t nobody know I’m there. Gonna have to meet ‘Milio fer… personal matters sometime soon, but I’ll travel.” It could at least wait until he was out of the bandages. “N’ if anyone asks… was a troll what did this, aye?”

—

The younger Warden’s loyalties were considered strange at the best of times - he was the type where a little effort went a long way with him and sometimes it seemed like he was subconsciously searching for someone to serve, even if he never would’ve thought to perceive it that way. A knight wanting to pledge to a monarch, a ronin with no lord. The unusual (or perhaps this was simply being all-too-human) part was that while it was a strong presence when it was there, it was also malleable and there was little, if any, love lost when those loyalties were either betrayed or discarded.

Right now, as he got into the driver’s side of the unassuming car with Rhett and the scowl the other man had given him regarded as something with no ulterior motive in his mind, Parker was fully expecting for the other Warden to deny his offer. Rhett wasn’t stupid and Parker understood the hesitance; he’d only been there once, it wasn’t a space to call his own, he had plans and ideas and Parker assumed that it would’ve been an adjustment going from being mobile in his own… iconic van to one house, even if only for a while. But Rhett wasn’t stupid, as was previously mentioned. Nightfall Grove’s sun set eerily early, giving him the cover of darkness (even if what was left of Rhett’s vision wasn’t properly suited for it), not a lot of people knew where it was and he knew that Rhett was more than capable of warding off whatever creatures roamed the streets, if any of them bothered him.

So when Rhett said yes, there was no immense relief, no misplaced sense of gratitude for electing to choose his house over wherever else he could’ve stayed (Parker assumed that Rhett’s bunker, van and Emilio’s places were respectively off the table) just as there wouldn’t have been hurt feelings if Rhett ended up saying no. It was a suggestion, an offer and as far as Parker could care, so long as Rhett didn’t ruin any of his trinkets, collectibles or other treasures, he probably wouldn’t have noticed that much. He’d make more food but that wasn’t unusual or unwelcome.

Rather… maybe having someone else in the house, someone he himself trusted, another unusual Warden, would be… nice, even if only for a few days until Rhett inevitably found someplace better for him.

“None of what transpired is going to be relayed through me.” Parker assured, looking over at Rhett as the two sat in the car for a moment. “I found you out in the woods, you received an early discharge from the hospital, last seen with me but I dropped you off at a preferred location.” He went through the motions aloud before he paused, tilting his head. “...A troll? Really?” His expression softened and he allowed the ghost of… what could’ve been called a ‘playful’ smile to cross his features. “I was going to say a massive bird. But it’s your story. Troll it is.”

—

“Massive bird? Oi,” Rhett laughed, settling the crutches between his right foot and the car door, making sure they were snugly wedged. “I known more wardens who been ripped apart by trolls than anythin’ else. Them fuckers’re tough. Should be believable.” As for people who didn’t know he was a hunter who asked… well, he’d probably just come up with a different story each time. Didn’t much care what they thought.

He was terribly tired, he remembered once he was settled in the seat, and he didn’t last the drive from Deersprings to Nightfall Grove. And once they’d reached Parker’s home, the older warden was woken up, brought inside, and shown to the spare room. From there, he rested his crutches against the side of the bed, regarding them with mild distaste, hoping that he wouldn’t need them after a few more days. It was hard to say, he’d never had a limb so broken that it needed metal plating to put it back together, so… who knew what his accelerated healing would do? Regardless—“Think I’m ‘bout ready to sleep fer a week,” Rhett joked as he sat down on the mattress, knowing that in reality it would probably be something close to twelve or fourteen hours. “Will bug ya whenever I’m back in the land’ah the livin’.” Another thank you sprang to the tip of his tongue unexpectedly but he swallowed this one, settling for a resolved nod instead.

—

The levity was nice, Parker decided, accepting the joking back with an actual smile, small and unsure as it was like it knew it didn’t belong on the Warden’s face. He wasn’t surprised at all when Rhett fell asleep during the drive - their genes made the recovery process a strange one, a shortened duration in exchange for little relief from the pain. He imagined it was especially rough for Rhett, who apparently not only had to undergo a major operation but he had never been in a hospital before and it was especially tough to learn new things at 49, or so he had to guess.

But they were at his home soon enough, he had awoken and subsequently shown Rhett his temporary living quarters. At least there was a bed, but not much else in the way of personality when it came to the room’s barebones decoration and even then, they were sorely dated - it was obvious that some of these items came with the antiquated house when he bought it. But it was warm, dry, and (at least as far as Parker could gather) safe for Rhett to stay at, at least until the latter was ready to move on and almost get himself killed again– ‘Whoa, that’s not your thought, is it? Sounds like something dad would say.’

He blinked the thought out of his head and he regarded Rhett, who was now sitting on the mattress. The older Warden mentioned sleeping for a week - it was rhetorical, of course, Parker understood - but at least he was willing to sleep. He nodded and Parker nodded back, having a feeling that Rhett was going to add something else but the collector was internally grateful that he hadn’t said ‘thank you’ again; he was still painfully unsure about how to react to that one. “Affirmative.” Parker glanced around the room briefly as though checking it for things that a half-blind, disabled man could accidentally stumble into, ding his shin on, or something of that nature but came up empty. Just as empty as the room was.

“I’ll be in the living room.” He held up his phone. “If you call and I don’t hear you, text me.” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid, not wanting to make it seem like he was doting on Rhett. ‘The day that happens is the day I know for sure that you got into a literal bind.’ Parker gave Rhett one last look accompanied with another small, genuine half-smile before he patted the doorway with a finalized gesture and he left to go into his own room, just for a few moments to breathe heavier than he should’ve, feel his hands seize up as he felt every emotion at once for just a second. Seeing Rhett like that in the forest. Taking him to the hospital where everyone was asking probing questions. The fiasco an hour ago. The episode. He gently clasped his hands over his ears as though that would suddenly make the thoughts that rattled around in his brain go away. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus on his breathing. This would be fine. Rhett would be okay. ‘You’ll be okay.’

#. thread ;#. with ; parker wright #. caged ;#medical blood tw #suicidal ideation tw #eye trauma tw

8 notes · View notes