#Thread: Emilio

[dirtwatchman]

PARTIES: Emilio (@vengeancedemon) and Caleb (@dirtwatchman) LOCATION: Worm Row TIMING: Present day CONTENT WARNINGS: None...unless you hate bananas. SUMMARY: Caleb finds a strange banana that becomes sentient after he peels it. Emilio is ready to tell him how weird it is.

“What makes you think it’s a baby? Could be an adult. Adults scream, too.”

Was it common to see a bushel of bananas growing on a weird bush in the middle of Worm Row? Because if it wasn’t, Caleb had concerns. His head was tilted as he looked at them, the zombie going to look around to see if anyone else was noticing this. It seemed to be business as usual though and he shrugged before reaching out to take one, curiosity gripping him entirely. Maybe there was something special about a fruit that could grow in the middle of this when it was supposed to be nurtured in a tropical climate. Maybe he could taste it? Wasn’t like it could poison him.

The peel was tossed toward the garbage can off to the left, his terrible aim only made worse by the fact that he wasn’t looking where he was throwing it. There was the small sound of a squelch, Caleb barely hearing it, but it caused him to turn his head and look at whatever had happened.

“Shit.” It was the immediate response every time he saw Emilio now though he’d never said it out loud. Of course Caleb would hit the man with a banana peel, because an arrow wasn’t enough, right? With the fruit forgotten, the zombie took a step back and sighed, not sure how to even approach this. “That was an accident.” Knowing the other man, it wouldn’t matter. 

Before anything else could be said though there was a dull screaming sound filling the air. Caleb looked around again, trying to see if he could find the source, only for his eyes to land on the now sentient banana peel glaring up at Emilio. The zombie’s eyes widened, as he watched the peel jump up and down, its screams seeming to bounce around with it. “What…is that?”

It was funny, almost, how quickly he slipped back into life in Worm Row. When he’d first moved to the neighborhood years ago, he’d had no one. He was two years out from the worst moment of his life and still felt his daughter’s blood sticking to his hands, and Worm Row had swallowed him up with a comforting dullness that allowed him to disappear into a world of other miserable people living their own miserable lives. It wasn’t so different now, really. Back in self-imposed isolation, separating himself from his family here the same way he’d disappeared from Rhett’s life the moment he had a chance to do so after the massacre. The only real difference, he figured, was that the death that spurred this isolation was his own. 

(Maybe that should mean more than it did; Flora’s death was a tragedy. Emilio’s had been inevitable. Was it silly to mourn an event that had always been the expected end result?)

It felt like he probably belonged here far better than he ever had in Teddy’s house. The shitty apartment, the miserable people, the dirty streets. Worm Row felt like a tomb, sometimes, which made it a great place for a corpse to rot. Emilio could trudge forward with his hands in his pocket and a scowl on his face, and no one bothered him. And that was better. He knew that was better. 

He didn’t bother other people, either, of course. A man in front of him stopped to look at something on a bush, and Emilio prepared to walk on by him. He didn’t notice any familiarity in the man; perhaps he would have if he still had a slayer’s night vision to cut through the shadows. As it was, though, he took no notice of the man until he was tossing something over his shoulder and hitting Emilio with it. 

Rage was quicker to rise now than it had been when he was alive. When the man turned around, it burned that much hotter, because of course. Of course it was Caleb. (More and more often, he was beginning to wonder if this was Hell, like he’d thought it was when he’d first woken up in Eve’s van.) “What the fuck is your —” He was cut off by a sound that came from neither him nor Caleb. His eyes darted down to the ground, to the thing Caleb had thrown at him. Not an arrow this time, at least — a banana peel. A banana peel that was now screaming in a way that hurt his ears just a little. “What the fuck?"

Caleb had noticed the rage quickly form in Emilio’s eyes, almost glad when the man’s biting words were cut off by the peel on the ground. The breakdown in the woods, the flashbacks to his childhood, he really didn’t want to deal with those at the moment made pretty evident by him flinching when the other man started talking. Saved by the banana…peel…thing. What the hell was that? 

His eyes went down to the bare fruit in his hands, trying to see if it was going to suddenly come to life. But it was still, no screaming or sprouting legs or anything of the sort. He even tried to poke the thing to rouse it awake but it was just the peel that was now running, or scooting? Whatever it was doing, it was going straight for Emilio with its tiny peels coming up to bang against his leg over and over. “Does that…hurt?” He couldn’t imagine so but what the hell did he know about the crap running around this town? Knowing their luck it had some sort of weird strength.

Yea, his luck. It couldn’t have been anyone but Emilio? Actually, no, there were a few people he would rather avoid but Emilio was near the top of his list, only outranked by one. “Maybe I could...” He trailed off, not daring to move any closer to the hunter. It reminded him of the last time they had seen each other and how neither of them would take that leap forward. Emilio refused to kill, Caleb refused to die. It was such a weird dance the two of them performed whenever they were in the same vicinity together and he had no doubts this time would be the same. 

The banana peel let out a screech, backing up from Emilio before ‘running’ back towards him and hitting him with its peel as if that would give it more strength. It didn’t look like it did anything.

It felt like a thousand things were going on at once. Emilio stared at a face that had once taunted him in a dark basement, informing him in no uncertain terms that his death would be long and drawn out. The person behind the face wasn’t the same one who had dragged a knife across his wrists and thighs to bleed him dry on an altar, but knowing that still did little to ease his nerves. There was a banana peel on the ground, slamming itself against his leg as if the peel was a bundle of fists with which it could wreak havoc even though it was far too small to do any kind of damage. 

And he was dead. That felt like the biggest blow of all, like the brutal punchline to a joke that wasn’t particularly funny. He was staring at a face that had once tried to kill him, worn by a man who didn’t want to. He was being assaulted by a banana peel too weak to actually hurt him but seemingly determined to do it anyway. And none of it mattered, because he was already fucking dead.

“No,” he said, looking down at the banana peel. He tensed as Caleb seemed to prepare an offer to help, head snapping up to look at him instead. Wasn’t it stupid, the way his throat felt tight? Wasn’t it so goddamn pointless? Caleb didn’t want to kill him; he never had. He’d been a tool used by someone long gone to attempt a goal that hadn’t been accomplished, and Emilio was dead anyway. Emilio was dead, and Caleb didn’t want to kill him, and he was still tense at the thought of him taking another step closer. His heart would have been pounding if it could beat at all. And he wondered, with a bitter self-deprecation, how long it would take for him to be just a little less pathetic. “It’s fine,” he snapped, unsure if the heat in his voice would sound more like anger or fear. They’d always been cousins where Emilio was concerned. 

The banana peel continued its assault, and Emilio kept a wary eye on Caleb as he leaned down — rather painfully, thanks to the bad leg that hadn’t decided to do him a fucking favor and repair itself in death — to pick it up. It screamed and thrashed in his hand. He felt like he could relate, just a little. “Never seen this before,” he mused thoughtfully. It was a nice enough distraction. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be the same, actually. There was something…off about the other man. Emilio had always been a bitter person who held a grudge against Caleb, something he couldn’t blame him for at all, but this felt different for some reason. He couldn’t place why but the fact that he could sense it, that the distinction was there, was enough to send his shoulders slumping down, relaxing even as Emilio snapped at him. That was a miracle in itself. Something said so harshly was usually enough to send the zombie flinching away for a second time, after all. But his tone wasn’t like what Caleb was used to and he figured that was easing the fear that so easily climbed up his spine in the presence of the hunter. 

Or maybe the person who had changed was him. He liked to think that he was different now. He wanted to believe that his ability to handle confrontation grew more whenever yet another person he cared about walked away, which was plentiful these days. The need to please everyone was still there but it was sometimes easier to ignore when he reminded himself that everyone was eventually going to walk away anyway. His skin was growing thicker with abandonment weaving through every morsel of his being. Frank gone? Another stitch in his armor. Katherine gone? Another stitch in his armor. Wyatt gone? The biggest stitch to add to his collection yet, almost sewing the armor up completely. It was fine though. Everything would be great as soon as that last stitch gained its place. He was already getting better as it was. He didn’t need people. Growing up alone prepared him to once again be alone but this time he was determined to let that make him better, harder, not weak like he had always been. 

So, maybe it was his determination causing this newfound bravery that was forming in his gut or maybe it was the change he thought he could sense in Emilio but whatever it was, he was just glad he could feel those nerves ebbing away. Slowly, but it was progress.

Was that an attempt at conversation? It was enough to send the zombies' brows together, nose scrunching with his confusion. It was just another thing that had Caleb questioning what had changed? If it were any other day he knew Emilio would have walked away without another word and Caleb would be left holding a banana in the middle of the street like an idiot. He looked down at the peel in the other’s hand before letting his gaze trail back to Emilio’s face, tone more brazen than it had been in the woods that day. His nerves weren’t on fire with fear anymore, at least, and it was showing even if just a little. A little could be enough for now. “Yea, I haven’t either.” He paused, considering whether or not Emilio actually wanted a conversation before deciding to hold on to his newfound attitude and not care as much. “It’s kind of cute though. If it wasn’t screaming like a maniac I would say take it home.”

There were few people he wanted to run into less than Caleb, really. Most of the ones he’d rather see less were ones he was avoiding because he cared about them, ones who were better off without him. Caleb was one of the few to exist on Emilio’s ‘list of people to avoid’ because of the maybe-fear-maybe-anger clinging to his chest now, had a category almost all his own. He saw Caleb’s face, and he was in a basement tied to a chair. He heard his voice, and he was bleeding all over the floor. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat, especially not now that his blood stained the inside of a dumpster in some shitty alley, now that someone else had succeeded where Caleb’s demon had failed. 

But the universe, of course, had never really been into giving Emilio what he wanted. Caleb was here, a banana peel was screaming, and Emilio couldn’t walk away without admitting to that thing gripping his throat like a vice. And whatever else he was now, Emilio was still a damn stubborn bastard. Walking away and admitting to the fear he was trying so hard to ignore was the same as letting Caleb win, and he’d never been one for that. 

Caleb called the peel cute, and a muscle in Emilio’s jaw twitched irritably. His nostrils flared, his hands clenched unconsciously into fists. “It’s a banana peel,” he replied flatly as the peel rained another flurry of what he could only assume were meant to be punches down on top of his hand. “The fuck is cute about a banana peel?” Maybe Caleb had a few screws loose. Maybe that happened when you died. Absently, Emilio wondered if it would happen to him, too, if there’d come a day where he looked at a piece of garbage on the concrete and thought it cute. 

With a scowl, he thrust the peel out towards Caleb. The motion looked a little strange, all things considered; Emilio still had his body angled away from the zombie, every syllable of body language screaming that he wanted to be nowhere near the man. And yet, the arm holding out the peel acted as a bridge, connecting two opposing islands. “Here. You like it so much, you hold it.”

Just like that, all of that progress he thought he was making deflated with one simple statement. Emilio pointing out it was a banana peel made Caleb feel so dumb which in turn brought on the rest of the old sentiments that he was used to being hurled at him. Worthless, stupid, a waste of space. His own jaw clenched as the screams yelled out in the empty spaces of his subconscious. The one difference was he would allow himself the anger that came with it. “So?” It was a quiet counter, nothing to call home about in the grand scheme of things, but to Caleb it held more weight than anyone could realize. The man thought it was cute, he wouldn’t let someone else make him feel so small for it. Not this time. “It’s a baby. All tiny things are cute.” 

Despite the indignation that had fueled his previous words, Caleb still flinched when Emilio’s hand came towards him. He couldn’t process why he didn’t feel the pain that should have come with that movement, not until Emilio told him to take the banana peel from him. But all that did was confuse the zombie further. Why in the world would Emilio voluntarily give him something? Even if that something was an annoying little creature that neither of them had seen before, it was baffling that he would offer it anyway.

Instead of reaching out to take the screaming terror, Caleb just eyed Emilio warily. The peel seemed to realize that something weird was going on too because it stopped screaming to look between the two men as if trying to figure which one it was supposed to start hitting now. It took entirely too long for Caleb to break the tension and reach out, his hand open and flat to not only let the peel walk onto his palm but to show Emilio he wasn’t trying to do anything dumb. No, he’d already earned the hunters hatred, there was no need for more. 

There was a problem, though. His hand was next to Emilio’s, the zombie refusing to let their skin touch mostly for the other’s sake, but the peel just stood there. It was still looking between the two of them like it was confused. Who should it yell at? Who should it terrorize? 

Caleb made the decision for it, his other hand coming up to usher the peel into his open palm while still holding the banana, his movements still slow. He could have sworn the thing tried to bite him but it didn’t have any teeth to bite with. As soon as it was in his hand it started to scream up at him again until it noticed the fruit…and then it went nuts. 

The peel started to thrash around, the violent screams growing louder while it beat its ‘hands’ against Caleb’s palm. It started to crawl up his arm and over his shoulder, the peels landing harder on his body each time they came back down. It tickled a little, really. Soon, it had pulled its way down the length of his other arm and its back was pressed against the banana as if it was protecting the fruit from the man. “Oh wait…I took its banana, that’s why it's mad.” Right? “How is that not cute to you?” 

“What makes you think it’s a baby? Could be an adult. Adults scream, too.” His mind went, inevitably, back to the basement. He hadn’t screamed, though Aesil had certainly wanted him to. He remembered his own useless defiance, remembered the way he was too proud to let himself give in to any of it. If Caleb’s friends hadn’t shown up when they had, the demon probably would have done far worse than slicing through a few veins to bleed Emilio dry. And Emilio, in all his stubborn pride, would have refused to earn himself any reprieve by giving the demon the reaction they wanted, would have held his head up high and died bloody and alone. 

It was funny, almost, to think of the way that had happened regardless. He’d made it out of that basement, made it out of the barn showdown with Owen, out of the factory where Siobhan tortured Rhett, out of Mexico where almost everyone he loved died a violent death, and none of it fucking mattered. He’d died anyway, just as he’d always known he would. He’d left the world bloody and alone and far more afraid than he’d ever care to admit, and then he’d come back to it. He was standing on a goddamn street with his heart dead in his chest and holding out a fucking screaming banana peel to a man just as dead as he was. It might have been funny if it weren’t so fucking infuriating.

Caleb seemed to hesitate a moment, and Emilio eyed the zombie with the same wariness Caleb was using to watch him. What was Caleb afraid of, he wondered? Emilio had never tied him to a chair in a basement, never dragged a blade across his skin. (And Caleb had never done it to Emilio, either. That was hard to remember. He wondered if it would have been easier to remember if he weren’t such a goddamn asshole.) 

Eventually, Caleb held his hand out, but now the peel was the holdup. It seemed to look between them, like it couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. And Emilio felt like he ought to just toss it on the ground, but something stopped him. Maybe the idea of throwing something away in front of a guy who was going on about how cute that thing was felt a little too cruel, even for a monster. He tensed a little as Caleb reached out to guide the peel into his own hand, pulling away the moment the thing was off of him. He tried not to move too quickly, tried not to make his anxiety obvious, but he didn’t know how well he managed it.

The peel went from screaming to thrashing, and Emilio’s brow furrowed. It was reacting to the banana, Caleb was right. He wasn’t sure why, though. “Maybe you should give it back,” he offered with a shrug because, frankly, he had no idea what the move was here. At Caleb’s question, and the repeated insistence that the peel was cute, Emilio huffed. “No, I don’t think the screaming banana peel is cute. It was trying to bite you a minute ago, man, come on. You really like it that much?”

“I just peeled it. It wasn’t moving until I took the banana away. So, doesn’t that mean it was just born?” That was the only thing he could think of to explain his thought process. Somehow he didn’t think Emilio would accept ‘it’s tiny and it screams a lot, classic baby behavior’ as an acceptable answer. Of course, he wasn’t sure Emilio would accept anything that Caleb had to say or do. He seemed hellbent on fighting the zombie on everything. “But whatever, we can have different opinions. It’s not like either of us know what this thing really is.” And he was tired of the way Emilio just seemed to want to argue. It was probably a way to make himself more comfortable, if that were possible, but Caleb was tired of it all.

He’d spent his whole life accepting the hate and belittlement of everybody else. Anyone would get tired of it eventually.

But then Emilio pulled his hand back, the movement a little too jerky for Caleb to ignore, and he suddenly felt horrible all over again. This back and forth with this man was too much. One minute he was ready to scream that he wasn’t the one who’d done anything to him and then the next he felt that regret take over again. That, too, was exhausting. His very existence was exhausting.

“Give it back how? It’s not like I can tie the peel around it. That would hurt it.” And the fruit was going to wither away eventually which…could screaming banana peels experience trauma? Was that a thing? 

Sighing at the question, the zombie turned sharp eyes on Emilio, his frustration finally getting the better of him (Something that kept happening these days). The anger was also the best explanation that he had, words spilling out before he could think about them. “Yea, I like it. I like the idea of being able to scream as much as I want and letting out every frustration I’ve ever had. There’s something to be said for not giving a fuck and letting it all out.” He shrugged a shoulder as if he hadn’t just revealed his own desires through his newfound affection for a screaming banana peel. He too wished to scream into the void and regret for not doing so when he actually was in a void was quickly joining the ranks of the worst decisions he’d ever made in his life. 

“That’s not being born. Wasn’t it born when it… sprouted on the plant, or whatever?” He didn’t know nearly enough about plants to have this argument with Caleb, but he couldn’t let it go, either. To Emilio, arguing was like a security blanket. It didn’t serve any real purpose, wasn’t enough to actually keep anyone warm, but it made him feel a little better to hold onto it. It gave him something to grip, something to focus on beyond the memories of the basement and Caleb’s face with someone else behind it. And it was better for both of them, really, that Emilio had something else to focus on. Without the petty argument about bananas, he wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t have started throwing punches. 

And, the thing was, Emilio didn’t want to throw punches. What happened to him wasn’t Caleb’s fault, no matter what face the demon who’d done it had worn. Caleb didn’t deserve to be punished, was a victim of Aesil just as much as Emilio had been. More, even; Emilio’s experience began and ended with that basement, but Caleb’s had been an extended form of torture. It wasn’t fair to punish him further for it.

But Emilio’s hands still shook, and his anger still burned hot to cover his fear. So, the argument was preferred. The argument was better. The argument was probably annoying, but at least no one was getting hit. 

“I don’t know. Maybe if you shove the banana back inside or something. I’m not a fucking banana expert. You’re the one who peeled it.” As if that made this whole thing Caleb’s fault. Maybe that, too, was a little easier; this situation was stupid and pointless and didn’t matter, but it was more clean cut than the one he really wanted to fight about. Aesil wasn’t Caleb’s fault, so the banana could be. 

Except, Caleb was angry. Caleb wanted to scream with the damn banana, and Emilio tilted his head a little, looking down at the peel in the zombie’s hand. “So scream. What’s stopping you? Afraid people will think you’re crazy? You’re holding a screaming banana peel. They already do.”

“It wasn’t alive when it sprouted on the plant, Emilio. It was a normal banana.” He shrugged like that was the most normal thing he’d ever said. Pointing next to them where the rest of the bunch was still waiting for someone else to come along and discover, Caleb felt like he’d made his point. “Those don’t look alive. They aren’t born yet.” How weird was it that the two of them hadn’t had a discussion that felt this normal before? Even if they were arguing about whether this thing was a baby or not it still beat the awkward undertones that usually laced their conversations and Caleb was almost grateful for it. He hated their usual conversations.

He looked down at the peel that had quieted at this point. It was looking between the two of them again giving Caleb the idea that maybe it was interested in their conversation. That was besides the point though, and the zombie rolled his eyes as he looked back at the other. “How the hell…I don’t think that would work. It would slide right off and make it even more sad. Look at it, it has trauma.” And that was his fault, wasn’t it? The accusation stung, reminding him that there were now two beings right in front of him that he had a part in hurting. 

Being told to scream was the last thing he had expected from the other man. Caleb knew that Emilio was nervous in his presence, that as much as he wanted to pretend he couldn’t let go of what Aesil had used his body to do. Screaming around him was not something he thought the other could handle. But Emilio did make sense and with the argument the two were having he almost couldn’t wait to let out the frustration. 

So, Caleb started to scream. And when he did the peel started to scream as well. The two sounds mixed in the air as heads turned towards them but for once Caleb wasn’t embarrassed at all. For once he was letting all of the pent up anger out without a care. It felt good. Better than anything had in a while and he felt it was over too soon. There was a lightness settling in his chest as the sound died down. The bananshee was jumping up and down in his hand and still screaming but it seemed lighter as well. Caleb opened his eyes and met Emilio’s gaze only to look away almost immediately. “Sorry…I should have waited, I think.”

“Clearly it was not a normal banana. Normal bananas do not just become screaming bananas when you peel them. I’ve peeled bananas before.” It seemed necessary to add the last bit to speak to his experience, as if Caleb would accuse him of talking out his ass otherwise. It was hard not to be defensive with Caleb, even though the man himself had never given Emilio any reason to be. It wasn’t his fault that a demon wore his face around town. Emilio could remind himself of that a thousand times over, but it did little to ease the tightness in his chest. He looked to the remaining bananas on the bunch. “Maybe they’re just sleeping. Sleeping is not the same as not being born yet.” It was a petty thing to argue about, but he clung to it, anyway. He missed petty arguments. He missed the times when his life was simpler than it was now. (He missed the times when his life could still be called a life.)

At least the banana had stopped screaming. It was a small mercy, all things considered. Emilio glanced down to it when Caleb indicated its trauma, though he didn’t want to look for too long lest the peel take it as an invitation to take up its screaming once more. “It does not have trauma. Bananas do not have trauma. They are bananas. Maybe if you glue the fucking banana to the peel, then.” It was a bad idea. Emilio’s usually were, when he was like this. Like this, meaning angry for small reasons instead of large ones, like this meaning standing in front of someone who would have made his heart pound if it still beat at all, like this meaning trying and failing spectacularly to be human. He wasn’t at his most articulate now; he doubted he ever would be, with Caleb.

He had expected another argument from Caleb at his suggestion. He had expected some excuse about not wanting to scream in public, not wanting to disrupt the peace that had already been broken by the banana peel. While Aesil had been cruel and twisted, Caleb was the opposite. He was the sort of man who Emilio suspected would rather swallow himself up than take up any kind of space at all.

So he was surprised when the zombie started screaming. The first yell made him jump, but by the second, he was calmed. Caleb was screaming, and the peel was screaming with him. And Emilio wondered, with a quiet envy he couldn’t satisfy, if it helped. Did it feel better? Did it feel good? He thought of the way he felt when his knuckles were bruising against someone else’s skin, the way it eased that tension in his chest but only ever temporarily. Was this the same for Caleb? Or were other people capable of freeing themselves from that tension in a way that actually stuck? 

After a moment, the screaming quieted. Caleb opened his eyes, looked at Emilio before looking away again. Still meek, still small, still apologetic. The screaming hadn’t fixed everything after all. “Fuck sorry,” he shrugged. He was the one who told Caleb to do it, after all. “Guess you make a good pair.” He nodded to the peel in Caleb’s hand, which had quieted when he had. 

“Yea, Emilio, we’ve all peeled a banana before.” He had to catch himself, stop the eye roll that he’d already been in the process of. Shaking his head, Caleb looked back at the bunch that had unpeeled bananas still and made a face. “Those are not alive. They’re still growing. They haven’t been born yet.” This was the stupidest debate that he had ever been a part of but he couldn’t stop arguing for some reason. Arguing with him was easier than the guilt, it was easier than watching the slight panic that filled his features every time Caleb came near. This was easy and comfortable which wasn’t normal. Not for him. “Banana’s can’t sleep. They’re banana’s.” He said this even as the peel on his arm yelled in Emilio’s direction like it was arguing to. They were bonding. Maybe. Who knew? It was a banana peel.

Or maybe it could understand Emilio as he suggested gluing the banana back in. Even Caleb blanched at that. It just felt uncomfortable and weird. “I don’t think it likes that idea. Probably just needs to stay with the banana…until the fruit dies, I guess.” The peel looked up at him when he said that and beat against Caleb’s arms a little. It wasn’t as hard as it had been before, not that it had been a hard punch, which made him think they were making progress. “Okay, don’t mention the banana dying. Got it. Looks like it's traumatized to me.”

The screaming had helped relieve some of the tension, yes. It had given him some of that lightness that he sometimes got when he was able to release some of his frustrations. Not enough to make too much of a difference but he did feel a fraction better than what he had moments before. ‘Fuck sorry’ had him looking up again, his eyes widening just a bit. He had been sure that he’d scare Emilio, remind him of things that he didn’t want to remember (though he was sure his face did that enough) so the almost…civil way he was talking to Caleb now was a little strange. “Yea I just…” He nodded, letting the words trail off. Maybe he was right. Sorry wasn’t the way to go here. “Like I said…I think it's cute. I think I’ll keep him.”

“Well, how do I know if you’ve peeled a banana before? You think they’re supposed to scream,” he replied, despite the fact that Caleb had done nothing to imply that he believed the banana’s wails were a normal, expected outcome of banana peeling. “If they hadn’t been born yet, they would be seeds. They are not seeds. They are bananas.” He preferred this, he found. The petty argument was a good distraction from the memory of being tied to a chair in a basement, a good way of avoiding thinking of the only place his mind wanted to go to. He doubted Aesil would have argued about bananas with him; more likely, the demon would have just slit his throat to shut him up. “Bananas can’t scream, either,” he pointed out. “That isn’t stopping this one.” As if to prove his point — or maybe just to express its distaste for him — the banana screamed. Emilio nodded, pointing towards it as if to say, see? 

He wasn’t sure how Caleb could interpret anything as the banana liking or disliking what he was saying. It seemed like a stretch to assume that the thing understood English at all, because why would it? Why did people who spoke English as a first language always assume that everything in the world would understand them when they conversed in it? There was nothing to say the banana didn’t speak Spanish instead, or that it may have had a language all its own that neither of them was privy to. Emilio eyed it uncertainly, trying to determine if it was traumatized as Caleb said. Something twisted in his chest at the way it seemed unhappy with the implication that its fruit would die. Would it die with it? Would it shrivel, the way banana peels often did? “Could just be drawing it out,” he pointed out, thinking of the knife in his chest. A quick death wasn’t always better, but he didn’t think anyone or anything liked the idea of dying slow.

The screaming had helped with some of the tension — both that from the banana and that from the zombie. Aesil had been so much more controlled, in the basement. Nothing Emilio said had the right effect on him. Maybe it helped, seeing Caleb a little looser. He furrowed his brow, surprised at the zombie’s declaration. “You’ll… keep a banana peel? It’s going to rot. Probably smell bad.” The banana screamed again, evidently offended. Emilio glanced down at it with a shrug. “Don’t get mad at me. That’s what banana peels do.”

“I don’t-” He stopped himself, his teeth gritting slightly. Emilio was the biggest pain in his ass but Caleb did fear that he would push things too far and make things awkward again by reminding the hunter of things he didn’t need to think about. His temper around the other was shaky ground, the zombie knowing exactly how Aesil had pushed his buttons before. He was there, buried deep in his own mind, but he had been there. Tampering down some of the irritation, he began again, hoping his voice wasn’t giving away how annoyed he was. “I don’t think they’re supposed to scream. I just have a screaming peel on my arm right now.” Yea, no, that sounded like his irritation had bled out a lot. He stopped though when the other made his next point and looked at the banana peel now on his arm. He had a point. If this one could scream, why couldn’t it sleep? “Actually, it’s a peel.” His voice had shrunk when he’d said it but he was trying to stick to this new way of communicating between them. The better way. “It’s not the actual banana. The banana is still a fruit…laying there. Not alive and all. And it’s not sleeping.”

His face at Emilio’s comment reminded Caleb of that thing where people and their pets started to look alike. The peel and he, both, stared at the hunter, a grudge forming. Why he was offended for the thing, he couldn’t say but he was. “Why would you say that? It’s right here and can very much hear you.” Whether it could understand or it was taking its cues from Caleb was the real question, though. For something that didn’t seem to like him much, it disliked Emilio more. 

“It might be what they do, but you don’t have to point it out to it. Maybe it didn’t know.” And now he was defending a banana peel. This conversation had turned into such a weird direction and Caleb was starting to fear that he was a little out of it. Did he actually like the peel or did he like arguing with Emilio? Could it be both? “I’m keeping it. I’m gonna name it and everything. It’s my pet now.”

There was a hint of anger, there for a second and then swallowed. Normally, Emilio would prefer to see it come out. Anger, like most things, stood a better chance at hurting you when it was hidden away. He liked to see the knife coming, liked to be able to anticipate the blow. But with Caleb, he found he’d rather the rage be swallowed up. Too much of it and he’d turn in on himself, be as small as he’d been in that basement with his limbs all tied down. It was better for Caleb to swallow his anger, even if it wasn’t kind to ask him to do so. (Emilio was never as kind as he should have been, was he?) “Yeah, and you’re talking about it like it’s normal,” he pointed out, too stubborn to give up the argument. Caleb did make a decent point, though; a peel was not a banana. “A peel is also not a baby,” he replied. “And unpeeling it from a banana isn’t the same as making it be born.” Birthing it? Was that the terminology he should use there? That made it sound as though Caleb was giving birth to the banana peel. That image was a little too disturbing, even for this conversation. “How do you know the banana’s not alive? Maybe it is. Maybe it’s just alive in a quieter way than the peel.” He didn’t believe that, but he’d like to argue more.

Caleb and the peel wore matching expressions, and that was a little funny. The tension that had soaked every aspect of this conversation was easily melted away by the ridiculousness of the situation at hand. It was difficult to be afraid of a man who was wearing the same face as a sentient banana peel. “I say it because it’s true,” he replied with a shrug, looking at the banana peel as if he was speaking to it as much as Caleb.

He shifted his weight a little as Caleb continued. “If it doesn’t know, isn’t it better to tell it? To make sure it understands what to expect? If that were what was ahead for me, I would rather know than go in blind. It’s better to understand what’s coming, to prepare for it. Dying is scarier if you don’t know it’s coming.” A little too much for a conversation about a banana peel rotting, maybe, but wasn’t it still true? Shouldn’t Caleb know? He’d died once, too. Had it taken him by surprise? “Your pet? You don’t know how smart it is. It could be as smart as a person. It would be fucked up to call it your pet if it were.” Another argument made for the sake of arguing. And then, after a brief pause, “What are you going to name it?”

“Like it���s normal? Have you seen this town and the crap that goes on?” He gestured around them, temporarily forgetting that the peel was on his arm and was now wrapping around it so it could hold on. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel bad though, too focused on the words being exchanged. “I don’t know about you but this is pretty normal compared to what else I’ve seen.” He resisted from saying anything about the demon that had taken over his body. They both remembered, they didn’t need Caleb blatantly pointing it out. Compared to that, though, the peel seemed like an everyday occurrence. 

Or maybe it seemed that way to Caleb because Aesil had been the worst thing that ever happened to him. Worse than dying, worse than having to survive off of human brains, worse than losing everyone…it was time to cling to something good even if that good came in the form of a stupid banana peel that might not even make it very long. Deep down there was this inkling that he was replacing lost affection with this creature and he knew he’d be devastated if the thing did rot like Emilio was suggesting but he would worry about that when the time came. “It’s a baby to me, that’s all that matters.” There was a finality to his tone that even he wasn’t used to. It was different. He almost enjoyed it. 

Even with that finality, there were other subjects to move onto, other arguments to continue. There was no shortage of them with Emilio and for some odd reason that was a comforting thought. He looked over at the banana with a roll of his eyes, careful not to close his hand around it too hard so he wouldn’t smash it. “I feel like it would have moved or something by now. A strange man is holding it. Why would it just lay there?” 

He scoffed, Caleb shaking his head while that incredulous look stayed intact. The peel was also back on its feet, crossing its two front tendrils in front of it. “We don’t appreciate that.” The peel shook its head too and Caleb almost smiled down at it. Almost.

Suddenly the conversation took an even weirder turn, the hard lines in his face softening as Emilio kept going. His mind took him back to the night he had died alone in that cemetery, back to waking up mindless until he was standing over the body of the graverobber that had killed him, and he could see where Emilio was coming from. It had been terrifying and the man spoke about it like he had experienced something like it. Which surely couldn’t be the case. He sighed, frustration seeping back into his tone. “I think dying is different for everyone. If I knew it was coming…” Actually, Caleb wasn’t even sure what he would have done. It was something that he would have had to figure out back then and he didn't want to think about it more than he had to. His death had been violent, only turning into more violence after he’d woken. “It doesn’t matter. It’s my pet now and we’re not telling it that it could be dying already even if it is smarter than me. Why does it even matter to you?” Pausing, he considered Emilio’s question for a second as he stared at the peel and then looked back at the hunter after the split second decision. “Billy. It’s name is Billy.”

Caleb didn’t need to tell Emilio, of course, about the oddities of this town. They both knew that he was well aware of them. There was a phantom itch at his wrists and thighs, the long-healed scars Aesil had left him with quietly making their existence known again. But if Caleb wouldn’t bring up the demon directly, neither would Emilio. He had no desire to talk about the things that haunted him, no matter how many people insisted that talking about things would help you to heal from the damage they left behind. (That had always sounded like a stupid claim to him; there were things you didn’t get to come back from. Neither he nor Caleb would ever really leave that basement.) “Just because weird shit happens here doesn’t mean a living banana peel is normal,” Emilio replied instead of saying anything real. He’d always preferred the easy route, in the end.

It’s a baby to me. The fury’s fingers twitched, thumb absently rubbing against the ring on his finger. An old habit, one that stuck with him even now that the ring on his finger was no longer his wedding band. (It had still been placed there by someone he’d failed. Some things never changed.) “Maybe it shouldn’t be.” Did he care if Caleb was setting himself up for some kind of inevitable breaking here? He told himself that it only mattered because a broken zombie could be dangerous, because grief could turn people into monsters even if they didn’t survive on brains. But there was some quiet empathy to it, too; if Caleb saw the peel as a baby and it died as Emilio suspected it would, it would hurt. Even if it was only a fraction of the sort of pain Emilio knew well, it would still ache.

But Caleb couldn’t be convinced, and certainly not by Emilio of all people. Maybe Emilio would have been better off arguing for Caleb to do the opposite of whatever he actually thought he should do. It might have been more successful, given the way the zombie seemed content to argue with him at every turn. Though… Emilio was instigating plenty of that arguing. For example: “Maybe it’s frozen in fear. Or maybe it’s not the kind of living thing that moves around. Not everything that’s alive walks and talks.” And not everything that walks and talks is alive. He didn’t need to tell Caleb that, either.

In any case, it seemed Caleb and the banana peel were a united front. Which, whatever. Emilio didn’t give a shit. Let him take the thing home and get attached just to lose it in the end. What did it matter to Emilio? If he went on a killing spree afterwards, Emilio would take care of it. (He told himself, whole-heartedly, that this was the only reason he cared at all; he couldn’t quite convince himself of it, but it wasn’t as if there was anyone else to question him.)

His fingers twitched, and he tried to imagine what he would have done had he known death was coming for him. Drank less, probably. Found some way out of it, maybe. Found some way to keep himself from rising up after, ideally. But he wasn’t about to make any of those points to Caleb, because doing so would come a little too close to admitting something he wasn’t ready for anyone to know. “It matters to me because it’s stupid. And maybe fucked up, if it is smarter than you. Wouldn’t want someone stupider than me calling me their pet. Would you?” He wasn’t even sure what point he was trying to make anymore. Emilio had a tendency to get lost in arguments. He liked it a lot better than any of the other ways he managed to get lost. “Billy is a stupid name.”

It was like arguing with a brick wall. Caleb was getting more and more agitated the longer the conversation went, each word from Emilio making him want to roll his eyes. He was afraid they would stick permanently in the back of his head though so he refrained. “I don’t think they’re normal, just pointing out that we deal with weird things every day. I’m used to it by now. I eat brains to keep myself normal which is the biggest taste of irony I’ve ever had.” That was ironic, right? “I can handle a screaming banana peel.” In truth, Caleb wasn’t even sure how they got started on this subject anymore. He’d completely forgotten how it started and just hoped he was making sense as he threw whatever he could think of at Emilio. Otherwise he’d sound really stupid at that point.

He briefly considered asking why it shouldn’t have been the only thing that mattered, his eyes catching onto the twitch of Emilio’s fingers. What that meant, he wasn’t sure, but he wondered if the hunter knew more than he was letting on. Maybe the peel was more dangerous than he knew and Emilio was just keeping that fact to himself? Maybe the hunter was trying to get him killed in an entertaining way or something? He wasn’t sure but he didn’t really want to ask the guy to elaborate anymore for fear that he would be truthful with an answer. “Well, it is.” And he left it at that even as he glanced over at the peel, the two of them staring at each other; Caleb was wary, the peel somehow looked devious. Probably his imagination.

But his gaze went back to the banana in his hand, the look on his face turning even more wary with Emilio’s words. What if it was alive? The peel moved toward it as Caleb opened his hand and plopped down next to it in his open palm, making it clear that Caleb needed to keep his hand like that from now on. That was going to get tiresome. Still… “It’s not alive, Emilio. There would be something that told us if it was.”

Somehow, the words stung. Never mind that Emilio had said the banana could be smarter before, never mind that it probably was or that he himself had just said as much. It still hurt to hear the stupid comment directed towards him even if it came from someone he could care less about impressing. Emilio wasn’t someone he cared about, it shouldn’t have mattered.

But it did. The comment brought back past comments that he couldn’t seem to forget, nights of his confidence being torn to shreds, and he deflated. Caleb could feel the arguments drain from him as he was brought back to those moments and he diverted his eyes to the ground. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.” He bit the inside of his cheek, feeling like it was time to walk away if a simple word that wasn’t even directed at him could shut him down like this. “I’m going to take Billy home and get it settled. I’m sure since it’s smart and all it’ll show me what it needs.” And because he couldn’t resist one more childish comment as he turned and walked away he called over his shoulder loud enough for the man to hear. ”Emilio’s a stupid name!”

[longislandcharm]

PARTIES: @longislandcharm and @mortemoppetere TIMING: Current SUMMARY: Winter wants to enjoy a day at the beach. Emilio is trying to clear his head. Disaster strikes. WARNINGS: Very brief mention of medical blood tw

It was one of the hottest days that Winter had experienced in Maine so far. It reminded her a little of days back in LA when the warm weather was enough to push her towards the beaches, nostalgia pulling at her tiny heartstrings. Luckily, Wicked’s Rest had beaches too and she intended on taking full advantage of it. The sand between her toes, the sun kissing her skin, all of it brought a smile to her lips while she looked out over the water…only for the smile to fade when she thought back to her conversation with Mack. Nobody could enjoy anything around here, could they? All of it brought out memories that weren’t pleasant, or thoughts that she didn’t want to have like Mack floating in the sea for a few days after being thrown over the cliffs. She wasn’t even there but a chill still went up her spine at the thought of what she had to go through.

But Winter was never one to dwell on the bad when she didn’t have to. She shook the thoughts from her mind, wiggling her toes in the sand, and continued her walk along the shoreline. There weren’t too many people around, the heat most likely driving them to stay home, so peace was easy to come by until a shriek filled the air stopping her in her tracks. She whipped her head around in search of where the sound came from only to see people running towards their cars. Blood had seeped into the sand that seemed to be dipping inwards, little flecks of red graininess flying out and through the air. “What the hell? God, what else could go wrong?”

It was the wrong question to ask. She knew it as soon as it was out of her mouth, especially when the sand near the red clumps started to move. Something was underneath, causing the ground to rise as it moved like some gigantic groundhog, and it was moving straight towards her. That wasn’t even the weirdest part of it all.  No, the weirdest thing was the fin that was rising up, Winter’s eyes widending when she realized what it resembled. Land Jaws was coming straight for her. “Oh, hell no.” 

Her feet slipped a little when she turned to take off. Some Scooby Doo commercial came to mind with the movement but she dug her toes in and took off towards the parking lot as fast as she could. ‘Don’t look back.’ She kept telling herself that same thing over and over, knowing it would only slow her down if she took the time to turn her head and see if the thing was still following her. The sounds of the sand moving started creeping closer though, it was hot on her tail, and she was pretty sure she was about to die despite her best efforts.

He preferred weather like this. The cold of Maine’s winter left him with an ache in his bones, but the heat was familiar. It still wasn’t quite as hot as he was used to things getting in Mexico, but it was warm enough to set his mind at ease, to make him feel a little more comfortable in his own skin. Lately, this was a hard feeling to come by; Emilio would chase it as far as he was able, would cling to it for however long he could. He’d lost some of his confidence lately, left it in various places that became unreachable the moment he walked away. He didn’t know how to get it back; he didn’t really know if he could. 

It seemed he’d had more failures than victories in recent months, and it had always been hard for him not to internalize those. He knew he was… a shadow hanging over Teddy’s house some days, knew that the darkness that lurked in the corners of his mind sometimes seeped through without him really meaning for it to. Teddy would never call it out, though they would try to ask him if he was okay when it surrounded him. Emilio knew they didn’t mind it in a sense that meant anything more than caring for his well-being, but he still didn’t feel that it was fair to drag it around the house, to fill their space with shadows. So, when it got especially bad, he’d go out. He’d take a walk, or go for a hunt.

He wasn’t really sure which he was doing now. He had various weapons on his person, because he always did. There were knives lining his pockets, stakes shoved alongside them. A cross hung from around his neck, clanging against Juliana’s ring and the stake charm Teddy had given him a thousand years ago. There was holy water tucked in the fold of his sleeve, but there was no intention to the way he walked. He didn’t think he was looking for trouble.

It wasn’t particularly surprising that he found it anyway.

People were running away from something, which meant Emilio moved towards it. Someone nearly barreled into him in their attempt to get away, shouting a well-intentioned warning over their shoulder at him as they escaped. Emilio ignored it, still moving towards the chaos. What he saw was… unexpected. A shark on land, all sharp teeth and powerful jaws. He thought Teddy might have liked it, though any thoughts beyond that were interrupted by the face of a familiar woman running away. This was the same woman Wyatt had gone after in the woods, wasn’t it? Emilio’s brow furrowed. She was good at finding trouble, too. 

“I got this,” he told her, pulling a knife from his pocket. He didn’t know what this thing was, but he was assuming something sharp could dispatch it. “You hurt?”

Was this man trailing her now or something? The thought popped into her head as soon as Emilio came into view only clouded by the relief that pooled inside of her. Winter was pretty sure if anyone ‘had’ this it was going to be him. Still, this was the second time he had come to her rescue and she couldn’t help but think maybe he was taking pity on her and making sure the poor human stayed alive a little bit longer even if she knew he had been trialing Wyatt first. The thought was a slap to the face, her confidence shot by all the weird shit that had a hold on this place. She didn’t know why she stopped a few feet behind him. Maybe to answer his question or maybe because she felt safe in his presence or possibly because she wanted to watch this thing meet its fate, either way she did stop. And she would come to regret it.

The shark was gone. The fin had disappeared while the sand went immobile and Winter had a bad feeling about it all as she stood with her toes wiggling. Her feet were begging to move again but with the animal gone she couldn’t be sure if that was a good idea or not. “I’m not hurt.” 

As soon as the words were out of her mouth the sand beneath her started to fall away. She moved as quickly as she could but cried out in pain as sharp teeth dug into her left thigh. A row of them had dug into her flesh but thankfully she’d been quick enough that the shark hadn’t been able to bite down before her leg was wrenched away. Blood covered the sand around her limb, pooling beneath. Her blood. Winter stared at it and then terrified eyes looked up at Emilio as if asking what she should do, unwanted tears pooling in the corners of them. “Spoke too soon…”

He figured she’d make a break for it the moment he was between her and the shark. She’d been brave enough in the woods with Wyatt, even though it was clear she was terrified, but running hadn’t really been an option when the shifter was targeting her directly. Now, though? She could have disappeared with the rest of the crowd, vanished to leave Emilio to face off against the thing on his own. He wasn’t sure if the fact that she didn’t impressed him or pissed him off. 

Probably both. It was usually both.

She said she wasn’t hurt, and he nodded. He was about to tell her to get the hell out of there when the shark vanished, disappearing into the sand. Some people might have been relieved by this; Emilio wasn’t. He was immediately put on edge instead, heart pounding in his chest as he scanned the area, trying to figure out where his opponent had disappeared to. Winter was speaking behind him, answering a question he’d already forgotten asking; he couldn’t offer her any of his attention. His mind was overcome with the paranoia of an enemy he knew was there, but couldn’t see. 

It made itself known all at once, bursting out of the sand to wrap its massive jaws around Winter’s leg. Emilio cursed, diving for it knife first. His blade found the creature’s flesh, but it disappeared beneath the sand again and took the knife with it. Emilio’s chest heaved, eyes scanning the sand for any sign of it. He looked back to Winter, gritting his teeth at the sight of the blood. “Need to get that taken care of before you lose too much blood,” he acknowledged, almost hesitantly. Teddy’s house wasn’t far from here, but he hated the idea of leaving the beach before the creature was taken care of. “We have to get off the sand first. Then, I patch you up.” He had… materials on him. Given his ability to find trouble, he tended to carry something to patch himself up in his pocket. Unfortunately, most people didn’t agree with his medical prowess, but he didn’t think Winter was in any position to be choosey. “Can you walk?”

Fuck fuck fuck, she was in a lot of pain. It was hard to concentrate on his words as she stared down at her thigh, tears finally spilling over. How the hell was a land shark real? How the hell was any of this real? Winter wondered if she would ever get to a point where she wasn’t asking herself that question but it seemed unlikely now. New and more terrifying things kept popping up. It could be worse though. She could be missing an entire leg. The thought brought her mind to Henry and she winced, her wide eyes searching for the ghost that couldn’t be found. He wasn’t around for once and now he’d never leave her alone to go wherever ghosts went when they weren’t on Earth again. 

‘Too much blood’ caught her attention and she looked down at her thigh again. It was bleeding pretty profusely. “Oh my god…I’m going to lose my leg.” It was a whispered panic, the medium reaching out and gripping Emilio’s arm tightly as if she were afraid he was going to leave her there. “Tell me I’m not going to lose my leg, I need it. Tell me it’s staying where it is.” They didn’t need this. Not when there was a fucking land shark hiding in the sand just ready for another taste. This was not the time for her to freak out. Winter had survived being stabbed. She’d survived a poltergeist trying to kill her. She’d survived a crazy alligator with foul breath. She could survive this, right?

Her skin was losing color, the paleness of it once again sending her mind towards a tale spin but she bit hard into her bottom lip to stop those thoughts, leading them back to what she had survived, and did her best to climb to her feet (with Emilio’s help). She couldn’t put too much pressure on it but if he could help her she could get to where they needed to be. “Get me the hell out of here….please.” God, she was going to owe this man so much whiskey. 

She was panicking, talking about losing her leg, and for a moment, Emilio thought about Rhett. His brother wasn’t someone he particularly enjoyed thinking about these days, especially not in this context, but there was blood dripping from her mangled limb and, for a moment, the sand flickered into concrete and the open beach shifted into that abandoned factory. He shook his head to rid himself of the thought. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to pull his gaze away from her leg to look Winter in the eye instead, finding that the easier thing to focus on. Usually, it was the opposite. Blood made more sense to him than emotion, but in this context… well. He was no use to her if he couldn’t keep his head in the present, was he?

“You’re not going to lose your leg,” he snapped. “Shut up so I can think.” He wasn’t good at comforting, even when he knew someone well. Winter’s panic mixed with the chaos around them, and Emilio tried to keep a grip. He shoved a hand into his jacket pocket, yanking out the roll of duct tape he’d taken to carrying with him half because it was useful in a pinch, and half because he enjoyed being petty enough to come home with hastily constructed duct tape bandages just to piss people off. “Hold still,” he told her. “Gotta stop the bleeding before we move you. Keep an eye out for the shark. If it looks like it’s about to hop out and take a bite out of me, just… yell or something, I don’t know.”

Looking back to her leg, he set the tape aside to rip away the torn fabric of her pant leg around the wound. It was deep enough and wide enough that it would probably need stitches later — she wasn’t a hunter who healed quickly enough for such things to be overkill, after all — but they had neither the time nor the supplies for that here. Once he’d opened up the area a little more, he picked the tape back up and yanked at it, pressing the torn fabric from her pants against her leg and wrapping it tightly in tape. When the wound was sufficiently covered in the makeshift bandage, he ripped the tape with his teeth and sealed it off. “There,” he announced. “Good as new, no? Now we need to get off the sand.”

“Excuse you?” She knew Emilio was trying to help her but telling her to shut up was the last thing someone needed to do in her presence, especially when she was in panic mode. Winter’s face started to heat with her frustration but that started to make her lightheaded. Apparently it wasn’t the time for her temper either. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself but then the man brought out a thing of duct tape and the panic started up again. “What the fuck is that?” He couldn’t seriously be thinking of using tape to stop her profuse bleeding, could he? 

Oh, he was. “This isn’t going to work, Emilio.” She gritted the words through her teeth but still kept her eyes on the sand as the hunter got to work. It was a good time to reflect on what her life had become and how idiotic she felt as the tape started to get wrapped around her skin like the faux bandage that it was. But she soon started to focus more on the beach, knowing that was more important than contemplating hopping on a plane to follow after Mack. Every little movement she thought she saw in the sand had her head jerking in different directions even though she knew that if this thing wanted to come after them there probably wouldn’t be much warning. 

Wincing at the tightness in her legs as the tape bandage was finished, Winter looked down at it, her mouth dropping open slightly. How the hell had that worked? It was ugly and she looked like an idiot but the blood wasn’t seeping through the way she thought it would have. “...Why do I get the feeling you have experience with this type of thing? I bet you never go to a doctor, right?” She could tell that even if he wasn’t a hunter he’d probably still refuse healthcare unless he was dying…maybe even then. He just had that air about him. Why did she even care? The medium must have been slightly delusional from the blood loss. They did have to get off the sand though, something that was abundantly clear as that fin rose and started to cut through the ground heading straight for them. “Emilio!” 

He wished she were more agreeable, or that he was better with people. She was yelling at him, and that wasn’t really helping with his whole ‘trying to think of solutions without getting eaten’ dilemma. And, sure, maybe he shouldn’t have told her to shut up, but it wasn’t like her panic was helping anything, was it? “It’s duct tape,” he snapped as she questioned his first aid skills, “and it’s kind of all we fucking have right now. Sorry I don’t carry a full fucking first aid kit with me everywhere I fucking go.” If not for the memory of Rhett in the factory shoving itself repeatedly to the forefront of his mind regardless of how hard he tried to combat it, he would have found this less stressful and more irritating. After all, this sort of thing was close to the norm for Emilio, as commonplace as a flat tire or running out of coffee. But the blood on her leg kept yanking his mind back in time, and he found it harder and harder to focus. 

“It’ll work,” he insisted, wrapping another layer of tape around the wound just to be safe. “I use this shit all the time. It’ll hold you over until you can get to a fucking doctor, or whatever.” Winter was human, as far as he knew. That meant she was probably fine to walk into the hospital with this wound and have a professional stitch her up without worry of exposure or unanswerable questions that might have arisen had she been a little more supernatural. Of course, they had to get off this fucking beach before they could worry about any of that, and that was the kind of thing that was far easier said than done, wasn’t it? 

She seemed surprised that the bleeding was staunched, and Emilio tried not to be offended by her obvious lack of faith in him. “I told you,” he said gruffly, rolling his eyes. At her question, he snorted. “I look like the kind of guy who goes to the doctor?” The closest experience he had to a doctor’s visit was Masami, and he only ever showed up there if someone dragged him in. Strictly speaking, hunters could see human doctors if their injuries were bad enough. Rhett had done a few stints in the hospital at Wicked’s Rest, after all, and Daiyu had had a visit of her own, too. The quicker-than-normal healing was the kind of thing that could be easily explained away to people who didn’t want to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural. But… Emilio didn’t like doctors. Hospitals made his fingers twitch, made him feel like he was trapped in a too-small shed or a stranger’s basement. Even just visiting Rhett when he’d been forced to stay a few days after losing his leg had seen Emilio sweaty and uncomfortable. 

Which was why he’d really like to avoid being eaten by a sand shark.

“I see it,” he murmured through gritted teeth as Winter warned him of the approaching fin. “Come on, get up and lean on me. We need to get to the sidewalk as quick as we can.”

“Yea, yea, this is not the time to gloat.” Winter rolled her eyes at his words but there was an underlying nervousness lacing her own. It probably wasn’t the time for her own mouth either. He was right, they needed to get off this sand before the shark decided it was going to finish its job. “Maybe you should go to the doctor. You could probably pick up better methods.” 

She should have panicked more earlier. Her heart was racing as she did her best to get to her feet again, the tape wrapped tightly enough around her leg that it was hard to move without the edges digging into her bloodied skin. She inhaled swiftly when she tried to put weight on her leg, Winter finally leaning into the hunter when she realized she couldn’t do this one on her own this time. The ground around them was starting to shake softly, the sand moving in between her toes with each step they took towards the parking lot. People were standing around watching in horror, some screaming (especially one ghost who wasn’t tearing his eyes away from the two of them), but none of them made a move to come onto the sand themselves to help. She couldn’t blame them. She couldn’t even be sure she would do something like that with this crazy sand thing on the loose.

It wasn’t until her foot hit the pavement that she realized just how close the thing was to them. It shot up out of the sand intending to bite one of them again but they’d thankfully made it off just in time and the shark went back empty handed. Winter was panting and ready to pass out but she kept her focus on just staying conscious even as she sank back to the ground to lay back against it. “Tell me you’re good and the shark is picking its teeth off the pavement.” 

Emilio disagreed with her assessment. Now was a great time to gloat. Gloating kept him grounded, kept him in the present day, and he figured she’d prefer him here to somewhere else when she needed a hand to get to safety. But, of course, he couldn’t admit to that without admitting to the sorry state of his own head, couldn’t say what gloating was doing for him without copping to why it was necessary, and Emilio wasn’t much of a talker. He had no real interest in letting anyone in on the way his head sometimes dragged him backwards in time, especially not to someone he only really knew in passing. The gloating would continue, but he wouldn’t tell her why. “My methods are saving your ass right now, aren’t they? I’d like to see a doctor do that.”

She managed to get to her feet, and while Emilio’s own bum leg didn’t love the way she leaned her weight against him, it was easy enough to push the pain to the very back of his mind. He’d deal with it later, he was sure �� his knee would probably lock up on the walk home, and he’d have to drag himself through the front door and hope no one noticed — but there was no use in bending to it at the moment. He couldn’t save Winter and spare himself a little extra leg pain, so the pain was acceptable. It wasn’t like anyone else was jumping in to help, after all.

He dragged Winter towards the pavement, hyperaware of the sand moving behind them. Shifting his grip on the woman, he fished a knife out of his pocket and waited until a snout came out of the sand to toss it, grinning when he heard it hit but not risking a glance behind him to see where it had landed. Instead, he focused on dragging Winter to the concrete. When they got to it, he lowered her down as carefully as he could with the adrenaline still flowing through him, eyes wild as he glanced around. “In one piece,” he replied. And the shark is…” He looked back to the sand. “Gone.” There was blood staining the sand, though, and he knew not all of it was Winter’s. “Made off with one of my knives. Not sure where I hit it, but…” He trailed off with a shrug. “Probably going to need time to lick its wounds, if they don’t kill it.” He sighed, glancing back to her. “You, uh… You good?”

She nodded, his explanation of what happened with the shark satisfactory. Winter was vaguely aware of Emilio’s words towards his lost knife, her brain passing over the rest of his words entirely as her head started to spin and her vision started to go black around the edges. The adrenaline that had been funneling through her was fading fast and she was fading along with it. Even with the tape on her leg she had lost a lot of blood before he’d patched her up making it hard to breathe properly as her body worked overtime to pump what she had left through her veins. She closed her eyes, bringing an arm up to cover them and block out the sun while still fighting off the abyss that was trying to overtake her.

“Hey Emilio?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable in a rare moment when she allowed herself to be taken down by whatever was trying to wipe her out. It was the most embarrassing thing to happen to her that day but she couldn’t fully focus on the tone she was giving off anymore. Later she would chastise herself for the weakness that was displayed, tell herself that next time she needed to work harder to keep up her image, but for now she was content with giving Emilio that weakness as if she had any choice in the matter. “I think someone should call an ambulance.” 

That was an answer, right? He’d maybe asked if she was okay, his voice having long distorted by that point, but Winter was sure that was enough. Sleep was calling to her, a call that she so desperately wanted to answer despite a voice in the back of her mind telling her to resist. Or maybe that was Henry? It did sound deeper than her usual inner monologue. “I’m okay.” The ghost didn’t need to worry. 

Emilio saved her with duct tape.

[enthrallinglyeden]

TIMING: present LOCATION: the library PARTIES: Emilio @vengeancedemon and Eden @enthrallinglyeden SUMMARY: desperate to get to the bottom of his email problem, eden turns to the town pi for help. meanwhile, emilio is just trying to make it through the fucking day. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

Taking cases would be good. He decided it almost on a whim, the way one might decide to make a dramatic aesthetic change in the midst of a poorly disguised breakdown. Emilio knew nothing of the old cliche that found scissors a tempting thing to take to your hair when life seemed to be going to hell around you, but this was almost certainly his version of doing so. He was dead, he was angry, and he was taking on more cases because the distraction felt so much better than thinking about any of it. 

Today, he was meeting with a new client. The fact that this case wasn’t one lingering from before his death and that this client wasn’t someone he’d met while breathing made it appealing to him, as if he could pretend his heart still beat so long as there was no one around who knew enough to question it. He didn’t know anything about the case, but he didn’t need to. He knew it was a distraction, and that was enough.

Meeting at the library, too, was something that felt better to him. His apartment was something he was still getting used to, something he had to readjust to after so long away. It was nowhere near as nice as the office Teddy had built for him, but he didn’t want to go back there now. The apartment had served him well before, and it was a fine enough tomb now. But meeting outside of it allowed him another distraction to focus on, and he liked that. The library was public, and he liked that, too. There were no dark alleys to be lured into, no dumpsters waiting to house his corpse. This case would be good. If he said it often enough, it was bound to start sounding true.

Approaching the desk, he rapped his knuckles against it to get the attention of the person standing behind it. “Looking for Eden Lu.” It wasn’t the most polite greeting, but… well. Emilio wasn’t any more polite in death than he had been in life.

—

The emails had stopped for now but somehow, the silence scared Eden more. He was no fool — silence didn’t mean safety, it never did. It just meant that the individual was collecting themself, preparing more ammunition to toss in his face. Perhaps the scariest part of all was that he had no clue what their next move was. This was far from the first person to be too close to his personal business. Eden had handled his fair share of stalkers and blackmailers before, but it was never something that couldn’t be settled with money or his mother’s connections. This wasn’t one of those cases.

But if the person on the other end of the screen could prepare for a war, then so could he. Better to get a jump on the attack during this silence than sitting around and relishing a time free of threat. Eden had never dealt with private investigators personally, but how hard could it really be with enough money? Though one of the only offices in town that he found in his search was one with some…unfavourable reviews. Rude behaviour, drinking on the job, but good results, and that’s all that really mattered to him. Surely he could take a few jabs if it meant that he could get any substantial intel on the individual.

He couldn’t sit still knowing that the investigator was on his way. Eden tried his best to focus on his work, but the possibility of finally getting answers sent a strange mix of adrenaline and nerves through his body. He tapped away at his computer, his eyes darting between the screen and his surroundings until the knock on his desk finally came. “Yes, that’s me. Mr. Cortez, I presume? Just one moment.” There were no pleasantries, just a curt greeting which Eden was somewhat grateful for. He hadn’t told his co-workers who he was meeting, only that he would need an hour off and the less attention they were drawing, the better.

“Thank you, Helen. I’ll be back in an hour,” he said to the elderly lady that approached, flashing her a grateful smile as she took his place. His charm always did work especially well on her. Eden led the other man to one of the study rooms in the back, making sure to close the door behind them before speaking. “Thank you for meeting me here. And for taking my case. It’s a bit of a…critical situation.”

—

The moment the man behind the desk confirmed that he was the person Emilio was looking for, the fury studied him with a critical eye. He’d never met Eden in person and, given the way a recent case of a similar nature had ended with his corpse in a dumpster, he figured it was fair to proceed with some amount of caution. Eden didn’t look like much of a threat, though Emilio knew from experience that looks could certainly be deceiving. He looked like a lot of Axis’s clients did — nervous, uncertain, and a little paranoid. 

Emilio leaned against the desk as Eden had his coworker take over for him, following him wordlessly to the study room and shutting the door behind them. Eden, he suspected, would prefer privacy for this conversation, and he doubted the guy would try to kill him in his place of employment. (Not that it would matter much if he did anymore, of course; unless Eden Lu was planning on sawing his head off, Emilio was pretty close to untouchable.)

He nodded absently in response to Eden’s thanks, biting back a comment that he wouldn’t have taken the case if he weren’t being paid to. He’d been pretty reliably informed that his customer service skills could use a little work. He doubted his attempt to rein them in would last very long here. By the end of this case, Eden Lu would probably hate him… but he’d also probably have the answers he was after. To Emilio, the latter was the only thing that actually mattered.

“You were vague on the phone,” he commented. “Not a bad idea. But now’s the time for details. Tell me everything that’s been going on. Don’t leave shit out. Lying to me isn’t going to help you get this shit solved any quicker, and it’ll piss me off.”

—

Eden could feel Emilio watching his every move, or at least that was what it felt like. Call it a force of habit to believe that everyone was watching him at all times, whether it was born out of narcissism, insecurity, or paranoia. Not that he could really fault the other man for putting him under such scrutiny — from what little he knew about the profession, analyzing people seemed to be part of the job of a private investigator. Not that Eden was worried about what Emilio would think of him, but he still found himself subconsciously sitting up straighter in his chair. 

He was admittedly taken aback by Emilio’s tone, but Eden figured it’d be best if he held his tongue. The last thing he needed was to put an end to things before they even began, especially considering what he had read about the investigator’s temper in Axis’ reviews. “Well, I certainly have no desire to piss you off, Mr. Cortez,” he said cooly, clasping his hands together on the table. 

“The emails that I told you about on the phone started about a year ago. I initially ignored them because they seemed like your usual spam, not the first time I’ve gotten messages like this either. You see…” Eden trailed off for a moment, trying not to let the hesitation show on his face. “I used to be a public figure. A celebrity. People always wanted something from me, or sometimes they simply just wanted to try their luck with a shocking message. So when this sender claimed that they’d ‘ruin my life’, it was just another day, you know?”

Eden’s gaze shifted to try and read Emilio’s expression to no avail. “But, uh, then the emails started to get more in-depth. Sending me details about my life that you wouldn’t just get from an Internet search. Then the messages became more aggressive. They threatened to expose my secrets, then take my life, and I figured I had to step in before they could do either of those things. So, here we are.” Eden knew that was far from enough information to solve anything, but he was frankly tired of speaking. He wanted to hear what Emilio thought so far — after all, he was the one paying the investigator.

—

Lately, he’d taken to looking into his clients a little before meeting with them. It was a habit he’d once partaken in almost religiously, though he’d fallen out of it in recent months. If he hadn’t, maybe he would have been able to avoid catching a knife in his chest in the midst of a dirty alley and bleeding out at the bottom of a dumpster. That certainly offered a convincing argument for picking the habit back up now, even if it was certainly too late for it to be a helpful thing to do. So he’d looked into Eden a little. He knew the guy came from money, though he wasn’t sure he still had access to it now. (He was leaning towards probably not, given the less than glamorous position at the local library.) 

He didn’t know much about the man’s personality, though. Eden didn’t seem thrilled at Emilio’s less-than-friendly demeanor, but that was hardly a surprise. Emilio had read the reviews left on Axis’s Yelp page — he knew that his personality was pretty damn close to the number one complaint his clients had about him. When this was over, he’d probably earn another one-star from Eden himself, no matter how the case ended. He didn’t care about that. What he cared about was finding the answer to the puzzle Eden had presented him with, and that started with gathering all the pieces.

Emails were a little strange, for Emilio. He wasn’t someone who knew a lot about the technical side of things, tended to shrug that part of his job off on other people rather than deal with it directly. But the content of the emails Eden had been getting was familiar enough. Threats, blackmail. Emilio knew how to respond to that kind of thing far better than he knew how to respond to most things people might consider ‘normal.’ It didn’t matter how the messages had been delivered, only the content they contained. 

“Okay.” Emilio nodded thoughtfully, digesting the information. “It would be good if you’d tell me exactly what the emails were threatening you with. My first step would be retracing the information, figuring out how someone could get it and narrowing down who might be able to do it from that. But, look, if it’s something that’ll ruin your life…” He trailed off. He doubted Eden would be willing to share his deepest secrets with a stranger, even if that stranger was someone he was paying to help him. Roles reversed, Emilio sure as hell wouldn’t have been forthcoming. “So let’s start somewhere else. Time frame, ¿sí? People you met just before the emails started coming in. Even just people you saw for a moment who gave you a bad feeling. It can be a long list. It’s important that no one is left off. And the, ah…” He trailed off, snapping his fingers. “The address the emails go to. Is it one that’s public anywhere?”

—

This was the part that Eden wasn’t looking forward to; the main reason why he had let the individual go on with their games for so long. Everything would’ve been incredibly simple if he just handed all the evidence over to the police and let them deal with it. There was a world where he’d even be safer that way — a world where he was human. But he wasn’t, and that was why he was in this mess in the first place. As sheltered as his life in the colony had been, he was well aware of the threats that lurked out there. Hunters who were ready to draw their weapons the moment they set eyes on individuals like him. Maybe this person was a hunter themselves, and who knew what ties they had with the law no matter where Eden managed to run to.

He wasn’t even going to hire a private investigator in the first place, going back and forth on the idea for weeks. But he had bit the bullet and done it, and now he might as well accept the help. Eden felt more confident trusting an independent detective with his secret, if it ever came to spilling them. For now, he wouldn’t lie, but he would leave out the details until it felt absolutely necessary.

He sat quietly, trying his best to take in Emilio’s thought process without letting his usual habit of overthinking get to him. For as horrendous as the reviews called Emilio’s people skills, the investigator seemed to have a decent understanding of a client’s psyche. Even if people were paying the money for his help, that didn’t mean they’d be willing to immediately open up. Eden appreciated the alternative path that Emilio was offering him for now, nodding along to the investigator’s words. 

“See, that’s the part I’m struggling to figure out. No one really jumps out at me from the time the emails started. A year ago I was in some small town in Canada and mostly kept my head down,” Eden began, trying to dig deeper into his memory. “It’s the individuals who I’ve encountered before then who spark the biggest suspicion. Rivals in the industry, acquaintances in the industry who want something from me. Maybe a few people that I’ve managed to anger somehow? Definitely people that my mother has managed to anger…” His mind wandered to the long list of enemies that his mother had but managed to silence with money or death. “I can imagine it’d be easier for them to take things out on me, especially since I’ve…distanced myself from my family.”

With a tired sigh, Eden slumped back in his chair at the thought of being the collateral damage in his parents’ messes, even after all these years. “I know it doesn’t line up with the emails, but I have reason to believe that the individual stems from those times. Why they would take so long to strike, I’m not exactly sure…but my gut, my gut is telling me…” he trailed off, not entirely sure that Emilio would buy a hunch based on a gut feeling. “The email address is not public, no. Entirely separate from the ‘private’ email I had under my management company too, just one I use for personal affairs.” 

—

The problem with this line of work was that, in a lot of cases, people had very specific reasons for not taking their cases to the police. Sometimes, those reasons were easy to deal with. The police, especially in Wicked’s Rest, didn’t often make time for certain kinds of cases, especially if those cases seemed odd and difficult to explain. Other times, though, the reasons why people avoided going to the law with the things that concerned them were things that made it all the harder for Emilio to get to the bottom of their cases. Some people wanted secrecy, wanted privacy. They wanted to be given answers without having to offer up any of their own. And those cases were difficult to resolve. It was hard to answer questions when the questions you were given were carefully censored by someone trying to avoid giving too much away.

As annoying as those cases could get, Emilio understood them to some extent. People who came to him were usually scared. What they were scared of varied — if the case Eden Lu had put on his desk had been one involving something less dire, he might have been more annoyed with his fear — but the feeling was something universal. 

He’d do what he could with the information Eden was willing to give him. And, if that information proved to be less than what he needed, he’d dig into things Eden would probably wish he’d leave alone. That was where the one star reviews tended to come from. No one really liked someone who knew more than what they were told, and Emilio ended most cases in that very state. He could attempt to be respectful and avoid digging for a time, but he wasn’t good at holding off on it indefinitely. Especially not when digging was the thing sitting between him and answers.

For now, though, he’d work off what Eden told him. Most of it was straightforward enough, but the mention of his mother caught Emilio’s attention. “Your mother have a habit of pissing people off to this extent?” He’d seen things like this a hundred times before. Someone too big to touch did something shitty, and the person on the receiving end of it went after someone they cared about because they were an easier target, or because the kind of revenge they wanted necessitated taking something away from the person who’d wronged them instead of killing that person themself. He thought of his own daughter briefly, then pushed the thought from his mind. Not the time. 

“Maybe they were gathering information,” he suggested. “Making sure they had enough to threaten you with before making the threat.” If the email was private and not connected to anything else he had, there might have been clues there. “You got a list of everyone who has it? What do you usually use it for?” He wasn’t sure if he and Eve were on good enough terms to ask a favor, but maybe she’d be able to do something with this if he called her. (He didn’t know if he could bring himself to call her.) “I’ll need lists of people you and your mother have pissed off, too. Anyone you can think of. Doesn’t matter how small. I know it’ll be a big list, but we need to narrow shit down.”

—

He knew the rabbit hole he was going to have to go down when he mentioned his mother, but Eden also knew that there was probably no way this case would get solved without mentioning her. “My mother…she has a habit of getting what she wants no matter what. Money can be very persuasive, but it only keeps some people quiet for so long. As for the people who didn’t take the money, she had much more…confrontational methods. I doubt…those people can talk much now,” he explained as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Just recounting his mother’s dealings was headache-inducing.

Eden had never kept track of how many lives his mother had ruined. Hell, who knew how many more she had ruined since he left? Yet even after going through the effort of hiring a private investigator, even after sitting across from him in the room right now, conflict still stirred inside of him. The point of this wasn’t to ruin her life or take her down, and it wasn’t like some private investigator from the small town of Wicked’s Rest, Maine would be capable of doing so anyways. But even just admitting her wrongdoings outloud to an outsider felt wrong. The guilt tugged at his conscience and threatened to tear him apart. 

No, you don’t owe her anything anymore. You mean nothing to them. 

“Lu Ziyuan is a very powerful woman,” Eden finally continued after his moment of pause. “She is idolized back in China and she knows that. She would never risk anything that would publicly ruin her image, which is why she excels at getting things done behind-the-scenes. Even if there’s a conflict in the tabloids that doesn’t involve her, you can never count out her involvement.” 

Eden hadn’t realized how much he’d been talking until he met Emilio’s gaze, suddenly getting self-conscious as if he hadn’t hired the private investigator to come listen to him in the first place. “Lists….yes, lists seem like a good idea. Here, I’ll…” He reached for the piece of scrap paper at the other end of the table that had been bothering him since entering the room because why couldn’t people clean up after themselves. But that was beside the point.

“That makes sense. Would be a waste of time for all parties if someone started making threats without a solid plan,” Eden said bitterly as he pulled the pen from behind his ear. Splitting the paper into three sections, he began scribbling down some of the first names that came to mind. “Like…what people usually use a personal email for, I guess? The bank, Apple, subscriptions. Any communication I do in town that isn’t work-related like real estate agents. The running club? Hopefully it isn’t any of them. Some of them run very fast,” he said, half-meaning it as a joke despite it coming out more like a statement. “As for the list of pissed off people, get comfy. We may be here a while.”

—

He was a little surprised at the transparency. Eden wasn’t saying point blank that his mother had killed people, but the implication was certainly there. I doubt those people can talk much now. The fact that he was being so open likely spoke to the fear he was feeling now. Whatever was in those emails had rattled him enough that he was willing to turn over his mother’s secrets to get to the bottom of it, which made Emilio all the more keen in helping him out. So much of his job was helping people with small, petty things. He used to be able to balance it with his slayer work, used to be able to feel like he was making a real difference in graveyards with a stake in his hand, but now? He wasn’t even much of a match for spawn or ghouls anymore. His best bet at making any kind of a real positive impact was through his detective work, and Eden’s case was one of the few that offered him that opportunity. 

“Okay,” he nodded carefully. “That kind of thing has a real risk of pissing people off enough to take action. Even if the people she directly… dealt with aren’t capable of it, everybody’s got somebody in their life who gives enough of a shit about them to feel a certain kind of way about things like that.” Even monsters had people who loved them. The slew of unanswered texts on Emilio’s phone was proof enough of that. 

Eden continued, and the more he spoke the more Emilio began to suspect that the threats were less about him and more about his mother. If she was powerful, she was protected. She had people watching her back and making sure no harm would come to her. But Eden, alone in another country and distant enough to tell a stranger the sort of things she’d been up to, was an easy target. He’d never approved of the method of punishing people by hurting their loved ones, but he knew others often saw no problem with it.

Eden reached for a scrap paper, and Emilio was relieved that getting information from him was easier than it often was in cases he worked. Granted, there was a chance that the librarian would hold back on him a bit — people usually did, after all — but at the very least, whatever list he provided would give the detective something to start with. If it didn’t yield any results, he’d bully the guy a little for more answers. He was decent at that.

“I don’t have a personal email. I don’t know what people usually use them for.” He snorted at the attempted joke. “Well, I’m not very fast, but I’m sure I can manage to trip them if I put my mind to it.” The idea of a running club made him want to roll his eyes, but he refrained. (Couldn’t people run by themselves? Why did they need a club for it? It felt like bragging.) “I’ve got nowhere else to be. Try not to leave anyone off. Even if it seems like something small, write it down. You never know how pissed some people will get over the tiniest goddamn shit.”

—

He could see the wheels turning in Emilio’s head. Not that he had a single damn clue what he was thinking about, but at least it seemed like the information that he was providing was good enough for a start. “Yeah, exactly. That’s the thing. I need to protect myself, but if this person ends up being someone who was genuinely wronged, can I even blame them for reacting this way?” Eden stared blankly at the table, absentmindedly twirling the pen between his fingers as he tried to imagine himself in such a scenario. If someone he loved had been subjected to a wrath like his mother’s — a siren’s wrath — who knows, he might take such drastic measures too. At least there was no one that he loved that much. 

Luckily Emilio found his attempt at humour to be somewhat amusing and a hint of a smile tugged at Eden’s lips. “I’m pretty sure man-made obstacles are against the rules of the running club. And a personal email for personal affairs. That way your work life can stay professional and your personal affairs can stay private.” His expression soured at the irony. “Well, they’re supposed to stay private.”

Eden forced his twitchy hand to steady, concentrating on putting pen to paper once again. The list wasn’t going to write itself, and thankfully the ‘email’ column came easily since it was really only a handful of people who had it. “I’ll just put individuals for now. I’ll give you the more general contacts — bank, newsletters, the running club — later, if you end up needing them.” A part of him hoped Emilio wouldn’t. After all, it would be nice if he could keep some privacy.

The column for his enemies was harder. Eden wasn’t sure what exactly constituted an enemy, but he did have a few severed connections that could’ve harboured enough negative feelings. The relationships ended for a reason and he did not care about airing them out for Emilio to see. However, Eden hesitated as he started writing Dayo’s name, immediately crossing it out. Dayo didn’t deserve to be on this list; it was impossible that he’d need to be on this list. But Emilio had said everyone, and the investigator was bound to inquire about the name that got such a reaction out of Eden regardless. 

As for his mother’s column, Eden’s head started to spin after writing down the initial obvious suspects. How could he possibly write down everyone who his mother had pissed off when it could mean half the people in every room she stepped in? He didn’t even know the majority of their names, and Eden couldn’t help but think about the unidentified corpse that laid in his trailer that night. “That’s definitely not the end of my mother’s column,” he said as he slid the paper over to Emilio. Rubbing his temple as if it could clear him of the incoming headache, Eden closed his eyes. “But it’ll have to do for now. Like you said, too many people get angered over the smallest things. Have to think about the rest.”

—

Emilio was, of course, the last person who could condemn anyone for seeking vengeance. How much of his life had been dedicated to finding the people who had wronged him and his family and taking revenge against them? His death was dedicated to it in its entirety, from the moment the blade went into his chest to the moment he woke up in the back of Eve’s van and every goddamn moment that followed. But… he thought of Flora on the floor of his living room against the wall, dying for her father’s sins. He thought of Juliana, who would probably be alive now if she hadn’t fallen in love with a Cortez. “You can blame them for acting against the wrong person,” he pointed out. “If they were wronged, they were wronged. But unless you were the one who wronged them, it shouldn’t be you they come after.”

He huffed as Eden shot down the idea of tripping people in running club. “Sounds like it would be more fun if it weren’t against the rules,” he commented, mostly joking. The explanation of a personal email’s purpose — to separate life from career — drew a dry laugh from the detective. “I live in my office,” he said flatly, “so I guess that’s not really on the table for me, anyway.” But it made sense that Eden, whose career had been so public facing before he’d fucked off to join a library instead, might want something like that. Privacy was important. Emilio didn’t envy the obvious lack of it that Eden had been granted.

He watched Eden write down names, paying a little extra attention to the one he crossed out and re-added. An ex, the title beside the name said. How bitter had the breakup been? Why the hesitation in adding the name? Emilio wouldn’t be able to stop himself from digging into it later. In any case, that name and Eden’s hesitancy in adding it provided a decent distraction from the more familiar name in the column of people who had the email address on hand. Eve Farran. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see it spelled out there. His fingers twitched absently against the table. He hoped he wouldn’t have to ask Eve about it, but he knew he likely would. He was thorough. It was one of the things that made him good at this.

“Individuals is a good place to start,” he confirmed, eyes darting occasionally to Eve’s name scrawled out on the page. “Not a lot of overlap, I see. Your exes don’t have your email address?” Testing the waters, looking for a reaction. Clients weren’t always honest; sometimes, they didn’t even recognize how dishonest they were being. 

The mother’s column was one he paid special attention to. Given how Eden spoke about her, he figured the source of the emails was far more likely to be tied to her than it was to Eden himself. “We can start with these,” he agreed, “and see where we go. Do you know anything about where the sender may be coming from? The emails, are they in English? Any wording that makes you think English is not comfortable for the person sending them?” 

—

But that was the thing — a little part of Eden always felt like he was partially responsible for wronging these people. By not speaking out more in the colony or putting a stop to the ways his mother conducted business, could he really claim innocence as a witness? Eden bit the inside of his cheek. No, it was pointless to think about that now when everything was over and done with. Besides, what could he have ever done against his mother when he could never even take back control of his life from her?

“I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first to comment on your apparent work-life balance, or lack thereof,” Eden said with a hint of amusement, though the irony of that statement coming from his mouth wasn’t lost on him. His free time in his old life was never really free, and God knows he was currently doing a terrible job of not overworking himself in an attempt to distract himself. “At least tell me that you have a wall in between your respective work and home areas. A partition, even.”

He could feel Emilio’s eyes on him as he wrote. Not a surprise, the man was doing the job Eden had hired him to do. Though with every name he wrote, the slight feeling of dread in his gut only intensified. This was getting too real. He was taking action, and he had no idea if it was going to save him or make things worse. But at least he would be prepared. Death didn’t scare Eden nearly as much as it used to, but he still refused to die at the hands of this individual. 

Eden snorted, shaking his head with certainty. “My exes? Hell no. Relationship with Jiayi was staged, Vincent was a leech of a friend. Haven’t talked to either of them since leaving China, and I made this email after that. Dayo…” he paused as if it would help let the tightness in his chest pass. “We did all of our communicating through text. More…personal.” It was the truth, though he hoped Emilio wouldn’t linger too long on this particular subject. 

“They’re all in English, pretty fluent English from what I can tell. Would seemingly narrow it down to somewhere in North America, but most of my circles in China spoke good English. They see it as a necessity to learn now, a way to stay relevant in our business.” Eden grimaced. “You never know with these rich people either, maybe they hired someone. You’d never believe what insane things people with too much money choose to spend it on.”

—

He understood it, that tendency towards feeling guilty for things other people had done. Emilio knew all about guilt; it was one of the driving forces behind his life, for better or worse. (Usually for worse.) It was easy to tell someone else that something wasn’t their fault, simple to remind Eden that he could hardly blame himself for his mother’s actions. But when it was Emilio staring into the mirror and repeating the same assurances to himself, it always seemed to fall flat. Emilio was a man capable of applying the things in his head to everyone but himself. Other people deserved a grace he couldn’t extend to himself.

He got the feeling he wasn’t the only hypocrite in the room, though. Eden spoke of a work life balance in a way that made Emilio think he didn’t apply the same rules to himself, either, and the detective huffed a quiet half-laugh. He thought of his apartment, with the desk just a few feet from the couch. He’d taken some measures to separate the two spaces, but it seemed to dissolve more and more as time went on. Whatever barriers he had between his personal life and his professional one disintegrated when he’d stopped spending time on the former. “I manage,” he said, which didn’t really answer Eden’s question. Probably better that way, though; this was a professional relationship, too, after all.

The exes were probably off the table, then. There was certainly something about the way Eden mentioned Dayo, though Emilio suspected it was more emotional than it was related to the case in a genuine way. He didn’t ask about it, both because it wasn’t relevant and because, on the off chance that Eden might genuinely respond, he didn’t want to listen to a stranger talk about his ex or his feelings surrounding them. Better to leave all that for whatever friends Eden had in town. (Which included Eve, apparently.)

“So it’s not the exes. That’s a good thing.” Grudges with a romantic history tended to be more brutal than most, in Emilio’s experience. Heartbreak was a hell of a driving force. It complicated everything it touched, turned people into things they would have never become without it. His thumb absently rubbed at the ring on his finger, and his chest ached with the thought that he, too, was responsible for breaking the heart of someone who loved him. (Of everyone who loved him, really; it was hard not to think of Wynne’s face in his apartment, of the look they’d given him just before they turned to leave.)

Pulling himself out of the spiral, he nodded along as Eden spoke. “We’ll go with the assumption that the person writing the emails is the one making the threats for now,” he said, clicking his tongue. “Threats are usually personal. The kind of thing a person wants to do for themselves. A lot of people find some satisfaction in just making a threat, even if they don’t plan to follow through on it. It makes them feel powerful, like they have something over someone. People like that feeling. But we take these seriously, too. We won’t assume the person making them isn’t planning on doing what they’re saying unless they give us reason to think so. So… for now, this is the information we have. This person is someone who has your private email address, and they speak English very well. They know things about your mother, and things about you. It’s a place to start.” 

He took the paper Eden had written his list on, folding it and tucking it into the pocket of his jeans before standing. “I can work with this. But if we’re working together, I need you to be honest with me. Keeping secrets makes it harder for me to do my job. And you really want me to be able to do my job. So, before I go, I’m going to ask you: Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

—

From Eden’s experience, saying ‘I manage’ was usually someone’s way of covering up how badly they were actually managing. Though, maybe this was also just another case of him projecting his own miseries onto someone else. Regardless, he knew better than to press on with the matter; maybe if he ever found himself in the Axis Investigations office, slash Emilio’s home would he be allowed an opinion.

“Yeah, thank god for that,” Eden said softly, the ache in his chest finally starting to dissipate. There was relief — not because Jiayi and Vincent were people he remotely had any emotional connection to now, but because of how they represented some of his worst days back home. Reliving bad memories was something that was going to happen with this process, and he had accepted that the moment he stepped foot into the room with Emilio. However, if there was any excuse for him to put off the vulnerable discussions, he was going to take it.

Inhaling sharply, Eden forced his attention back to what Emilio was explaining. “To be honest, this is far from my first time being threatened. They say it comes with the industry that we’re in. Well, that I was in. It usually always was someone who just wanted to feel power and control over someone seemingly untouchable, even if the feeling only did last for a few seconds. So that…makes sense,” he said with a nod. Not that it would take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusions that Emilio had so far, but Eden was still impressed with the private investigator’s work nonetheless. Though considering the abysmal opinions about the man he had read prior to their meeting, maybe his bar was already on the floor.

Seeing the other man start to pack up, Eden stretched his arms over his head before standing up. From what he could see through the small window in the study room door, it didn’t look like the library had gone up in flames in his absence, to which he let out a quiet sigh of relief. However, just as he was about to reach for the door and lead Emilio out, the investigator’s tone dropped into something much more serious. 

Is there anything you’re not telling me?

It was clear from their short hour together that Emilio was someone who would not take well to lies. Not that Eden had never planned on lying, but he had been ready to lean into the art of omission. It was something he had gone back and forth on in his head for weeks, because god knows the case might be solved faster with such a crucial piece of information. But as satisfied as he was with Emilio’s work and no-nonsense personality, Eden didn’t trust him. At least, not yet. He was going to wait and see how well the investigator could be trusted with the private information he had handed over today, and then would he consider telling him about the rest, no matter how much he knew that was going to anger him.

It was times like this when Eden felt a sliver of gratitude for his past career choices. Putting on a polite smile that came so naturally to him after years of PR training, he prayed the slight uncertainty in his gaze didn’t betray him. “No, I’ve told you everything that I can recall at the moment, Mr. Cortez. But I will let you know if anything else comes to mind.”

—

A lot of PI work could be done through the process of elimination. You crossed out answer after answer until the only thing remaining was the truth. It was something Emilio had gotten good at during his tenure at Axis, a skill he’d honed carefully and completely into something as sharp as the knives in his pockets. Already, he could cross a few names off Eden's list. It wasn’t the exes. It wasn’t Eve. It was more likely something to do with the librarian’s mother than the man himself, though Emilio wasn’t entirely ready to commit to that as a certainty just yet. This case was a hair more difficult than some of the ones that came across his desk, but Emilio liked that. He liked the distraction it brought with it, liked feeling like he could focus his energy here instead of on his personal life. He could play the elimination game, and he could play it well.

But only if he had all the possibilities available to him. The problem, of course, with the process of elimination was that if the right answer was never on your board to begin with, eliminating the ones that were got you nowhere. He believed Eden, at least, that his exes weren’t a problem. The relief he expressed was too real to be falsified, even for an actor. But he wasn’t sure how much of the rest of it to believe. His mind kept going back to Eve’s name on that list. Did Eden know her because he’d used her cleanup services before? Had he been a part of one? Emilio would have to reach out to her, figure out if she knew any more than he did. (He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of reaching out to her; their conversations as of late hadn’t been the most productive.)

He considered the man in front of him, the familiarity with which he greeted these threats. Emilio understood that, too, had been both the person being threatened and the person doing the threatening. It was a little surprising to think that someone in a profession as human as acting had to deal with things like this but, then, Emilio knew very little of the industry. Things like this, he figured, were one of the few things that seemed to transcend species. Whether someone was human or something else, this kind of thing was always a possibility. He wished it weren’t, even if it likely would have put him out of a job.

In any case, he thought he’d gotten all he could from Eden here. There were no more answers to be provided; the librarian made that clear. This did not mean that there were no more answers to be found, of course. Emilio would be thorough. He’d look into all the information Eden had given him first and, if the process of elimination there left him with nothing left to see at all, he’d start poking around at the things Eden didn’t want to share with him. One way or another, he’d figure out what was going on here. Eden might not like him much by the end of it, but Emilio would do all he could to at least ensure that the man was alive. 

He nodded at the man’s polite smile, wondering if he could really trust anything Eden said. An actor was a liar by trade, and Eden must have been good at it to have had such a lucrative career back home. But questioning his client would do him little good at this stage, so Emilio offered a smile of his own that was far less convincing. “All right,” he said. “In that case, I’ll be in touch. We’ll figure this out.” Whether Eden liked it or not.

[banisheed]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Axis Investigations PARTIES: Siobhan (@banisheed) & Emilio (@vengeancedemon) SUMMARY: Boobs Realperson needs help from Emilio! CONTENT WARNING: implications of child death, implications of past domestic abuse (child abuse). PREVIOUSLY: (mentioned) Siobhan Dolan and Ingeborg Endeman teamed up to kidnap and torture Rhett Tangaroa in an abandoned factory, where Siobhan joyously claimed his leg. Emilio Cortez burst on to the scene, bargaining for Rhett's life, ultimately saving him. [ part 1 & part 2 ]

Siobhan strangled someone while Double Indemnity played on his CRT TV once and so, she knew a thing or two about noirs. There was a certain style about them: long trench coats, dark glasses, curling plumes of cigarette smoke and a dame with blonde hair. Though there was no saxophone playing in the background, and her blonde wig left much to be desired, she was sure that Emilio would be none the wiser. She’d gotten the look: she had the coat, she had the hair, she practiced her French accent, her large sunglasses obscured most of her face. And, anyway, Emilio was an idiot. 

“Bonjour,” she said. The sniffles and the meek voice were intentional, though aided by the sheer volume of dust around her. Had the building always been like this? Didn’t he have the money to hire a maid by now? Siobhan straightened out her brown coat. “It is moi, Boobs Realperson…” Siobhan had always been terrible with fake names; for all the lifetimes she’d lived, she’d always insisted on using her own. “...we spoke on ze phone? Monsieur Cortez? Are you in?” She tapped her foot. Fates, she hated being French but she’d still take it over being British. Would it be too late to change her accent? 

“Seal voos play—” She rolled her eyes. “—it is so scary here and I am a…woman.” 

—

The first time he’d been seriously injured on a hunt, he’d been thirteen. It was less than a year out from Victor’s death, and grief made him sloppier than he’d ever been before. He’d had close calls before that one — moments that would have been worse if he’d ducked a heartbeat later than he had, injuries that would have lasted longer if his healing factor weren’t willing to work overtime — but at thirteen, he came the closest to death he ever had at that point in his life. He remembered thinking his mother might worry over him, and then he remembered wondering why he’d thought that at all. She hadn’t, of course; she’d chastised him for his mistake not because the idea of his death nauseated her, but because his injury had left Rosa unprotected in the remainder of the fight. When you make these stupid mistakes, it isn’t just you who suffers. You have a job to do. Why can’t you just do it? 

He’d been on another hunt less than a week later, still aching and unsteady. Cortezes didn’t let silly things like near death experiences slow them. And maybe Emilio was a blight on the family name, but he still followed that philosophy. He still had a job to do, still clung to it. He was dead. He was dead. He was dead, but couldn’t he be useful, still? 

It was less noble than that. He knew it, deep down. He didn’t want to be useful, he wanted to be distracted. He wanted to think about anything other than the stillness in his chest. He couldn’t be alive, couldn’t claw his way back to a heartbeat, but he could make it so he didn’t have to think about the absence of it. He wanted to forget, needed to. Axis had always been a good method of doing that.

So, when his phone rang, he answered it. He listened to a painfully French woman complain, and he thought, this is good. He thought, this is better. He told her to meet him at his office — the one in Worm Row, the shitty one, the only one he was planning on using now — and he hoped that whatever she brought to his desk would be interesting enough to let him forget he was dead for an hour, or maybe two.

He was in the bedroom when she arrived, sitting on a dirty mattress he no longer needed and staring up at a stained ceiling that had almost grown unfamiliar in his absence. There were new stains there, different ones. He was trying to work out which he remembered when he heard her enter, her voice calling out through the empty apartment. It was familiar; more so in person than it had been on the phone. He didn’t know who it could belong to, but… his recent experience, the case that ended with him dead in a dumpster, had him moving cautiously out to the living room. 

“It’s a fucking apartment,” he called out gruffly, irritation clinging to the words. “Don’t have to be nervous about —” He cut himself off as he entered the living room, narrowing his eyes. The wig was bad. The jacket was ugly. The accent, he was realizing, was fake. (How was he supposed to know? He’d never spoken to a French person before.) The name was… one he probably should have clocked, sure. But he’d just died, and everything felt so goddamn heavy all the time.

Still… it was a little embarrassing that it had gotten to this point. He stared at her with a sigh, rolling his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my apartment,” he ordered, fingers itching for a knife. He probably needed to be careful here; he remembered, in the van with Eve, how easily he’d been consumed by rage, how hard it was to control himself after. Control was still a fickle thing, even now. He needed to try not to lose it.

—

Siobhan waddled into the apartment, it was hard to move with all the knives she had in her coat. She didn’t want them to start clanging around, lest Emilio begin to wonder why she sounded like a coin purse. Something was…terribly warm. Under her coat, through her skin, between her ribs, her slow heart hummed. She blinked. Emilio didn’t have a dead body in the apartment, did he? How dare he keep that from her; dead bodies ought to be disclosed at the door. No matter, she was here now and she would liberate the body from Emilio’s grimy clutches. Where was it, exactly? She waddled forward, her wig tipped over. She was being led towards Emilio. She stepped forward again and again, her heels clicking. Eventually, she was facing him. He was telling her to leave. Her heart was singing. Her skin tingled. The concentration on her face broke and her lips twitched. She fell over, laughing wildly. 

Siobhan was terrible at fake names and accents and picking wigs, sure, but she’d always had a talent for finding humour in things no one wanted her to find humor in. You couldn’t be an outcast for forty years without learning to laugh a little, or a lot. She threw her head up to the ceiling, clutched her stomach and wheezed with uncontrolled amusement; she was crying. A knife clattered out of her coat and she didn’t care. It was the irony that tickled her most—an undead slayer! Fate did agree with her idea of comedy, or rather, she had always agreed with Fate’s ideas. She threw her mind into Emilio’s and laughed harder; oh, how he must hate himself! Oh, how it must feel to become the thing you hunted! She’d offer all her coat-knives to read his mind just this once. Everytime she glanced at him, her laughter was renewed.

What flavor was he? A vampire? While the funniest option, she couldn’t imagine that he’d allow that to happen and she wasn’t sure it was possible. A zombie? When had he gotten bit? Would he have let it go this far? A mare? Could he have left his dreams so unprotected? No, he didn’t look like he slept. Well, he didn't when he was alive, now he couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to. A fury? It would fit his general sad-angry demeanour. If he was an upior, would he show her how long his tongue was? She wiped her tears and drew her knees to her chest. Her wig had fallen off during their fit of laughter and so she was sure she didn’t need the accent anymore—a small mercy for them both. “Oh, you poor, poor thing,” she said, setting her sunglasses aside. He could keep those, and whatever knives fell out of her, he could call it a Death gift. She stood up and brushed herself off. 

It was true that the undead were vile, disgraceful creatures but Emilio had also been that in life. As far as Siobhan was concerned, the only thing that changed was how funny he was, and how much more useless. She snorted and covered her mouth, hoping to stop herself from descending into laughter again. She wanted to insult him; a thousand and one things to say fluttered across her mind. “I suppose you don't want to hear about my treacherous husband anymore, do you?” She wanted to tell him he was a mistake. She wanted to remind him that the thing he was now was the culmination of everything he hated. Yet, she was gathering the sense that he knew these things already. In fact, he must’ve known them better than her. After all, he was the one stuck inside his own corpse, dragging it around. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “I failed you.” She hadn’t meant to say it; through the laughter and the realization that nothing she could say to him was worse than anything he was already thinking, a truth slipped out. With a banshee in town—with two, even if Regan was as much a banshee as Emilio was currently a slayer—one needn’t develop into a mockery of nature. If a slayer was a fix for an existing problem, a banshee was preventative care; or they could be, should be. If Siobhan had been there, if she’d screamed, if she'd seen it, would she really have offered Emilio a proper death? Siobhan shivered as she tried to imagine herself doing something nice for Emilio. 

“Do you want me to finish the job?” Siobhan asked, pulling out a knife. “Or have you got unfinished business?” In truth, she didn’t like killing (could it be called killing?) the undead. For a surety, they needed to go back to Death, but it wasn’t the same as taking a life. What was true—what would always be true—was that something was better than nothing. Some Emilio, no matter how putrid, was still an Emilio. He was himself, whether he liked it or not and from where she stood, it seemed he didn’t like it much. But then again, he’d always seemed miserable to her. “Your next family reunion should be fun.” 

—

Back when he’d slept, Siobhan Dolan had been a common feature in his nightmares. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d share with anyone, least of all Siobhan herself, but in the privacy of his own mind, it wasn’t something he could deny. Siobhan had once been responsible for one of the most harrowing moments of Emilio’s life, had tortured someone he’d loved for days on end for Emilio to find and torn a promise bind from his throat to stop it. Seeing her here, in his apartment during the newest most harrowing time of his life, was not a welcome surprise. 

Her laughter made it worse, of course. It cut through him with the same painful force as the blade that had ended his life, shoved itself into his ribcage and shredded everything in his path. The pain of it wasn’t even a useful thing anymore, was it? Pain was a signal sent to the body to warn it of damage, to warn it of something wrong, and what good was that to a corpse? It was as useless as he was. Siobhan’s laughter only drove the point home.

She was on the floor now, the force of her laughter having felled her and torn away whatever flimsy pretense she’d come here with. Gone was the bad wig and the strange attempt at an accent; he wondered how much of it had been a real attempt to fool him and how much of it was something she was doing only to prove to herself that she could. For the first time since his death, Emilio wished he’d been dragged back into his body as something else. A vampire could sink teeth into her throat and drain her dry; a zombie could tear into her skin no matter what she threw to protect herself; a mare could flitter away into the astral and attack her from behind. But Emilio wouldn’t gain the strength a fury boasted until he fed, and he hadn’t done much of that. He was weaker now than he had been in life. He wondered how on earth something like that was fair.

Rage burned through him, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but. He felt the claws trying to push through his hands; it was hard to remind himself why he shouldn’t use them. All Siobhan had to do was scream, and he’d be incapacitated at the least. His left ear was still dulled from his last banshee encounter, death not enough to repair it. If she took the building down, other people would suffer, too. Emilio could excuse petty rage bringing about his own demise, but he had a harder time allowing for it to doom his neighbors. 

She talked about her husband, about the fake case she’d invented to push her way into his apartment. He wondered why she’d bothered. She could have barged in without it just as easily, could have shown up with no pretense. Was it a game to her, then? Was everything? 

And then, the strangest part yet — she said she failed him, and his fingers twitched. He’d spoken to Regan often enough to know that banshees thought death a duty that belonged to them and them alone. Emilio disliked it with Regan, but he hated it with Siobhan. “Fuck you,” he snapped harshly, the rage making his voice loud enough to echo. He used to be afraid of her; he didn’t think he was now. What more could she do to him? There was nothing worse than what had been done already.

She held a knife, and he thought about the one in the alley that had ended his life. Would it feel the same going in now as it had then? He still felt pain, despite the fact that the signals it sent were no longer necessary. Would his body remember the blade that killed him? Would it recreate the feeling? His stomach twisted into a knot, his hands clenched into fists. She talked about his next family reunion, because she didn’t know enough about him to know that he had no one to return to. He kept his eyes on the knife, which was the only thing that could grant a family reunion. “I want,” he said lowly, “for you to get the fuck out of my apartment. Or maybe I rip your throat out. Either one is fine for me.”

—

“Such anger!” Siobhan clutched her chest. “Is that it? Is that what you…” She leaned in. Being a fury had a bit of a redundant stink to it. Did he really need to shove more anger into his tiny body? “Do you want revenge?” She flipped the knife around, pointing the hilt towards him, offering it out like the morsel of food it was. “I did hurt that man, didn’t I? Your brother? What was his name…” Rhett. She could never forget it; she had his foot. And she adored his foot, really, it was a great foot. Part of her wanted to ask Emilio how he was. Part of her hoped he was doing alright—she always hoped for it, like wishing good luck upon an old friend. The people she hurt were more her friends than anyone else. Torture was the most intimate act she knew; violence was a love language. But most of the time, it was just violence. She hoped the post-torture sentimentality was one of her more charming quirks. 

“Is this not the bounds of your curse?” She continued, “what do you want? My blood? My brain? Go on.” She whistled low at him, like a dog. “Come. Rip my throat out. What are you going to use? Do you have claws? A tongue? Is there metal fused into your skin now? Magic—oh that would be dreadfully boring, say it’s not that.” 

Siobhan wasn’t afraid of pain; all her life she had endured it. When she possessed enough shame to beg, no one listened. She stopped hoping that someone would. Her life could be catalogued by scars and blood and the last place to feel sudden shyness was on the precipice of something interesting. Meaning had been stripped from her life but she knew a place where she could find it again. It was inside Emilio’s mind, running down his cold skin and sitting on the tips of his fingers. It was what he could give her. 

Siobhan wanted very simple things: bones, knives, home (never happening), appropriate worship for her attractiveness, fun. She was ravenous for fun. In any place she could find it, she hoped to pull it out roots and all. But even fun was secondary to this. “I want to hold your idea of me in my hands,” she whispered. And then she could know it too, and then she could have it. He could give it to her. Siobhan wanted a very simple thing: be told who she was. If Emilio could say it while giving her a show, it was all the better for her. 

“Go on,” she said. “Come on. For what I did to Ringo.”

—

She leaned in, and he wondered what she knew and how she knew it. He knew so little about banshees; like furies, they were a rare thing. Even Rhett had known precious little about them beyond the most basic of facts. Emilio had learned a little more thanks to Regan (who was hardly a standard, when it came to banshees) and Siobhan (who never had any intention of helping him understand more), but his knowledge remained so full of holes that what he knew far outweighed what he didn’t. Siobhan seemed to know, as soon as she entered his apartment, that he was undead. Did banshees have a sense like slayers, then? Something that alerted them to a thing that was moving, but not alive? Was theirs more specific?  Did Siobhan know exactly what he was, and how he’d become it?

He knew he’d get no straight answers from her. To Emilio, everything in this apartment was an apocalypse. To Siobhan, it was a game. This was a common theme between them, something that had been true in the warehouse where she’d tortured Rhett and in their online conversations where she frequently brought it up. 

Of course she was bringing it up again now, too. Of course she’d mention it, would drag it out of the shadows and drop it on the floor between them. Look! She seemed to boast. Look at how easily I tore your world apart. Wasn’t the boasting proof that she could do it again? He’d exchanged a bind, made her promise not to hurt Rhett again, but weren’t there other people she could go after? Was the promise he’d fought so hard for even still in place now, or had it expired when he had? Were the dead bound by things they’d promised in life? He wished, for a moment, that Rhett were here to ask. But if Rhett were here, Emilio wasn’t sure he could count on his brother not killing him for what he’d become. The undead weren’t a warden’s usual target, but Rhett had never been picky. 

The more she spoke, the more impossible it seemed to hold his anger in. It grew with every word, made itself bigger and bigger like a snowball rolling down a hill. Emilio hadn’t been good at controlling his rage when he was alive, and he was useless at it now that he was dead. Siobhan whistled, like he was a dog she could call, and the hilt of the knife was pointed towards him like an invitation. And wasn’t there something poetic about that? Stabbing Siobhan with her own knife, when it had been his blade that took his life in that alley… The thought sent a rush of something unrecognizable through him. 

Her ‘misremembering’ of Rhett’s name provided a straw big enough to break the camel’s back, and Emilio didn’t realize he was moving until his hands wrapped around the hilt of her blade. He rushed forward with a hoarse, guttural cry, fueled by the rage burning in his chest. Nothing about it looked human, but maybe that was to be expected. After all, there were no humans in this shitty apartment, were there? Only monsters.

—

As the knife plunged into the soft skin of her abdomen, Siobhan realized that the issue with the knife was that it didn’t give her any new information. A vampire could stab her just as well as a zombie which was probably as well as a mare which was certainly about the same level as a fury. Did it look like he was slurping up the vague idea of revenge? Her blood gushed out over his hand, streaming on to the floor. Well, he wasn’t one of the vampires, that was certain—but she already guessed that. Did his dramatic battle cry mean anything? Was that the rage of a fury or the rage of a sad man? Honestly, it was so hard to tell with Emilio; it looked just about the same as when he skewered poor Ingeborg with a sword. He really hadn’t changed much. 

She snapped one hand over his wrist and the other around his forearm. Her blunt nails dug in. She wanted to keep him there, looking at her, looking at what he’d done. There was always a moment of painlessness while the brain was catching up to the body. Siobhan could count the seconds to the exact moment her stomach would burn up and her legs would buckle. She’d been stabbed more times than Emilio had ever stabbed people, she guessed. She had about ten seconds before her need for medical care became too obvious. The knife was a terrible idea; what idiot thought the knife was a good idea? Ten seconds. “How does it feel? Does it feel good? Do you feel better? Describe it to me.” 

She stumbled back, clutching the knife. Pain rammed into her, blossoming from her stomach. It wasn’t the pain she minded. Fates, there was so much blood. “Ha, I’m going to be inside your floorboards forever now.” Her back hit a wall and she laughed. The knife was small, the coat caught most of it, and it didn’t feel like he hit any of her jumbled organs, but she didn’t feel great. It was odd how stabbing had that effect. It was odd that some piece of her mind really believed she’d get a crumb of his catharsis. He was being so selfish about it. “I could scream,” she said, but she wasn’t going to. There was a terrible truth about love, it existed like a cockroach. Rhett loved him so dearly, and where there was one, there were more. So many loves spun out from his pathetic body, inside his pathetic life. She wanted to know them desperately. She reached out, grasping air; she could take them, they could be hers. 

Her hand dropped. To Emilio, she was evil. The stabbing and that impassioned cry of rage made it all very clear. She had what she wanted to know and yet, all she could think about was fighting it, simply because it was there. Why was it that nothing ever seemed to be enough for her? “I know it’s disgusting,” she said, “what you’ve become. I know how you hunters think, it’s all monsters and innocents to you. But there are no monsters, Emilio. There never have been. Life is predictable and boring and undeath is just the same…” She trailed off, trying to find the door. Her hands were shaking. “How does it feel?” she asked again. 

—

The knife sunk in, up to the hilt. Blood splurted out, got on her blouse, on his hands, and somehow, he thought it would look different. Somehow, when he’d imagined Siobhan bleeding — and he had imagined it, hadn’t he? So many times, in so many different ways now — he’d pictured her blood as something so completely unlike his own. Black, like a vampire’s or glittery, like a mare’s. But it was red. Like Rhett’s in that factory, flaky and half-dried. Like Flora’s on the floor of his living room, seeping into the floor. Like his in that alley, spilling out so quickly that his vision was going black around the edges before he realized he was losing it at all. Siobhan’s blood was red; he wondered if it was supposed to be.

It took him a moment to recognize that the color of her blood wasn’t the only unexpected result of the ordeal because normally, this felt different. Normally, Emilio sunk a blade into someone looking for solace and found emptiness instead, found nothing but more grief and anger swirling around in his chest with the already substantial amount of it that lived there full time. It never felt the way he wanted it to, never felt better. 

He still wasn’t sure it felt better now, but it felt… different. Felt… good, maybe. It sent a surge of something through him, felt like a gust of wind on a hot day cooling his sweaty form. He swore his fingers were tingling with it, though Siobhan’s grip on his arm prevented him from pulling back to check them for changes. There was a hollow in his stomach that felt a little fuller now, he thought; an emptiness that still existed, but wasn’t quite as vast. 

How does it feel, Siobhan asked, does it feel good? And it did. Fuck, it did. It took him a moment to realize why, took him a moment to understand it. Siobhan had wronged him, and he’d fought back. This wasn’t a temper tantrum, wasn’t an angry man lashing out against something bigger than himself and making no difference at all, wasn’t screaming into a void. This was a meal. 

She stumbled back, and he watched her. Her back hit the wall behind her, and he clenched and unclenched his fists as if it was an experiment, as if he was figuring them out. Would he be stronger now? How much? For how long? He couldn’t unsheathe his claws in front of her without giving away more than he wanted to, so he shoved his hands into his pockets instead. The burst of energy that had come with the rage of the conversation was faltering now, like a brief rush of adrenaline that was difficult to hold for long. Numbness seeped back in. Siobhan threatened to scream, and he nodded. “So scream.” She would have done it already, if she were going to. He figured they both knew that.

She talked a lot, for someone who’d just been stabbed. He hated that he could relate, hated that he was just as mouthy when he was in pain, hated having anything in common with her at all. He hated it, too, that her assessment of him was right. It was disgusting, this thing he’d turned into. He’d spent his entire goddamn life knowing it. 

He let out a laugh, sharp as the knife, when she continued. There are no monsters, said the monster bleeding on the floor to the monster who’d put her there. There never have been. 

“You’re wrong,” he told her. “In here, there are only monsters.” But that wasn’t all she said. There was that question again, hanging pretty above his head. How does it feel? A good man would say it was harrowing. A hunter would say it was necessary. Emilio, when his heart was still beating, would have said it was empty. But he was none of those things now, was he? He’d never been a good man, and he could no longer claim the title of hunter. His heart no longer beat, and he wasn’t even sure he felt like Emilio now. So how did it feel? What would the monster say? “It feels pretty goddamn good.”

—

Siobhan slid across the wall, groping wildly. The door was here somewhere. Wasn’t the door over here? She croaked and sputtered. Standing in front of her was the man that had turned Ingeborg into a kebab, but she couldn’t find the other one. She was waiting for the man who cried, the man that begged, the man that would’ve thrown his life aside for a man who didn’t deserve it. The man whose desperation gave her a promise. The man who had loved so strongly that it was still Rhett and Emilio that came to her mind when she heard that cursed 4-letter word. Did Emilio seem flushed? Did he seem filled? Or was it that she’d finally reached the stage of being stabbed when her vision decided it wanted to swim?  

“Not monsters,” she said. “Just a sad man and a…” She swallowed back her blood. “...sexy woman.” But he seemed so sure of what he was saying, that it felt good to him. Where was he? Where was the Emilio that Rhett had begged for? The one he swore was “good”? She found the door at last, her bloody hand slipping off the handle, again and again as it pinged, useless. “How lovely for you. Feeling generous with that ‘good’ feeling?” Even if he could transfer it to her, he probably wouldn’t. The door’s handle pinged again as she failed to find her grip.

“Was Rhett a monster too? Is that why you begged for him? You loved him.” Despite what he was, despite what he had done. She didn’t understand it then and she understood it less now, with this man staring at her. “Where is he?” She swallowed. “That… That Emilio. You said… You said…” Siobhan replayed the scene. Rhett was his brother, he said. He loved him, he said. It didn’t matter why, there was no why, he said. He wasn’t good, Rhett wasn’t good, she wasn’t good, Ingeborg wasn’t good, he said. Rhett said Emilio was good, though. Siobhan certainly thought Ingeborg was good, despite everything, though she’d never say it to her face. “Does it still feel good?” Finally, the door swung open and the sudden pull tossed Siobhan’s body against the frame. 

She was watching him, she was still waiting to see it. “Still?” she asked in a whisper. There was always that moment after, when the victim started to look like what they were: a life, a person. When all that was left were the actions, and all of one’s past unfurling to join the present. One person could look so much like someone else; one drop of blood could so easily transform into the memory of another. It was the inevitable humanity. Siobhan had learned to work despite it. “You begged for him.”

—

She was sliding, was flopping, was moving with none of the grace she usually boasted, and Emilio wondered if he’d looked like this. Everyone wanted to imagine their final moments as a noble thing, wanted to believe they’d face it valiantly and bravely with their chins held up high, but no one ever really did. In the end, when death came knocking, all anyone ever was was afraid. Emilio had been, in that alley. He’d thought it so strange at the time, thought it preposterous. He’d spent years chasing death, longing for it, and when it came for him, it hadn’t come with relief. It hadn’t welcomed him with open arms, hadn’t embraced him and laid him down to rest. It chewed him up and spat him out as something else, something worse. 

He wondered if it would treat Siobhan more kindly. She loved it, didn’t she? She talked about death like it was a god, like it sat at the head of every table and bowed everyone’s heads with a stern look. If he took her knife and slit her throat, would she die smiling? Or would she, like he had, learn that death was so much crueller than you’d imagined it would be? 

She insisted, again, that there were no monsters. He stared down at the blood seeping into the floorboards, felt the stickiness on his hands, and remembered Rhett on the floor of that factory, his leg already starting to rot a few feet away from his body. If that wasn’t a monster, what was? The things he killed in the woods, the ones that didn’t look human anymore? Things like spawn, or ghouls, or wights that only ever wanted to eat? What Siobhan had done to Rhett wasn’t about earning a meal; what Emilio had done here had fed him only by coincidence. If this didn’t make them monsters, then the word had no meaning at all. 

Was Rhett a monster too, she asked, and he thought yes. He remembered every terrible thing his brother had done, remembered loving him in spite of them. He thought of Eve, calling him her friend in the darkness of her van even as he snapped at her. He thought of Teddy, who he knew would love him just as much now as they had when his heart beat if only he would let them. And he thought about how he had no intention of holding himself back from snapping at Eve. He had no intention of letting Teddy love him, still. He wondered if that made him better or worse. 

Was a monster that knew it was a monster better than the one that didn’t? Was the beast with sharp teeth and deadly claws that called itself what it was more forgivable than the one that tortured and hurt while insisting that monsters were things of fairytales? How much did it matter that he accepted the definition if he spelled it out with blood, anyway? 

“He died,” he replied blankly, thinking again of that alley, of the knife in his chest, of the way death wasn’t an old friend but a mouth full of teeth that hadn’t bothered to swallow its meal. It was jarring, saying it aloud. He died. The Emilio from that factory, the one that begged for his brother’s life and would have fallen on the sword to save it, had died bloody and alone, with no one to plead for him. 

The surge of the brief feeding was fading now, the morsel too small to provide a full meal. If he finished the job and killed her now, would it be better? Would the feeling last longer, would he be stronger? Or would the only change be that the monster was well-fed for a moment instead of starving? A hungry monster was dangerous, but was one with a full stomach any better?

He could have done it, he thought. He could have taken the knife and shoved it in her throat, and maybe she would have screamed and brought the building down around them both, but maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she would have screamed and killed him, and maybe the resulting explosives that came with a fury’s demise would have taken her out, too. It didn’t feel good anymore, he thought; it didn’t feel bad, either. He wasn’t sure if it was supposed to.

“Would anyone beg for you?” He asked it slowly, watching as she crawled towards the door. Would it change his mind if they did? If someone showed up now, if they pleaded for Siobhan the way Emilio had pleaded for Rhett, would the guilt seep in? Or would he still feel what he felt now — this deep, endless chasm of nothing? 

He followed her towards the door, hands still shoved into his pockets. Maybe he’d kill her, still. Maybe it would make him feel better, make him feel something. Maybe the monster that felt anything at all was better than the monster that was empty. 

—

Siobhan couldn’t find him. Her eyes darted between his, snapped to his feet, watching his hands stuffed into his pockets. She clutched the knife in her stomach, comforted by its familiar hilt. She wasn’t expecting remorse; something like that would require Emilio to like her and she was under no delusions that he did. She wasn’t expecting sympathy; something like that would require her to be sympathetic, and it was much harder to be delusional about that. She had stood where Emilio was hundreds of times before. She liked to watch them. She liked to be standing where he was. Always, the spear of emotion found her in the end—for just a moment, for a minute or for days. It wasn’t remorse and it wasn’t sympathy but it was some nameless swirling pit inside of her. It was something. There was only one person she’d never seen hold that something but her mother was not someone she wanted to think about. 

Siobhan laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic.” She leaned against the wall and coughed, a stab (ha) of pain surged through her. “It didn’t die. You can’t—it’s still there.” She swallowed. She still had the sensitive child, the arrogant teen, the impulsive adult. She was still the girl that buried moths and drew wedding dresses into the margins of Austen. She was still the adolescent with the raw voice and the knife’s determination: steeled and sharp and carved into a line. She was still the woman who’d choked on dirt as her mother pulled her wings out. All of them there, screaming at her all of the time, inside her head. There was always something. 

What did you become if there was nothing? 

“I still see you holding him. They always—they always say they have family. Kids. They always beg for themselves. But I’d never seen someone… for someone else. For someone like him. For you.” Siobhan wasn’t afraid of Death; how could someone like her be? And yet, like everyone she had killed, she didn’t want to die. She limped away from him. She didn’t walk into his filthy apartment thinking he could kill her but she was certainly leaving it with that impression. No, no one would beg for her, she’d known it for more years than Emilio had been alive. Foolishly, she always seemed to hope that someone would. Even the twin scars down her back hadn’t worn out that optimism. 

“Why…” She smiled. “You’d beg for me, wouldn’t you? The knife is practically a marriage proposal. I don’t accept, by the way.” She swallowed and puffed her chest out, tensing against the pain. She sucked air into her lungs and turned to face him. “You’re a little too dead for me.” 

The scream was a weak one, there wasn’t much left inside of her to burst pipes or pop windows. She wanted a moment to limp down the hall and she’d always been skilled at tight, focused shrieks anyway; she could thank her mother for that, at least. She didn’t turn around to see if it’d worked. She pushed down the hall, out of Emilio’s path and away from his sight. Her nightmares would thank him for the fuel: his slow, steady walk; his hunched body; his blank face. She heaved, she winced and lurched around. She crashed into walls and groaned and dragged herself across gravel and dirt. She felt terrible. She felt hollowed out and reassembled. She felt foolish. 

Most of all, she felt sorry for the man who begged for his brother. 

—

Her eyes kept darting over him, and he wondered what she saw there. It had been years since he’d felt comfortable looking at his own reflection, but he’d avoided mirrors with a desperate vigor since waking up in the backseat of Eve’s van. Did he look different now? He thought, inevitably, of his daughter. He thought of his wife, of his mother and his siblings. He thought about how, even if you’d washed the blood from their corpses, they wouldn’t have looked like themselves. When a person died, wasn’t there something that left them? Not just the animated features of life dancing across their face, but something deeper. 

No corpse ever looked exactly like the person who had once inhabited it. So what did Emilio look like, now? What tiny differences was Siobhan cataloging, what small changes could she notice? He felt as exposed now as he had in that body bag, like a thing on display. She was the one with the knife sticking out of her gut, but Emilio didn’t feel much like the person in control anymore.

She insisted that it wasn’t gone, that version of him that had used this body before the knife tore through his chest. She sounded so sure of herself, because didn’t she always? There was a part of him that wanted to believe her, a part of him that yearned for it to be the truth. He could still be him, even without a heartbeat. He could still be him, even if he was dead. But that feeling in his chest, the quiet hunger that had been awoken by the smallest hint of a meal, was so loud. The monster didn’t leave much room behind for the man. It was always going to be one or the other. 

Had it really rattled her so much, the fact that he loved his brother? Was it really something that sat with her, still? If she were anyone else, some part of him might feel sorry for her. If something as simple as Emilio not wanting Rhett to die had tilted her world so fully on its axis, it must have meant that love was a hard thing for her to come by. But he could feel no sympathy for the monster that had haunted so many of his nightmares, could muster no grief for someone he’d hated so completely. Siobhan was unloved, and Emilio told himself it was because she’d deserved to be. He told himself that there were people who hadn’t earned any form of affection.

He told himself that monsters were unlovable, because wasn’t that easier than facing the people who loved him now? Wasn’t it better to pretend that he wasn’t capable of receiving that love? It would hurt less. He thought it would hurt less.

“I would never beg for you,” he said lowly, half-offended that she’d suggested it. He wanted to take it further, wanted to insist that he’d never beg for a monster, but hadn’t he begged for Rhett? Didn’t he love his brother, even now? He pushed the thought away, focused on this instead. It was easier, wasn’t it? Keeping the violence at the forefront of his mind, ignoring all the things that lurked behind it, that was easier. It had always been the thing he understood best. 

She said he was dead, and she was right, but he wanted to flinch anyway. He wanted to close his eyes to it, wanted to pretend. He wanted to turn it around and taunt her, wanted to say, you will be, too, wanted to make it true as much as he didn’t. He wanted to do a lot of things, but she screamed and he did none of them. His hands went to his ears, a curse clattered against his teeth. He ducked his head away from the sound and, by the time his ears had stopped ringing and he looked back up again, she was gone.

He could have gone after her. He wasn’t very fast, but she was probably a lot slower now. He could follow the trail of blood to find her, could track her down without much effort and finish what he’d started, but he stood in the living room instead, staring at the bloody floor. His hands dropped from his ears, his claws resheathing. He wondered, somewhat absently, if that desperate screech to ensure her escape counted as a banshee screaming for him. 

There were two monsters in his apartment, and now one. There were two monsters in his apartment, and now a lone corpse and a bloodstained floor. He stared at the red until his vision swam, watched it twist itself into imagined shapes. There was a monster in his apartment, still. It wouldn’t leave until he did.

Turning away from the bloodstained floor, he made his way back to the bedroom. The apartment door stood open behind him, but it felt like too much effort to close it, felt like too much effort to do anything. It was hard to worry that someone might come inside with poor intentions, hard to feel concerned that anyone might hurt him. Whatever damage there was to do had been done already, with a knife in a dark alley. Eventually, he’d probably face some kind of consequences for the blood on the floor for the same reason the open door didn’t bother him now.

Monsters, he knew, were hard things to kill. 

[whimmortal]

TIMING: Present day (May 16) PARTIES: Emilio @vengeancedemon and Jenny @whimmortal LOCATION: The elevator to Netherville SUMMARY: Jenny and Emilio take the same elevator. To both their dismay, it gets stuck! CONTENT WARNING: None

When a new neighborhood popped up beneath your feet, it was natural to want to get to know more about it. With all the drama of dying, Emilio hadn’t had as much time to explore Netherville as he’d have liked. There was something curious about it, something that raised more questions than he liked to have unanswered. And, with extra time on his hands now that he was very intentionally not spending free time with his loved ones, he had a minute to check it out. 

Luckily for him, someone had even installed an elevator into the neighborhood. He doubted the stairs would have been a fun experience for his shitty knee, even if the elevator was rickety and seemed unstable. He stepped onto it with a dubious squint, testing his weight on the wooden floor. There was no give, which must have been a good thing. He was just about to close the door when someone else stepped on, and he gave another cautious stomp with his good leg to see if it would hold. So far, so good. 

The door closed, and he was glad it did so before anyone else could join the ride. Two people on an elevator like this one was bad enough; he didn’t want to add weight to it. As it began to move, he eyed the woman who had stepped on behind him. Twenties, brunette, a little too excited to be plunging into the darkness of underground. Maybe she’d be quiet for the duration of the ride, at least.

—

There were many places in Wicked’s Rest worth visiting. Jenny wasn’t sure where to start, as many locations were deemed ‘interesting’ to supernatural ‘fanatics’. Bloggers had long lists of ‘must-see’ places in the town, most of them writing about interesting energies or the apparent demon that had taken over the town. Though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to take everything said online at face value, she sure as hell had to visit the new neighborhood that had erupted.

Her curiosity had no bounds, but that didn’t mean she was enthused about walking down a bunch of stairs. As she sauntered towards the elevator, she pulled out her phone, considering what had been posted about Netherville already. Maybe she should start a blog herself. She would definitely have much better insights than some of these travel bloggers. Eventually, Jenny got into the elevator, a little worried about the state of it but figuring that it had been tested before. If it got her hurt, she could always sue the place. 

She wasn’t very good at worrying about the things she ought to worry about, anyway. Only about the meaningless, nonsensical things. Jenny glanced at the other person in the elevator. He didn’t look very excited to skip out on walking stairs. Strange. “For a new part of town, this elevator sure feels like a hundred years old, hm?” The floor was wood. “Have you been here often already? What do you make of it?”

—

His temporary elevator companion was not going to be quiet for the duration of the ride. Emilio really should have seen it coming. Everything about the woman’s appearance screamed talker, and Emilio wasn’t the sort of person who had enough luck to avoid things like small talk with strangers, especially not when he desperately wanted to avoid it. The universe, it seemed, had a finger on the pulsepoint of Emilio’s desires, and it got off on pressing down on it hard enough to stop the beat. 

He grit his teeth together as the woman spoke, first to comment on the elevator and then to ask him questions. Both were annoying. “Doubt they could put a modern one here,” he ground out irritably. It was bad enough that he was locked into the small space of the elevator with a stranger, wasn’t it? He really should have just stayed home. He only even wanted to go to Netherville to satiate his curiosity. It wasn’t worth the small talk.

“Never been.” If he didn’t answer her questions, he got a feeling she’d be even more annoying. She seemed like the type. “Figure it’ll be just like the rest of town. Shitty. Annoying. Darker, I guess. Weirder people.” He was curious about that. Evidently, there were people who’d lived beneath Netherville for generations now. He was curious to know what they might be like. “What makes you want to go down there? Businesses?” Maybe she was into pottery, or bowling.

—

“Hm, I don’t. I doubt they’ve tried, though, which is a very different thing.” Maybe the priority wasn’t with installing a proper elevator, though, which was unfortunate. They hadn’t even put in a mirror to check her make up in, which meant she just had to hope it hadn’t become messed up on the way over. Jenny considered the other for a moment, then figured that it didn’t matter a lot. Even with messed up make up, she would still be the most fuckable person in this elevator.

His answer made one of her eyebrows raise, judgment apparent on her face. Jenny understood a dark and stormy mood, but she had never been very good at interacting with people who were it so openly. She preferred those kind of personalities in her romance novels and fantasy movies, rather than in an elevator with her. “So… if it’s going to be just as bad as the rest of town by your calculations, why even go?”

He didn’t seem very enthusiastic about Wicked’s Rest, which was the opposite from how she felt. Jenny thought this was the best town ever, and that meant a lot, coming from a born and bred New Yorker. “I’ve never been either, but I’m super curious. I mean, it’s not everywhere that there’s an area in a town that was apparently created by … demonic forces?” She tried to sound skeptical, but mostly came off as someone who found the concept cool. “Might want to check out the theatre, though. Walk around a —”

There was a loud screech, almost animalistic. Jenny let out a squeal. “What was that?” The answer was all around them: it had been the elevator, creaking to a halt.

—

To be entirely fair, Emilio had no idea what went into installing an elevator into any given location. A modern one, sleek and metal, would have certainly looked out of place sinking into the earth towards Netherville, but that hardly meant it would have been impossible to install. He was sure it would have taken more time, though, which might have been the driving force behind going with something simpler. Even people with two working legs might not want to take the long, winding stairs down to Netherville; businesses likely wanted to make themselves as accessible as possible. Deciding the subject wasn’t an important one, anyway, he just shrugged. Who cared about the elevator? They’d only be on it for a few minutes at most.

A few annoying minutes, if the woman who’d joined him intended to spend them talking. “Never been,” he said again. He thought it a good enough explanation, but he added to it anyway. “Figured I should check it out. Don’t like living in a place where I’m not familiar with all the corners.” He didn’t think he’d enjoy Netherville, but he’d enjoy knowing nothing about it even less. The idea of having a world beneath his feet that wasn’t tangible to him, one he’d never seen firsthand… It made him nervous, antsy. Even before his death, his paranoia would have disliked the idea. After, though? It wasn’t exactly something Emilio could swallow. 

She must have been an out of towner. Emilio, too, was a transplant, but he’d been in Wicked’s Rest long enough now not to think much about the oddities of the place. Sure, there was a neighborhood underground that had been carved out by a demon. Why wouldn’t there be? It felt less weird, somehow, than the goo that had temporarily displaced him from his apartment. He listened to the woman give her itinerary, nodding along absently and counting down the seconds until the elevator ride was over. And that was his first mistake, wasn’t it? Emilio wanted off the elevator. He should have known that meant something would go wrong.

Something screeched; something groaned. The elevator came to a stop so suddenly that he stumbled, grunting as the movement jostled his bad leg. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” He jabbed his finger into the button. If his heart could beat at all, it would have been pounding. For someone who disliked tight spaces with the same intensity Emilio always had, this was something of a nightmare scenario. “Fucking… Shit.” He eyed the door. Maybe they could pry it open? Though his strength wasn’t exactly what it used to be, and unless this woman wasn’t human, he didn’t know how much help she’d be, either. “What — What do we do?”

—

It seemed the stranger didn’t like a lot of things about this town, even those things he didn’t know. Jenny could understand that in one way or another, though not in regards to Wicked’s Rest. This place was, so far, pretty good. Strange in a way that didn’t feel put on or overexaggerated. Filled with history that she was itching to uncover, as well as current developments that were equally exciting — like this newly unearthed neighborhood. She gave the other a bit of a glare, but figured that sharing an elevator with a negative nancy was better than sharing one with someone with overabundant flatulence.

That positive attitude didn’t last long, of course. Jenny would love to share a short elevator ride with a farting person over being stuck in a rickety one that halted with such a loud noise. She felt something rise in her stomach, tickling her intestines. Nervousness. She hadn’t worried about being stuck in elevators since she’d been a little kid and had seen it in a Totally Spies episode, but she now wished she worried about it a little more. Maybe then she would have opted for the stairs.

She watched the grumpy man handle the situation and thought the expletives were very fitting for it all. “Fucking shit, yeah,” she echoed, nodding her head. Out of all elevators to get stuck in, it had to be this weird one, in a part of town that had come to be because of demonic activity according to the rumours. 

Jenny followed her instincts and fished out her phone, but due to them being underground there was absolutely not a shred of connection to be found. “Well, I was going to call 911, but it seems that’s impossible in this corner of town,” she said while still attempting to call the number. As her phone attempted to connect to something, she tried to think of other solutions. She looked at the elevator panel, on which were a mere two buttons. Ground floor and Underground floor. “So … we’re … somewhere between those.” That wasn’t good. “Where the fuck is the emergency button?”

—

He didn’t think his elevator companion liked him very much, which was just as well. If she’d decided the elevator was a bonding experience, she might have tried to follow him around Netherville. The idea sounded like a nightmare to Emilio, who preferred wandering around alone to being trailed behind by a stranger. Lately, he didn’t even like the idea of someone he loved accompanying him anywhere. It was easier, these days, to be by himself. It was better for everyone, really. He felt like a goddamn timebomb, and as annoying as the stranger was, he didn’t particularly want to risk her being around when he went off, either. 

Though it was looking like there might not be much of a choice in the matter. The elevator halted, and the anxiety rising up in his chest was bound to give way to anger eventually, because didn’t everything? These days, his temper was like a house of cards in the middle of a hurricane. It was impossible to hold for very long. And what happened when he couldn’t hold it any longer? He’d been lucky not to fully lose control of himself yet, but how long would he be able to maintain that? Every slayer knew that it was only a matter of time before an undead hurt someone they didn’t mean to hurt.

He hadn’t even thought of using his phone as a solution until the woman informed him that it wouldn’t work. Emilio relied on technology so rarely that, had she not been present, he doubted calling someone would have crossed his mind at all. It didn’t do him much good now either way, though; a quick glance at his own phone screen revealed that it, too, sat at zero bars of service. Not entirely unexpected underground, it seemed.

His reluctant companion inspected the elevator buttons, but there wasn’t much to see. A button to send the elevator up, and one to send it down. Neither seemed to be working at the moment. “Emergency button?” He hadn’t been on enough elevators to register that there was such a thing, but now that he was thinking back, he did recall a red button on the elevator in his apartment building. “Doesn’t look like we’ve got one. Shit. Maybe we, uh…” He looked up at the ceiling. “Probably a hatch, right? Something we could climb out of?” And then what? Climb all the way to the surface?

—

What kind of elevator didn’t have an emergency button? Probably one that didn’t have any service, which was incredibly unfortunate in this situation. Jenny punched the other two buttons repeatedly, not worried that it might confuse the already confused elevator. She just wanted the thing to move: she didn’t like being stuck here, or anywhere at all. She felt like stomping her feet like a child, petulantly enraged by the situation she was in — though that did seem like a fitting reaction.

“Yeah, an emergency button? It usually has a bell symbol. I actually don’t know why, probably because of old times?” Did elevators used to have a bell in them, in case of emergency? Jenny looked around hopefully, wondering if that could be the solution to their problem. But no, there didn’t seem to be any such thing here. Just her, a grouchy man, two broken buttons and a wooden floor. She crossed her arms, one foot patting the floor with annoyance. There was no way the elevator would be susceptible to her irritation, but if it was, this might make it move.

She did look up along with the stranger, and before she could answer his question she realized she should know his name. Like, if you were going to be stuck in an elevator for the first time in your life, might as well get to know their name. “I’m Jenny, for what it’s worth.” It was clear she expected him to offer his name in return.

Then, back to the hatch. “We could try that.” She considered the two of them, then stepped closer. “If you give me a boost.” Because she was not going to give him one. “I’ll try and shout for help. That should … work.” She didn’t sound very sure of that.

—

The woman was explaining elevator buttons, and it took everything Emilio had not to snap at her to shut up. The anxiety in his chest was building, shifting itself into anger the way everything else did, these days. It wouldn’t do him any good in here. Maybe if he’d had a few more good meals, enough to build up his strength a little more, he could have… what, exactly? Ripped the floorboards from beneath their feet to allow them access to a nice drop that would probably break their legs or worse? Emilio would be fine with something like that, of course — fall damage couldn’t kill a dead man — but his annoying companion probably wouldn’t have been, and he wasn’t sure he was willing to doom someone just to get himself out of an elevator faster. 

No, this situation wasn’t one that could have been easily resolved even if he was in top form, though knowing this didn’t do much to make him feel better. He was still anxious, still irritated, still angry. The elevator didn’t have an emergency button, so what did it matter what one looked like? “Great,” he said, a little more harshly than he’d meant to. “Glad to know what one looks like. Can confirm that there isn’t one here. This is very helpful.” He knocked his foot against the wall with an irritated grunt. This, too, was utterly unhelpful. He knew that.

He let out a long, unhappy sigh. The woman — Jenny — introduced herself, and he acknowledged her with a sharp, unnecessary exhale. (Should he be holding his breath? He didn’t need the oxygen, but Jenny did. If there was a limited supply of it, he probably shouldn’t be wasting it with a silly attempt to feel human.) “Emilio,” he replied gruffly. 

He looked up at the hatch, hanging a little too far over their heads. Neither of them could actually reach the damn thing, though Jenny’s idea offered an almost-solution. “You’ll yell? We’re under the ground. I don’t think anyone will hear you. And even if they do, what can they do? Throw a rope?” Would he be able to climb a rope? Would Jenny? She didn’t seem to have any physical ailments, but there was certainly a lot of athleticism required to scale a straight angle with a rope. But it wasn’t like they had any better options, so… “Okay. Maybe it’s… I don’t know. Worth a shot.” He linked his fingers together and crouched. “Try it, then.”

—

Being stuck in an elevator with another person could be an interesting meet cute (or the start of an adult film), but Jenny felt very little carnal or flirty desire for the man she was stuck with. Rugged handsomeness aside, he had an attitude so grating that even a broken elevator was not enough to warrant it. She glared at him. “You’re not being particularly helpful yourself. Kick it again, see where that gets us.” She hoped he wouldn’t take her up on that, but she didn’t bother to correct herself. If they were going to plummet to their death because of his angry, petulant kicking, then at least she’d die on a high horse.

Emilio at least offered his name, which was more than she’d expected. She wasn’t going to say it was nice to meet him, though, because she was a poor liar and she didn’t want to waste her politeness on him. “Cool,” she said in stead, which was a nonsensical answer but one nonetheless. Maybe they’d circle back to introductions later, if their situation were to last longer.

For now, there was still hope. “They can call for help, duh? We can’t, but they can — they have connection!” She wasn’t sure if it would work, but at least there would be something to do up there. She tried not to think about how scary standing on top of an elevator would be. Jenny was glad she didn’t have to convince this Emilio for much more, because she certainly lacked the conviction to do so. 

She moved towards him, wishing this was a cuter form of proximity than what it was. Placing her hands on his shoulders she tried not to look into his eyes from this up close, in stead preparing to gain some momentum as she put one of her feet in his hands. “Ew,” she said, immediately biting her tongue before she could comment on his choice of aftershave and lack of hygiene. At least she was smelling like her new Chanel fragrance. She tried to breathe through her mouth and ignore how poor this man’s smell was. “Alright, then. Boost me up.” When he did, she clambered further onto his shoulders, one hand holding onto his head as she tried to remain steady. Once Jenny had reached full height, she reached for the hatch. Her fingers barely brushed it. “Come onnnn!”

—

It was clear that her invitation for him to kick the elevator once more was less genuine and more rhetorical, which meant Emilio maintained eye contact while delivering another kick to the side. The movement did very little to help their situation — in fact, it sent a wave of pain through his bad leg with the contact — but it allowed him a moment of petty defiance, and that made him feel a bit better. 

The feeling didn’t last long, of course. Petty defiance or no, they were in a rough spot. He could think of nothing that would get them out of here, and even Jenny’s explanation of what catching the attention of someone above ground might do didn’t help. Emilio wasn’t very good at relying on other people to resolve a situation like this one, particularly not strangers. The small voice in his head that was responsible for the bulk of his worst thoughts insisted that a stranger was more likely to leave them down here to rot than they were to help them out of the situation.

Still, there was little they could do about any of it. The only option they had here was to hope some good samaritan was good enough to make a goddamn difference. “Who would they call?” It was a genuine question. Emilio had no idea what the procedure was for a thing like this. Would someone be able to repair the elevator remotely? Would they find some way to get them out without them having to climb? What was the best case scenario here? His mind would only provide him with the worst.

He rolled his eyes as Jenny reacted with disgust to their proximity, unbothered by it. She struck him as the uptight sort, and people like that never liked people like Emilio. That was all right, though. He didn’t need her to like him — he didn’t even want her to. He just needed her to make good on her promise to use her loud mouth to get them out of this fucking hole. He grunted as she climbed onto his shoulder, his bad knee nearly buckling under the added weight. He managed to hold her up, though, managed to keep the pair of them upright… just for Jenny to be unable to reach the hatch. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He demanded, tilting his head to glare up at her. “Stretch a little.”

—

There were a great many times in her life where Jenny had felt uncomfortable, but this really was taking the cake. That was a bold statement, and maybe one made by a catastrophizing mind, but as she balanced on the shoulders of a smelly man called Emilio, trying to reach an elevator hatch, she could not imagine a worse thing. Yes, she would rather take improv classes in middle school again. Or sit through a ‘family discussion’ where they talked about values and expectations. Or even sit next to a woman who was bleeding out.

“I am! And stop looking up at me like that!” The way she cried out made her wobble, but she made an extra effort to try and get on her tippy toes, hoping the way her shoes pressed into Emilio’s shoulders was uncomfortable. “You are too short.” It was definitely his height that posed the issue here, and not her 5’2” stature. Maybe she should have worn her platform boots. Maybe the extra inches could have helped her push the latch open — but even then that would require her having the arm strength to do a pull up. She did not.

Jenny was not giving up, though, face growing red from her attempt to reach it before letting out a long exhale. “Nope,” she said. “Too high. Who makes elevators this high? That’s ridiculous. This is ridiculous. Why is there a neighborhood under the ground in this town? Why are people saying it’s because of demons? Why didn’t they hire a proper elevator company to get this stuff installed?” She looked down, starting to make the descend by pawing the elevator wall and then clinging onto Emilio’s head again. She ripped out a few of his hairs.

She replaced one of her feet on his shoulders with a knee. “I need your hands again,” she said, not wanting to jump down onto the shaky elevator floor and make things even worse.

—

Being trapped in an elevator with an incredibly annoying stranger balanced on his shoulders and stretching for a hatch that was just out of reach was not the worst thing he had ever experienced. He figured bleeding out in a rusty dumpster or stumbling through streets littered with his family’s corpses were tied for the top spot, at a constant war with one another to determine which tragedy was bigger. But petty and blinded by his current level of irritation, he thought the elevator could probably at least slide into third. At least bleeding out had been quiet.

“I’m not looking at you like anything!” He snapped, grunting a little as her wobbling forced him to adjust his balance and sent another shooting pain through his bad leg. His irritation burned hotter as she insisted that this was his fault, that his height was the problem. Maybe bleeding out in the dumpster had been preferable to this after all. “I’m too short? You’re four feet tall!” This was her fault, really. If she hadn’t gotten into the elevator, it probably wouldn’t have broken. (Emilio knew that wasn’t true. The universe lived to make his life hell, even after he was already dead. Blaming someone else only served to make him feel better.)

She kept shifting on his shoulders, stretching to try to reach the hatch and finding it impossible. He hated to agree with her, but the whole thing was a little stupid. “This fucking town,” he mumbled irritably, trying to find some other solution to their shitty situation. A sharp pain at his head caught his attention, and he reached up to shove her hands out of his hair. “Stop that.”

More shifting, though this time it seemed to be in the interest of getting down. Emilio disliked the idea of giving up on the hatch, but he would be glad to have her off his shoulders. His knee would be protesting this stunt for a week, if not more. Reaching up, he grabbed her hands to help her balance enough to climb down. “The fuck do we do now? Just… wait?” He was bad at that. He was so bad at that.

—

Growing up, Jenny’s parents had granted her and her sisters independence. They were hands-off parents, which was a modern and cool way of saying that they were distant and absent — though they really did believe it would make their daughters into strong individuals. In stead, it had left her with very few problem solving skills, as it was often her elder siblings or the nanny that ended up helping her out when in trouble. Or, in plenty other situations, the issue was just not resolved. Shoved under the bed where no one could see it. Ignored as if it wasn’t bothering her. 

That was why she sank onto the ground, sitting cross legged with her back against the elevator wall. She glared up at Emilio, “For your information, I am over five foot!” Only by two inches, but those inches mattered. Jenny pulled her phone from her pocket, staring daggers at the lack of connection before opening a phone game to give her hands something to do.

“Yes, I guess,” she confirmed eventually. “Somebody has to notice the elevator isn’t running, right? There are other people who want to use it. They’re going to make a fuss and they will call someone.” Just like her, to assume that someone else would bring her a solution. Jenny figured they had tried everything there was to do, though, so why would she get up to her feet and try some more? She didn’t like to exert herself.

She looked at the other for a moment, abandoning the bubbles and gems on her screen. “Or did you have any other brilliant ideas?”

—

“Oh, well, congratulations,” he replied sarcastically, throwing his hands in the air. He tried to decide if he’d prefer to be trapped in this elevator alone, or if having someone else here with him made it more bearable. Jenny was certainly annoying, but she did provide an outlet for his rage beyond simply kicking the sides of the elevator or screaming into the void. He just wasn’t sure how much that meant at the moment. Maybe he’d have been better off alone, where he could have broken down without fear of being seen.

In any case, he would have certainly rather been trapped in an elevator with someone who had some idea of how to get out of it. Jenny had no further ideas on how to escape their plight and, worse still, didn’t even seem particularly bothered by it. She pulled out her phone, seemingly content to play with it in lieu of a signal that might help them call someone. Emilio was half tempted to smack it out of her hands, but he managed to refrain. Barely.

“It could take hours for anyone to notice,” he pointed out. “Hours more for them to fix it.” He disliked the idea of waiting around for someone else to solve his problems, especially when that waiting had to be done in a small box with a person he found infuriatingly irritating. There had to be some other way out, something they were missing, somehow. Emilio glanced around the elevator, desperate for some kind of escape. “Maybe if we both jump, we can… I don’t know. Knock it loose?”

—

It was not hard to notice the sarcasm in the other’s voice, especially because he laid it on extremely thick. What a sour, dramatic man. Jenny didn’t bother to offer a reply. She knew she was awfully short, and she knew that the two inches she had on top of her measly five foot was nothing to brag about, but she would never stop. As long as people accused her of being shorter than she was, she would point out her actual height, thank you very much. Besides, no one ever died of being short. To many people, it was even considered attractive. She didn’t bother to point that out to Emilio, though.

“I can sit here for hours,” she pointed out. “I have a fully charged phone. A notebook. A book for reading.” She did not want to sit in the elevator four hours. It frankly sounded like an absolute nightmare, especially considering her current company. She just wanted to seem like she was better than him for not thinking it that big a deal. She did not think all that highly of herself, but she certainly had to consider herself better than the other. 

She shook her head. “Nope. Nope. Do not — we are not jumping and making this thing crash to the ground. I am not dying in a fucking elevator.” Jenny looked back at her phone, wishing she had downloaded an episode or two on it before leaving home. Every place had WiFi these days though, and her unlimited data meant she never had to worry about being without connection. Until now. “Got any more fantastic, brilliant ideas? Preferably ones that are not risking our lives?” She didn’t look up as she added: “Or will you just sit down and keep quiet?”

—

Maybe she could sit in the elevator for hours, but he couldn’t. To Emilio, such an extended amount of time trapped in a small box felt like a Hell he had no hope of overcoming. He thought of the shed his mother had locked him in as a child, of the dumpster in the alley, of the bodybag in Eve’s van. How long could he spend in this elevator before his mind transported him back to one of those other, more sinister places? How long could he fend off a meltdown in front of a stranger who was unlikely to respond in any way that would be helpful? 

“Well, I have places to be,” he lied through his teeth, taking the two short steps back to the elevator panel to uselessly mash the buttons once more. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Neither had any effect on their situation. The elevator remained well and truly stuck, and Emilio resisted the urge to punch the panel. In his current, weakened state, it wouldn’t even hurt the buttons. If anything, he’d only end up bruising his own knuckles and likely earning a scoff from his unwilling companion. 

She didn’t seem to like his idea very much, even if she offered no alternatives of her own. “We wouldn’t die,” he insisted with a scoff. “We might not even be so far from the ground.” It was hard to know how deep the elevator had gone before stopping, after all; they might be closer to the bottom than they were to the top, right? Maybe the fall would only be a few feet. “Maybe we can pry the door open. If we both try to. Maybe there’s — I mean, there would be something out there. Right?” Probably just dirt, given how hastily the elevator had been built. All the ideas Emilio had dismissed before were sounding more appealing now that he didn’t have any others. “I’m not going to just sit here.”

—

Things were often solved for her. Sometimes she didn’t even have to ask for it, but she tended to have the means to do so. Here, there was no one to help solve things, so Jenny remained on the floor, annoyed and way past giving up. This would be her reality until someone came and fixed the elevator, which they would — if there was anything she'd grown up knowing, it was that problems were always resolved. Her parents snapped their fingers, threatened a lawyer, hired a guy … there was nothing out of the scope of possibility. 

“Sucks to be you then,” she said, watching Emilio mash the elevator buttons with raised eyebrows. “At this point, if the buttons do anything, you're just confusing them.” Technology definitely seemed like the kind of thing that could be confused, thought Jenny. She became more and more convinced that she should stay rooted in place and give into giving up, if only because she wanted to piss the other off. 

She scoffed right back. “No, we would. I've seen this happen.” In movies, but that didn't need to be specified. “Go ahead, try and pry it open. I'm just going to wait for someone to come. I've no idea what's out there, considering this is a supposed demon hole and I've never been in a demon hole before.” She returned her attention to her phone, thoughts circling around how intolerable Emilio was and how that could possibly be. Then it clicked. She looked up. “Are you an Aries, by any chance?

—

“You can’t confuse buttons.” He had no idea, really, if that was the truth or not. Jenny clearly knew more about technology than he did, though it was not a hard feat to achieve. Maybe there was something to the warning, some deep secret that Emilio was unaware of. There were a lot of unspoken rules that he missed, a lot of unsaid things he had no way of knowing. It was frustrating but, right now, so was everything. He wanted off the elevator, wanted to be back aboveground, wanted a thousand different things that he did not know how to take. He was so much better at wanting than he was at getting. 

He gave her a dubious look, because he wasn’t sure he believed that she’d seen this kind of thing happen before. Where would she have seen it? Not from inside the elevator if she was claiming such things were fatal and she was a witness. (Unless she was something more durable than human, but if that were the case, why was she concerned? For his sake? He doubted that.) But without her help, the jumping probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Emilio wasn’t exactly heavy enough to move the machinery alone. 

He also wasn’t strong enough to pry the doors open without her. He might have been weeks ago, when he was still alive and had a slayer’s strength, but not now. Now, he was useless on his own with no one willing to help him. “I don’t know what an Aries is.” He glared at the door of the elevator, trying to fit his fingers in the crack to pry, but it was no use. The door was as stuck as the elevator itself. Frustrated, Emilio turned back to the button panel, slamming his hand against it again…

…and the elevator creaked. It trembled. It groaned. And then, with a sputter, it moved.

—

“You so can. Every push of the button is an input and you keep contradicting the input, making it very confused.” That was for sure how technology worked. She had experienced plenty of times before, when she’d started mashing buttons on her phone or computer. It usually led to an error or the device simply giving up on whatever it was trying to do with a loud noise. She didn’t want that to happen to this elevator.

Jenny rolled her eyes as he asked her what an Aries was. It did explain a lot of his behavior, the fact that he didn’t know what zodiac signs meant. It also did confirm her suspicions, even though he hadn’t actually confirmed it. “When’s your birthday? March, April, something like that?” She did not bother to help him with the elevator door, not wanting to fail at a test of strength. She undoubtedly would, after all — she had skipped arm day for many years, now.

It seemed her strength wasn’t needed anyway, because somehow the elevator started moving again. Jenny gaped, looking up at the other. It wasn’t because of the way he’d punched it, surely. “Wow, seems someone up there finally connected some cables again!” She got up to her feet, fitting her phone in her back pocket as she felt her stomach churn the way it always did as an elevator descended. “Thank God.”

—

He had no idea how accurate or inaccurate what she was saying might be. She was using big enough words that it sounded like it could have been plausible, maybe, but Emilio couldn’t really tell. Was that how buttons worked? Could you really ‘confuse’ them just by pressing them too much? He’d never had the problem before but, to be fair, until a few weeks ago, any angry button smashing he’d partaken in had resulted more commonly in a broken button than a confused one. The missing slayer strength had seen to that. 

She continued on, and Emilio narrowed his eyes as she asked about his birthday. It was in March, but he wasn’t sure how she knew that. Suspicion and paranoia licked dangerously at his heels, and he studied Jenny with an uneasy expression. “Why?” He wasn’t going to offer up extra information about himself to a stranger, in any case, especially not without an explanation. Who knew what her intentions were here?

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as the elevator moved again, feeling triumphant. “No, I fixed it,” he insisted, arms crossed stubbornly over his chest. “It didn’t start working again until I made it work.” It was simple cause and effect, wasn’t it? The elevator was broken. Emilio punched the buttons. The elevator worked again. Common sense said that the two events were undoubtedly related to one another. “You can thank me any time, you know.”

—

“Because I want to know if you’re an Aries,” she said plainly, as if it was normal to ask people’s birthday in situations like these. In all fairness, situations like these simply weren’t normal, so there was no social contract to adhere to. Emilio also didn’t seem like the kind of guy who held down normal communication techniques, what with the gruffness and obvious anger issues. Jenny stared him down, becoming more and more convinced of her assessment. An Aries, and if not that, a Scorpio or Capricorn.

She snorted on instinct as Emilio made the claim of the century. “You cannot be serious,” she said, “You can’t really think that your punching the elevator fixed it?” Maybe it had. Sometimes when her phone got stuck, she slapped it and it seemed to kind of work. Jenny was no expert when it came to elevators (though definitely more knowledgeable than Emilio), so it might as well be that the punch had sent a shock through its system and reset it. 

She moved closer to the door, wanting to be the first to leave the elevator. She couldn’t wait to wash her hands after having gotten them stuck in Emilio’s hair. She looked at him pointedly, “Thank you, for making this entire situation even more intolerable and not bothering to hide your obvious anger issues while stuck in a small room with a stranger.” She hadn’t exactly felt intimidated, but it felt good to hold it over his head. “Satisfied?”

—

“I still don’t know what that means,” Emilio replied, frustration rising all the more. What did his birthday have to do with the question she was asking? What did any of it have to do with their current situation? He didn’t particularly enjoy talking to strangers about anything — he barely enjoyed talking to the people he knew, really — but he especially wasn’t keen on discussing birthdays with a stranger in a shitty elevator. Was this what qualified as small talk when nothing was actively trying to kill you? Emilio would have preferred dodging punches.

But at least the elevator was working. At least he had fixed it. He crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest as Jenny tried to insist that this wasn’t the case, chin tilting up defiantly. “It was not working,” he pointed out. “I punch it, it works again. You think it just magically fixed itself all on its own? No. I fixed it.”

The argument was stupid, but so was the rest of it. Emilio couldn’t bring himself to give a shit about it now. The elevator was moving, slowly but steadily towards its destination, and that was the only thing that really mattered to him. “You’re welcome,” he replied, figuring taking her thanks as genuine despite the clear sarcasm in her tone was bound to piss her off. And he found he really liked the idea of pissing her off. 

The elevator let out a dull hum as it arrived at the ground floor, and Emilio was just petty enough to slide by Jenny to get to the door first as it opened. “I would say it was nice meeting you,” he said flatly, “but I don’t care enough to lie.”

[pandemoniumfm]

status: open (cap of 3) @cardinalstart location: breaking glass bar notes: maybe they know each other, maybe they don't up to you and it also depends on if we have a plot or not!

         Sitting back in his chair, Emilio sighed. He'd had a long day, making sure everything was set up for the next exhibition the art gallery would be viewing. Knowing him, he'd left the most annoying task for last; paperwork. Paperwork definitely wasn't his friend, especially with how cosy he knew Breaking Glass would be around this time of the evening and he longed for social contact at this point.

Would it be that bad if he just took a short break? Just one hour of going to the bar to hang out with people? He knew he shouldn't, and he also knew it definitely wouldn't just be one hour, but he couldn't help himself. Grabbing his coat from the coat hanger in the corner of his small, yet nicely decorated office, the man made his way outside.

Once inside the bar, the man looked around with a smile. The place was warm and filled with people, laughter and good conversations waiting to happen. Shrugging off his coat, he made his way to the bar. "One Irish Affogato, please." He asked, giving the bartender a smile as he took a spot at the bar, looking around if he could see anyone familiar.

Getting his drink, the man handed over some bills to the bartender, a 'thank you' accompanying it. "Busy night, isn't it?" He said to no one in particular, eyes roaming over the bar again. He hummed in thought, taking a sip of his drink. Out of experience he knew the bar would bring him the most conversation and thus he decided to stay there. Lifting his drink to the person next to him he smiled. "Let's enjoy it."

[luckylockjaw]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: A dive bar in town PARTIES: Wyatt (@loftylockjaw), Owen (@apaininyourneck), & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Wyatt confronts Owen in a bar about him snooping around the Grit Pit, and tries to get him to talk about what's going on. Owen refuses and it gets heated. Wyatt is removed from the bar after hurling death threats, and Emilio, who was quietly watching the whole thing go down, approaches the shifter with an offer. CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of emotional abuse

—

Being approached by someone he had pissed off at some point was by no means a new experience for Owen. Quite the opposite actually, it was more of a given by the time he’d spent just over a few months in this godforsaken town. People were easily insulted and a lot of them dumb enough to try and start shit with a 6 '3'’ hunter. Granted, a lot of them didn’t know just what sort of strength the lithe figure actually contained but most ended up finding out in some way or another. Or they got verbally torn to shreds, depending on the amount of frustrations Owen needed to vent on that particular day. Either way, there had been a commonality between all of them and that was enjoyment. It probably didn’t come as a surprise that these conflicts amused him, stoked the fire in him that tended to rub people the wrong way. 

What might have come as a surprise was just how little he was going to enjoy this particular confrontation, though. 

Maybe it was a good thing that Owen was ‘room starting to spin just a little bit’ drunk, or maybe that was the reason he hadn’t noticed Wyatt’s presence before it was too late. Fucking Wyatt. It was hard to really remember where things had been heading before shit blew up, somewhere weird definitely but… well, he was finding it hard to muster up any sort of emotion other than ‘pissy as all hell’ when dealing with the people who were part of the reason he was in this current mess. Unwitting participants or not, Owen was still perfectly torn between pure hatred and the reason he was filled with hatred - the fact that he’d been foolish enough to let himself care. No surprises on which emotion was easiest to put into words and actions. 

So, there was no room to run. Not that he wanted to run, Owen didn’t think of himself as someone who ran away from shit (god, did he want to run away from all of this) and maybe this confrontation would even be good. Not in any sane way, it would completely and utterly suck but that was good. His attempts to feel nothing towards the shifter that had accidentally witnessed more of Owen than any other living person had been pathetically useless. Getting yelled at might help. Even though he felt his whole body tense when Wyatt was actually looming over him - not that this tension was visible from the way Owen leaned back in the small booth, a lazy but mostly drunken grin greeting the other man. 

—

Being the one who got cast aside was a familiar role, though it usually involved a bit more fanfare. Until Xóchitl came along, the reaction had always been the same, too. Wyatt was angry for having been kicked to the curb like last week’s trash, and the dumper was pissed off at his anger. With Xó, Wyatt had done his best to not let the hurt transform him into a hateful, miserable thing, and it’d gone well, hadn’t it? In the weeks following her decision, his kindness and understanding had earned him her favor (maybe—hopefully) and she wanted to see him again. But such grace could not be extended to Owen, because Owen would never willingly admit that anything had been happening between them. So the anger was allowed free reign, the lamia falling back into old patterns that Owen himself had witnessed back in Boston, from the perspective of a friend. He knew what this kind of thing would do to Wyatt, and he’d done it anyway. Worst of all, now he was being an ass about it. It was expected to a degree, but still managed to sting. 

Hearing Felix’s recounting of a recent, bizarre interaction with the slayer in the alley by the Pit was like adding fuel to an already-burning fire: Owen had been looking for him? Hoping to talk to him? Why? It only managed to create a million more questions in the shifter’s mind, and he’d never been great at letting things remain unknown. That’s why, when he happened to spot the slayer in some dive bar in town, he didn’t retreat. He narrowed his eyes at the man, taking his time and keeping an eye on him, getting a drink before approaching the table Owen was sitting at. The smile he was greeted with made Wyatt’s skin prickle and start to feel warm, the anger getting confused with something else where it swirled in his gut and made his heart rate quicken. Still he kept his expression even, coming to a stop in front of the slayer and giving him a thorough once-over, like a butcher deciding which cut to make first in a carcass.

“Lurkin’ ‘round the Pit now, are we? That’s a pretty pathetic move, if you ask me. Ain’t you got any better ways to spend your time?” Wyatt took a sip of his drink, hoping that the liquor would steel his nerves, as he might not be able to mimic nonchalance for long.

—

For a while, things had mostly worked out in Owen’s favor. Not really, things had gone to shit plenty of times but he’d developed a knack for insisting, whichever way things ended up going, that it was the outcome he’d desired or planned for all along. Those had been simpler times and there was no pretending that he wanted any of this. Granted, this thing with him and Wyatt had always been doomed to end here - Rosel had just sped up the process. The cracks had already begun to form even before Owen’s sudden departure, the foundation of a decent friendship made weak once they’d inevitably fallen into bed together and then even flimsier once the domesticity had settled in. In a way, his bitch of an ex had also sped up the process of combustion by way of forcing this proximity with Wyatt, making it feel, for a moment, normal to share a space with someone who occasionally made you breakfast and moaned about the lack of gratitude for it. 

Probably not a good thing that Owen’s mind was drunkenly, and very unhelpfully, conjuring up further memories from the time spent at the inviting house. Even the knowledge that Wyatt was shacking it up with some undead scum of the earth wasn’t enough to keep other knowledge at bay, the kind that still lived in his skin and could remind him how it felt to be truly close to the man currently staring down at him with disdain. He was warm with it, both in the familiar way that had him wondering just how badly trying for a quick round somewhere secluded would go, as well as in the much more disturbing way of feeling comfort, or the ghost of it. The familiarity of a passing touch or knowing grin or for fuck’s sake, a scaled tail wrapped around his midsection for a night of sleep better than most others he could remember. 

So no, Owen hadn’t been expecting things to go his way after the mishap at The Grit Pit with the squirrely fighter. He’d definitely shoved it into some dark corner of his mind and hoped it wouldn’t come up again but that was also expecting too much from this fucked up hand he’d been dealt. How much of the pitiful display of lies and truth all garbled together had reached Wyatt? Had the fighter repeated it all, word for word, maybe added on a flourish of desperation for the dramatics of it all? Not that Owen cared except he fucking did. “Sure I do. And for the record, I wasn’t actually there for you. Your nervous friend just had no business knowing why I was really there.” 

It sounded entirely unconvincing, which was hilarious in its own way considering it really was the truth, and now he was simply unraveling (or trying to unravel) the shit lie made up to cover something that would cause plenty of trouble if it reached the wrong people. Somehow, Owen was honestly more comfortable with telling Wyatt he’d murdered a hunter in cold blood rather than have him think he’d been there to grovel. “So don’t worry about it, don’t have anything to say to you.” 

—

He knew the smart thing to do would be to turn around and walk away. He could finish his drink in peace and leave, and just hope that whatever was keeping Owen in this fucking town would be done soon, and the man would move on. The smart thing did not involve prodding him for more information to get answers he really shouldn’t care about, but the anger was winning out over reason. Owen had threatened Caleb (thankfully without knowing it was Caleb he was threatening) ((yet)), and that fact sat in the back of Wyatt’s brain like a bag of bricks ready to drag him to the bottom of the lake. This hunter was a danger to people he cared about, and he wanted to know why.

So instead of taking Owen at his word that they didn’t have anything to discuss, Wyatt decided that they did. “Seems you do,” he started, not sitting opposite Owen but instead deciding to continue standing, preferring having the height on the hunter for as long as he could. “You still ain’t told me why the fuck you’re here.” The question had been posed in private messages at least twice, and each time it had gone unanswered. If there was something that Wyatt could do to get him out of here (not a favor, of course), then he wanted to hear it.

—

Obviously there were things Wyatt should have been worried about, telling him otherwise was a stone cold lie, but the shifter only knew half of it - the part that involved a zombie or a mare or a vampire (Owen really fucking hoped it wasn’t a vampire) that had managed to earn a spot in Wyatt’s heart. Which in retrospect, clearly wasn’t that hard of a task if someone as prickly as Owen had somehow managed it and obviously, he was aware of the hypocrisy of judging the other man’s caring and blatantly ignoring it. No, Wyatt got to be blissfully unaware of the looming threat to his life, a threat kept at bay by so much spilled blood and humiliation. Wyatt could allow himself to stand there and demand answers as if he wasn’t inadvertently responsible for the carnage of these last few months. 

“Why should I? I don’t owe you shit,” Owen scoffed, neck craned to meet the full force of those angry, blue eyes. It was possible they contained something more than just anger but everything in his line of vision was slightly blurry and his chest burned with the consequences of caring and the last time he’d seen Wyatt, he’d had the luxury of being able to reach out and touch which was muddling most of his coherent thoughts (there weren’t too many to begin with at this point). “If you’re worried then that’s your fucking fault for messing around with some nasty, undead fucker. They’ll get theirs eventually and it will have nothing to do with why I’m here, that part will just be for the fun of it.” 

Owen had long since decided that anyone Rosel had made him play lapdog for would meet their gruesome end when the time was right but whoever Wyatt thought he was here protecting? Well, that one would be personal. Or more personal. Far from fair but Owen had never claimed to not be a petty son of a bitch. 

“But definitely do try to talk me out of it, that sounds hilarious.” Green eyes searched blue for any sign that the (mostly) calm facade was about to crack - speaking of fair, it only seemed right that Wyatt lose his shit at least once considering the drunken hissy fit Owen had thrown over Rosel’s return. The one where Wyatt had been a calm beacon of understanding followed by the perfect way to vent frustrations and yeah, Owen really needed this to turn into an altercation soon before his treacherous mind was allowed further reminiscing. 

—

Still no answer, and he was threatening them again. It didn’t matter that Owen didn’t know exactly who he was promising to kill, because Wyatt knew he meant it. Whatever business had him back in Wicked’s Rest and acting against his own will had him angry enough to lash out at anyone he perceived as responsible, and there was no doubt in Wyatt’s mind that Owen would first turn on the undead he’d been forced to protect out of spite. When and where that would happen Wyatt couldn’t even begin to guess, but he didn’t have the luxury of waiting around to find out. Not when he knew Caleb’s name would be on that list, and god love him, he also knew that Caleb wasn’t exactly prepared to defend himself from a slayer. At least not in a way that wouldn’t end with him turning feral and dangerous to everyone. 

The anger flared, intermixed with fear, and it made Wyatt feel sick. He wanted to yell at Owen, wanted to grab him by his stupid neck and slam his head into the table, wanted to tell him he was a mistake. He wanted to kill him, truthfully, even being aware of the agony that would follow. All sorts of violent scenes ran through his mind and the shifter was fighting tooth and nail to not act on them, fists clenched at his sides, jaw tight as his teeth ground together. He was quiet, listening to those venomous words spill from lips he’d once been able to draw much more pleasant sounds from. He needed to be smart about this. For once in his fucking life, he needed to not act on his instinct to hurt and maim, and instead consider the option that had the best chance of getting him somewhere. 

He drew in a long, slow breath, hoping that it would calm him (it didn’t). Instead of throwing a punch like he really wanted to, Wyatt sank into a squat, one arm propped on the edge of the table, the other resting on his thigh. “I don’t think you really wanna do that to me,” he tried, his voice quiet. It wasn’t even, though — despite his best efforts to mask it, the shifter still pretty much wore his heart on his sleeve. His anger was palpable, but so was the fear and pain that convinced him to try and be civil. “I think that whatever’s got your hands tied behind your back is makin’ you meaner ‘n usual. And I think you’re tryin’ to take it out on me, ‘cuz some part’ah you still cares.” His eyes narrowed. “Now I could and I should take your head clean off for threatenin’ to kill someone I care about. I can take care’ah myself, but I know people that can’t, and I ain’t about to just sit back n’ let ‘em fend for themselves. But I’m also tryin’ to be less impulsive these days, so why don’t you just go ahead n’ tell me… what’s goin’ on? And stop makin’ promises you ain’t never gonna keep.”

—

Silence dragged on and despite the haze of alcohol, Owen didn’t miss the telltale signs of frustration, a confirmation that he was finally getting under Wyatt’s skin, the visible tension in every muscle Owen was reluctantly familiar with. If it came to it, he’d probably even allow those clenched fists to get in a hit or two before reacting - granted, Owen didn’t like his odds against the real Wyatt but the full ten foot gator probably wouldn’t be called on inside a crowded bar. Probably. Owen found he didn’t much care either way, the thought of sharp claws or teeth tearing into his flesh one that provided quite a neutral reaction, maybe even a hidden sense of calm. He wondered if Wyatt would regret the taste of his blood afterwards, seek comfort from the undead creature whose protection would be guaranteed with the single act of brutality. 

Owen doubted it would be regret that lasted too long, if his death (or murder) even managed to inspire any emotion at all. 

The taunting smile didn’t betray any of that, such an easy expression to maintain after years of practice, but it faltered when Wyatt willingly gave up the position of physically standing taller. It took a moment for the quiet words to really register, to break through the expected reactions Owen had been preparing for - anger or avoidance. This was neither, this was… it was tempting is what it was. Owen had been pulled taut for over a year now, no reprieve to be found in the usual ways or the unusual ways, no relying on the slivers of emotional connection that had gotten him into this fucked up mess in the first place. It was a soft offer, a genuine one to unload the horrors of this past year, maybe even accept a helping hand. 

If only there was a part of him left that believed such a kindness to actually be a viable option, instead of one that would inevitably make things worse or, and that part stung, simply a manipulation to ensure the safety of someone who mattered more than Owen. 

“Must have gotten knocked on the head a few times too often if this is what you see as someone caring.” Owen finally spoke, hoping the venom in his voice made up for the very obvious hesitation, the moment of weakness where he’d wanted nothing more than to give in to pretending someone cared and that it wouldn’t end up ruining him. He leaned in closer, practiced smug turn of the lips back in its place, even if it lacked all emotion. “That’s pretty fucked up, Barlow.”

Owen rose to his feet, wanted - no, needed - Wyatt out of that condescending crouch, needed to crush any and all misconceptions that a few soft spoken words in that ridiculous accent were enough to break him (they almost were - was there anything left to break?). “You don’t know shit about what I want or what I won’t do. You really think you know me?” His laugh was clipped, cold. “No wonder you’re going to end up alone, being this fucking delusional.” 

—

The patience that Wyatt had been clinging to was gone like a flash in the pan — igniting an inferno as it made a quick exit, stage left. Fine. If Owen wanted to be an insufferable shitstain, let him. If Owen craved Wyatt’s anger that badly, then who was he to deny him? He’d fucking drown him in it. 

There was nothing more to say as he stood, knowing that no words he could conjure would make a difference to the hunter. There was no reasoning with him. All attempts to appeal to his better nature were wasted, because he had no better fucking nature. He was a miserable, wretched thing, and it left Wyatt with one option: kill him before he figured out who the lamia was protecting. End this before it had a chance to get any worse, and spare whoever else in the process. Wyatt didn’t know (because Owen wouldn’t fucking tell him), and he didn’t care. Not anymore.

Only… he did. It was a convincing act, though, as he let his fist do the talking for the first time that night. “Go fuck yourself,” he snarled, wasting no time winding up the second punctuated statement of knuckles-to-face-justice. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly justice, but it sure felt good. 

There wasn’t time to deliver a third, violent point as his arm was caught by someone, and he felt more hands pulling on his jacket. Remembering the time he’d tried to attack Inge in public and the strangers around them had defended her, pinning him to the ground until the police arrived, his panic spiked. But of course instead of being reasonable and displaying submission to the people pulling him off of Owen, the fighter did what he did best: he made the situation worse. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you!” he bellowed, tears stinging his eyes. There were too many people dragging him toward the door for him to manage to stay on his feet enough to get away from them, so all he could do was yell and scream until his back met the cold, snowy pavement outside. 

It was actually infuriating to realize that Owen wasn’t getting tossed out alongside him, where he very much would have liked to finish the job. Blinking away the snow that tried to collect on his eyelashes as it fell from the sky, the shifter gave a grunt and rolled over onto his side, pushing himself upright. There’d be time. He didn’t know where Owen was staying these days, but he knew the kinds of places the slayer was liable to crop up. And when he found him again, he was going to rip his fucking throat out.

—

Mission accomplished with none of the satisfaction. Wyatt could throw a punch but in this form, only with the strength of a competent human, so it was far from the heaviest hit Owen had received, barely even stung through the blanket of booze and thrumming of whatever fucking emotion was currently wrestling for control. Physically, Owen was fine, this would only leave a bruise that would be gone by tomorrow evening. The metaphorical gut punch of the genuine murderous intent in Wyatt’s eyes, that one did leave a mark even if it had been the intended effect of Owen’s scathing remarks and threats. If a part of him had been clinging onto some pitiful hope that it wouldn’t work, well, that was a part he needed to work harder still to squash. 

The third wind up for a punch was foiled and Owen watched with detached interest as strangers started pulling Wyatt away. Remembered a time years and years ago when either of them had been the one to hold back the other, or sometimes done the opposite and provided backup for whatever brawl their big mouths had started. It was a curious thing, wondering what might have been if he hadn’t let Rosel run him out of the city. Of course, Owen was tired of ‘what if’ scenarios, too many of them to count but essentially all of them boiling down to the only constant in his life - the person that had irreparably sharpened his edges and shown him the consequences of caring. 

Wyatt’s face, contorted in rage and desperation as he screamed out his threats was a pretty good visual for the consequences of caring, too. 

As soon as Wyatt had been forced outside, the quiet only lasted for a second, business as usual resuming. People luckily had the common sense not to approach Owen once he’d sat back down, washing down the mouthful of blood with what remained of his drink. It was cold out, the shifter wouldn’t last long trying to wait him out so Owen probably wasn’t getting torn to shreds this evening. Rubbing at his face, at sore spots he would barely feel in the morning, Owen was quick to open his eyes again, banishing the image of absolute betrayal on Wyatt’s face. Maybe with a few more drinks, he’d be able to swing a couple of hours of dreamless sleep. He wouldn’t but it was all he could do to pretend it was an option as he waved for a refill. 

—

Restlessness was a familiar thing for Emilio. He’d found sitting still difficult since childhood, despite his mother’s attempts to correct it. He wasn’t good at waiting for the opportune moment to do something, wasn’t good at utilizing things only when it was most beneficial to do so. When he found something exploitable, he was impulsive. He moved right away. If he saw a weak spot in his opponent’s form, he didn’t wait for an opening — he aimed his next hit directly at the target. When he got information that could lead to a result he wanted, he rarely found himself capable of sitting on it long enough to make a plan. Instead, he acted immediately. He dug his fingernails in, he carved out a path for himself even when an easier one might have made itself available had he only waited. It wasn’t always effective. It wasn’t always smart. But it had gotten him this far.

Now, he just needed it to get him a little farther.

They’d learned plenty from Owen’s apartment. With the information he’d already had pooled together with what Eve had known and what he’d learned through his scooping, Emilio almost had the full story. All that was really left, all he really needed was a name. There was someone pulling Owen’s strings, someone else in charge of what he was up to. And, as much as Emilio would have loved to take Owen out, taking out whoever was really behind the behavior was the priority. After, if Owen was still a problem, he was one Emilio would be happy to solve. But killing him without taking care of the woman calling the shots would only fuck things up for everyone.

He could have waited things out. He could have given Eve a chance to do her digging, and she probably would have found something eventually. They might have had to break into Owen’s place again, might have needed to do some more surveillance, but Eve’s methods were the kind that usually got results sooner or later. If he waited, he’d probably know more soon. But Emilio was bad at waiting. Thirty-odd years later, and he’d still never quite mastered sitting still. 

But he had gotten a little better at blending in. Granted, it wasn’t hard when Owen was several drinks in and swaying in his seat, paying far more attention to another familiar face than Emilio hunched in a corner at the opposite end of the bar watching him. Wyatt took up all the other slayer’s attention, first in quiet conversation and then in angry blows. Emilio tensed as he watched it all go down, half-tempted to join in just to get a few shots in himself. But… Wyatt’s name was on that list, and Owen clearly knew him well enough to get pretty firmly under his skin. Emilio could punch Owen later. (He was planning on it.) Right now, a conversation might do him a little better.

He ducked out of the bar as everyone, including Owen, remained distracted with the aftermath of the fight. It wasn’t hard to find Wyatt sitting in the snow, looking angry and pathetic and probably exactly the same way Emilio looked half the damn time. The slayer pulled his jacket a little tighter around his midsection as he approached the lamia, standing back far enough so that Wyatt wouldn’t get the idea that he was offering to help him to his feet. (Emilio didn’t think either of them had any interest in that.) 

“That seemed to go well,” he greeted dryly, nodding his head slightly. “You at least get a few good ones in? Ought to try stabbing him next time. More fun that way.” He let the words hang, let Wyatt grow used to his presence like one might do a wild animal before continuing. “We should talk. I think we’ve got a couple common goals between us.”

—

The reaction to Emilio’s voice was made more pronounced by how raw he felt right now, his head snapping up to meet the slayer’s dark gaze, teeth clenched in a scowl and eyes wide. His heart hammered in his chest, blood roared past his ears, and he nearly flew at the other man out of instinct, ready to unleash this anger upon the first living thing stupid enough to engage with him. But there wasn’t a cage here, nor a jeering crowd. No cattle prods, no sickly stench of old blood and poorly sanitized floors where viscera had been smeared across it like a meaty fruit preserve on burnt toast. Something was ringing, drowning the other’s voice out with a high-pitched wine, and his vision blurred. 

“What?” Wyatt was panting like he’d just run a marathon, eyes squeezing shut. When he opened them again, the world was in focus, and it was quieter. Car tires hissed on the road as they drove through wet slush, headlight beams sweeping across the pair as the vehicle turned at the intersection. He could see Emilio’s face with more clarity for just long enough to settle his nerves, muscles relaxing as he sighed and heaved himself up onto his feet. “The hell you wanna talk about?” He almost made a snarky comment about Emilio’s impeccable timing, or perhaps his lack of assistance — but he wouldn’t have wanted the help, of course. If everyone had just let him, he’d have wanted to snuff Owen’s light out himself, to watch that smug smile fall slack as his eyes became unfocused and cloudy. (No, he didn’t.) ((Yes, he did.)) 

—

It was comforting, in a fucked up kind of way, to know that he wasn’t the only person who Owen had this kind of effect on. Emilio disliked the way the other slayer always seemed to know exactly what to say to get under his skin, hated knowing that Owen’s words still echoed in his head over a year after he’d first said them. Now, having spoken with Eve and understanding that it had been an incredibly intentional move on Owen’s part, he was even angrier. There were few things he hated more than being manipulated, and hadn’t Owen done exactly that? Emilio wanted to march back into the bar and punch the guy at the thought, and given the expression on Wyatt’s face, he was far from the only one. But there were other factors at play here. Emilio wasn’t good at sitting still, but he could control the direction in which he moved. 

He rolled his eyes as Wyatt’s anger turned towards him, though he wasn’t surprised by it. Wasn’t it the same thing he would have done, roles reversed? Even now, part of him wanted to snap back at the lamia just for getting short with him. He did his best to stop himself… at least for the moment. He could snipe at Wyatt later. (He probably would, knowing himself.) “The asshole in the bar whose face you just bruised your hand on,” he replied. “Bet it felt good. Bet I can give you something that feels better. If you like punching him, you’ll really like fucking him over.” Or… maybe he wouldn’t. Wyatt’s name was on that list, the one of people Owen… apparently gave some kind of a shit about. (But so was Emilio’s. He still couldn’t figure out why.) “Guessing you know something’s going on with him. I’m… one puzzle piece short of knowing what. Hoping you might be able to help.”

—

“I don’t wanna fuck him over,” Wyatt snapped, “I wanna fuckin’ kill him.” He heaved another sigh, trying to encourage himself to calm down rather than get more worked up — what good had charging into a non-work-related fight headfirst ever done him in the past? It’d gotten Felix in trouble with Leo, is what it’d done. And while there certainly wasn’t anything remotely near the same stakes in this situation, maybe Emilio knew something he didn’t. Obviously Emilio knew something he didn’t, but it kind of sounded like Wyatt might know something Emilio didn’t, from what he was saying. 

What was he saying?

“But yeah, no shit something’s goin’ on with him. Fucker won’t tell me what, I done asked about twenty times, now. Fuck.” Dusting snow off his ass, the shifter dragged his chin up again to squint at Emilio. The last time they’d crossed paths, Emilio had given him a hell of a whack in the head with a tree branch. Threatened to throw a knife in his ass. All because of that stupid, nosy girl — point was, they weren’t on the best of terms. Not the worst, either… even if the bar was practically on the floor. “What? What’s this puzzle, huh? What you need to know so damn bad?”

—

That was good news. Emilio’s expression shifted just a little, some of the tension melting away at the idea that he and Wyatt did have a common goal here. “Well,” he said slowly, “we can do that, too.” He ignored the strange churning in his gut at the idea, ignored the way his fingers itched. He wanted Owen dead, just like Wyatt did. If that meant letting Wyatt do the deed, that was okay. Wasn’t it? (Maybe that was the source of his sudden discomfort; maybe Emilio disliked the idea of not getting to kill Owen himself. He clung to the thought, declared it the truth in the privacy of his own mind for the audience of one uncertain hunter.)

He watched Wyatt warily, trying to decide if this was going to be a conversation or if the lamia was going to start throwing punches again. The former would be better for both of them, but he wasn’t sure he’d mind a fight, either. Wyatt seemed willing to talk, though, and Emilio shrugged at his response. No shit Owen wasn’t talking. Owen never talked, unless his dynamic with Wyatt had been… something wholly different than what Emilio knew of the other slayer. It was rare for any hunter to open up about their problems; he couldn’t imagine Owen partaking in it. But if Wyatt asked twenty times, didn’t that mean he’d expected an answer? Didn’t that mean Emilio was on the right track, asking him about all this? It was a good sign. “Someone’s pulling his strings,” he said, cutting right to the meat of things. “Holding a list of people he cares about over his head, using them to make him do what they want him to do. Shit he wouldn’t do on his own. Killing allies, protecting enemies. Shit like that.” He paused a moment. “Your names on the list.” He left out the fact that his was, too. “I figure maybe you know who might be calling the shots.”

—

The expression Wyatt wore was wholly unimpressed as Emilio spoke of some kind of puppet master. That couldn't be right, could it? Short of brainwashing (Owen was acting differently, sure, but not like he was brainwashed) what the hell was there for someone to hold over his head that he'd care enough about to do what someone else told him? It sounded like a load of crap. He was rolling his eyes in disbelief when Emilio said it was a list of people — yeah fuckin’ right. Owen didn't give a shit about anyone. “Sounds to me like you got bad info,” Wyatt griped, pointing a finger toward the interior of the bar he'd been so unceremoniously removed from. “That couyon in there don't give a flyin’ fuck ‘bout nobody but himself.” As he said it, his voice damn near cracked. The hurt came slamming into him full force all over again, and he tried to cover it by clearing his throat and straightening out his winter jacket, avoiding eye contact with Emilio in favor of glancing down the street in the direction of his parked car. “Look, I don't wanna fuckin' hang out in the cold no more, so if you got more to say, say it while we walk.” He stepped around Emilio, head down and shoulders hunched, begging his emotions to stop flaring up like that before something really embarrassing happened.

—

In a lot of ways, Emilio was inclined to agree with Wyatt. Seeing his own name on that list made it seem impossible that it was something being held over Owen’s head, because hadn’t Owen made it pretty goddamn obvious that he’d like to see Emilio in a shallow grave? Maybe the idea of someone else killing Emilio would be enough to make Owen hesitate — after all, Emilio had decided that he’d be a little bitter if he wasn’t the one to deliver the killing blow to Owen, and it’d make sense if that was a thing that went both ways — but not enough to turn him into this. Maybe the added weight of names like Wyatt’s (whose reaction definitely seemed to speak of something deeper than anything Emilio had ever had with Owen) and his family back home were enough to add to it. Emilio tried not to let himself think of the younger siblings whose names Eve had uncovered, tried not to let himself remember the way their ages so closely reflected the ages Flora and Jaime had been when they’d died. It was hard to think of anything else, so he focused on Wyatt. On the expression on his face, on the anger that could only really come from a betrayal from someone close. It was a good move, asking Wyatt for thoughts. It seemed like he might actually know something.

“That’s what I thought, too,” he admitted with a small shrug. “But shit’s been coming together, and I can’t think of any other reason for it. Unless you’ve got some idea of what might make him hang out with vampires, protect them.” If Wyatt knew Owen as well as he seemed to, he probably knew how he felt about the undead. Eve’s discovery of dead hunters was a big one, but Emilio got the feeling that Owen’s newfound chumminess with people he’d been out to kill before his disappearance would shock Wyatt a little more. Glancing to the car, Emilio felt some quiet semblance of relief. He didn’t want to be out in the cold either… but he didn’t like admitting things like that. “Sure,” he agreed, falling into step beside the lamia. “I don’t know much, but I know enough. Last time I saw him, it was at a bar full of vampires. He was being a prick — not something that’s much of a surprise, I’m sure — and let slip that I’m who I am. One of his buddies mentioned that she wouldn’t like it. So… I know there’s somebody pulling his strings. I just don’t know who. Figured…” He trailed off, glancing back to the bar. “You know him better than I do. He and I never talked much.”

—

Wyatt was silent as they walked to his car, mostly because he was trying to dissect what Emilio was telling him. It was a lot, and piecing it all out was proving to be too much of a task for him while he was this fuckin’ cold. So he just listened, unlocking all the car doors and silently circling around to the driver’s side to drop into the seat and turn the key in the ignition, swiping the temperature dial all the way up. He looked confused and annoyed when he finally turned his attention to Emilio again, staring at him blankly for a second before shaking his head and opening the center console between them, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He held the box out to Emilio for a beat, then shook one out for himself and pinched it between his lips. 

“He’s protectin’ vampires?” he spoke around the grit. It was somehow both a surprise and not — Wyatt had known that Owen’s information was being given to zombies, at least, as some sort of protection… but vampires? He’d always hated them the most. So much so that Wyatt had once found himself in a dodgy situation with a vampire, and rather than seeking kinship with a fellow supernatural being, he had wondered if Owen would smile when he heard Wyatt had killed a vampire. He’d wondered if the slayer would be proud of him. 

So no, it made no fucking sense that he’d be protecting them now. Not unless Emilio was right, which barely made any fucking more sense.

Lighting the cigarette, Wyatt set the lighter on the center console and cracked his window just enough to let the smoke escape the vehicle. “You said it’s a she? Whoever’s got him in a bind?” And she wanted him to protect the undead… He couldn’t begin to fathom why, but now that vampires were on the brain and Emilio was talking about a mystery woman, Wyatt felt his hand start to tremble. 

“She… there’s… one, I guess. That I can think of. She was… or is… a vampire.” And she’d arrived back in town just after Owen’s apartment had been overrun by the goo, and he’d moved in with Wyatt. “I practically begged the idiot to let me eat ‘er for ‘im, but he kept sayin’ no…” And then he vanished without a trace.

“... ah, fuck, I’m a god damned idiot.” Pressing a palm over his eyes, Wyatt let out a long, weary sigh, then took a drag of his grit. “Yeah. Yeah, I know your girl.” He nodded and then shook his head, disappointed in his own inability to ever connect a single fucking dot without having all the clues laid out for him like a toddler with a fit-the-shapes-in-the-holes puzzle box. “Name’s Rosel. Never knew her last name, sorry. She n’ Owen were sweet on each other, years ago, back when we was both livin’ in Boston. Ended bad. Obviously he never forgave her, n’ he’s been takin’ his anger out on vamps ever since.” Which meant the list of people Owen was protecting was real, and his name was really on it. 

He felt sick again. 

“I don’t really wanna kill him,” the lamia added in a small, defeated voice. “I’m pissed, n’ he’s an idiot, but… if it’s really… fuck. Fuckin’ god damnit.” 

—

Emilio settled into the car, refusing to let the relief show on his face as Wyatt blasted the heat. He took the offered cigarette, sliding it between his lips and pulling a lighter from his pocket as the lamia got settled. It was clear that he wasn’t the only one put off by Owen’s strange behavior, and that came as something of a relief. Though he’d never admit to it, he was well aware of his habit of letting his emotions get the better of him from time to time, and Owen had proven that he was very capable of manipulating this habit. Hadn’t Eve implied that that was why he’d shoved Emilio against that wall and ripped him open by flinging his own insecurities in his face? Wasn’t that what had landed him here to begin with? Even with Wyatt, the first time they’d met, Emilio had let what he felt get in the way of what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to be. If he couldn’t trust his own thoughts on Owen’s behavior, the fact that Wyatt seemed to share them was invaluable. 

“More than once now,” he confirmed, feeling a little more vindicated at the shock Wyatt expressed in response. Killing hunters was jarring, of course. Emilio knew Eve was put off by it, knew she was shocked by the revelation. And it wasn’t as if Emilio wasn’t shocked by that tidbit himself, but… at the same time, Emilio was certain Owen would kill him given half the chance. It seemed far less out of character than protecting a group of people he’d always been vocal about hating.

Wyatt might have been the only person out there who could clue Emilio in on the why. Owen had clearly taken measures to distance himself from everyone in his life, but the closeness he’d shared with those people before that decision could prove to be all they needed now. Whatever Wyatt and Owen had shared, it was clearly something deep enough to inspire a very personal anger in the lamia. Emilio watched the gears turning in his mind, nodding his head at the question. “That’s what the vampire at the bar said,” he confirmed. “Didn’t get to ask for details. Owen ran after him and killed him right after. First halfway normal thing he’s done since he got back to town, actually.” It was the why behind that particular slaying that brought up questions.

And Wyatt might just have the answer to that question. He seemed to be grappling with something, and Emilio leaned forward a little as he puzzled it out. There was a woman who had apparently been in Owen’s life just before his disappearance. He’d had some kind of problem with her, but hadn’t let Wyatt solve it with his teeth. The timing added up. 

It took a lot of self control not to react when Wyatt confirmed he knew who they were looking for. Part of Emilio wanted to clap, or pound a fist against the side of the car, or cheer, but he grounded himself with a neutral nod instead. “Never would have taken him for the type,” he commented, taking a long drag of the cigarette. Rosel. “Don’t need much more than that. I can find out the rest with a little digging.” And with Eve’s help, probably. Knowing Rosel’s name wouldn’t make her motivations fall into their laps; Eve’s skills on a computer were far more likely to be the thing that made that happen.

He wasn’t really expecting Wyatt to say anything else. When he did, Emilio felt a rush of… something wash over him. Maybe it was disappointment; maybe it was relief. He thought it was a little odd that he couldn’t tell the difference between the two anymore. “Then you won’t kill him,” he replied. He wondered if he would, wondered if driving a knife through Owen’s heart would feel as good as shoving that stake into his side had or if it would only leave him feeling empty. (Wasn’t there only one way to find out? Shouldn’t he give it a try? The thought made his stomach churn; he didn’t know why.) “But she has to go. Lot of names on that list. Kids. Long as she’s around, they’re in trouble. If you still want to take a bite out of her… I wouldn’t say no to another person on my side here.” There was no way of knowing whether Owen would help them take out Rosel or whether they’d have to fight against him, too. And while Emilio was (perhaps foolishly) confident in his ability to take out both on his own, it’d be a hell of a lot easier with someone like Wyatt on his side. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do here. But this is what I’m doing. You can help if you want to.”

—

Maybe it was foolish to let sentiment get in the way of reason. Well, was it reason? All Wyatt had known up to this point was that Owen seemed to want nothing to do with him anymore, and that he’d been told by someone to make himself available to play bodyguard for Caleb. But that someone was Rosel, which he should have figured out months ago, and the reason was blackmail, and it seemed to be any undead that the woman deemed valuable. That wasn’t Owen’s fault, was it? His attitude was his own fucking fault, but feeling like he didn’t have a choice…? Wyatt was reminded of that night in the ring with Samir. He’d begged his handler to pit him against someone else and his pleas had fallen on deaf ears. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t say no. (He could have, but it would have cost him something he couldn’t quantify, and he was too much of a coward to face that unknown.) Really, Owen’s situation here was less his fault in some ways (he was trying to protect people he cared about, and wasn’t it nobler to sacrifice his own happiness and safety for their sake? Though it just meant different people were dying—) and more his fault in others. Wyatt had offered to help him kill Rosel more than once, and the slayer had let his pride get in the way of accepting. Now look where they were! This could have been dealt with a long time ago, but no! Of course it fucking wasn’t! The anger was building in his chest, and he couldn’t rightly decide if he was more pissed at Rosel or Owen. He wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t want to kill Owen, but he couldn’t be certain about how he’d feel in the moment. Part of him worried that if Owen had the chance to hurl one more insult at him, he’d fucking snap. And if he was there with Emilio… there wasn’t going to be anyone to hold him back. It didn’t matter that Owen was doing it to protect him. He didn’t have to be such a cunt about it.

Killing Rosel, though, that much he could agree to without any weight on his conscience. “Sure,” he muttered, sucking on the cigarette like his life depended on it. “Find ‘er, show me where to go, n’ I’ll make sure she don’t fuckin’ get back up again.” He thought about Owen sitting in that bar, alone and shiftfaced, and he wanted to march back inside and grab him by the shoulders and shake him. This ain’t how you protect people, he wanted to shout at him. Stupid idiot.  Stupid fucking idiot. 

Flicking the half-finished cigarette out the window, Wyatt rolled it back up and gripped the steering wheel tightly, leaning his head forward onto the backs of his hands. He wanted to rip the mechanism from the dashboard, wanted to shred the seats and kick out the windshield. He also wanted to cry, and he didn’t need an audience for that. “We done here, compadre?”

—

Wyatt was clearly having his own kind of crisis, and Emilio tried not to let himself focus on it. It was easier for him to think of Owen exclusively as he had been lately, as he had been in that empty apartment when he’d shoved Emilio against the wall and dissected every thought he’d ever berated himself with to voice them aloud. He didn’t want to think of the circumstances that might have encouraged Wyatt to offer to kill Rosel on Owen’s behalf, didn’t want to think about the conflicted expression on the lamia’s face or the fact that the list of names being used to hold Owen in line included his own. He wanted things to be simple, because they used to be. Both with Owen and in general. He missed the time when Owen was just a guy he fucked around with every now and then, missed the time when killing the undead was a thing he didn’t have to think about. He missed the certainty he used to carry with him. He couldn’t make slaying simple again, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t make morality an easy thing to tackle, couldn’t make himself forget the complicated churning of emotions that had lived in his gut since the day Flora was born or the way they’d outlived her just as he had. Life couldn’t be black and white, so he needed things with Owen to be. He needed this situation to be easy so that something was. Focusing on Wyatt’s reaction, on the obvious turmoil surrounding him, would make that impossible. So Emilio, like the coward he always had been, looked away. He focused on the glass of the window and the way it fogged with his breath, focused on the cigarette between his fingers and the way it felt just a little different than his usual brand. If he could make things simple, he would be fine. If he could make it so he didn’t have to think, this whole thing would be easier. He wanted, so badly, for it to be easier.

“Don’t think I’m just sending you off on your own,” he huffed, taking another drag of the cigarette. “I’m going to be there, too. Might be me that takes her out, might be you. Important thing is that she’s dust when this is over.” He was as involved as Wyatt was, though he had no intention of sharing that fact. His name on Owen’s list still wasn’t a thing that made any kind of sense to him. He’d rather forget about it entirely, rather avoid publicizing it even if Wyatt knowing might benefit them all in the long run. Emilio was nothing if not stubborn, after all.

Now that he had the information he needed, the interior of the car felt stifling. Wyatt’s conflict was still there on full display, still making things more complicated than Emilio wanted them to be, still humanizing Owen in a way Emilio hadn’t allowed in months now. When he was alone, it was simple to think of Owen as a monster. When he was with someone like Wyatt or Eve, it got harder. He reached for the door handle with a nod, relieved at the prospect of being released from the complexities of the situation, even if he knew it was only temporary. “We’re done,” he agreed, “for now. I’ll know more soon. When I do, I’ll give you a call.” With one last healthy drag of the cigarette, he opened the car door and tossed it on the cement before stepping out into the cold. Somehow, it was still preferable to the inside of the vehicle with the complicated conflict of a man he didn’t want to think of as having any qualities worth saving. Glancing back to Wyatt, he nodded. “I’ll be in touch.” And then, with little fanfare, he was gone. He had a lot to look into.

[gossipsnake]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: A swamp PARTIES: Anita (@gossipsnake) and Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Anita planned on spending the day wading through swamp water to observe aquatic bugs. Emilio was out at the swamp on a jewelry mission. Something flying through the air had other plans for the day.   CONTENT WARNINGS: none

Sometimes, Axis got cases so stupid that a part of Emilio wanted to turn them down altogether. Depending on his mood, he might follow that inclination. Some things were a waste of his time, and not every case was worth the cash payout. Emilio liked to feel as though he was helping. He liked to pretend he was making a difference, even if he often felt like he was doing little more than shoveling dirt back into the same hole he was trying to dig. Taking too many stupid cases made him feel like he was stuck in a rut, like there was little to do to get himself above water.

But sometimes, those stupid cases were brought to his desk by stupid kids, and that made everything harder.

The girl who’d hired him with a fistful of wrinkled bills and a handful of coins couldn’t have been much older than fifteen, though she swore she was eighteen when he’d asked. She wore ratty clothes, and her shoes had holes in them, and the money she gave him was nowhere near enough to actually cover his usual fee but he took the case anyway. At the end of it, he knew damn well he’d give the cash back to her, even if it was a stupid case. 

She’d lost a necklace. Her lip quivered when she said it, and he didn’t need to be a detective to understand that the necklace she lost was important to her. She’d dropped it in a swamp, and she was so desperate to get it back but afraid to go back and look for it herself. Emilio was fine with that. In a town like this one, it was smart for kids with ratty clothes and holes in their shoes to be afraid. 

It did suck a little that those kids’ fear often led to him trudging through dirty swamp water, though. He muttered incoherent complaints under his breath as he moved, scanning the dirty water with sharp eyes in search of a glint. “Be a detective, Milio! You’ll make money, Milio! Fucking shitty —” His foot sank a little deeper in the muck. “¡Puta madre! Stupid… Fucking… Swamp…” He punctuated each word with a yank, pulling his foot free and managing not to lose his shoe in the process. “This is so…”

He stopped. There was a sound nearby, the quiet splish splash of footsteps not belonging to him. Immediately, Emilio tensed. “All right,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. “If you’re something that wants to kill me, take your best fucking shot. If you’re something that doesn’t want to kill me, and you’ve seen a necklace lying around, let me know.”

—

Summertime was the best time of year as far as Anita was concerned. Classes were out, as was the sun. Warm weather also meant that insects were more active, as were all other aspects of the local ecosystems. It was a bright sunny day and Anita didn’t have much else to do so she decided to head out up to the swamp and see if she could manage to spot any rare insects. After packing up her camera, waterproof pack, and water wader pants and boots, she drove the scenic route (there is only a scenic route) out to the swamp. It was pretty early hours by the time she made it out there which was generally how she preferred it. 

As much as she loved fancy and expensive things, there was little pleasure greater than breathing in fresh air surrounded by nature and an absolute lack of humans. If the goal had been anything other than observation, or if she had gone to a more secluded area, Anita may have shifted. That was the only downside to the summer - she had to share the forest with a lot more people who were also drawn out by the warmth and beauty. 

It had been several hours of peace, the nature around her made sure that things never got too quiet though. But then Anita heard someone else cursing - in Spanish no less - and splashing about in the water. “And what if I don’t yet know whether or not I want to kill you?” The tone she used was playful, as was the grin on her face as the man came into her view while she took gentle steps through the water towards shore, on its surface her question was a joke. But as anyone who was around water should know, there was always something more going on beneath the surface. “You lose a necklace?” 

_ 

A voice called out in return to his question, and while this didn’t mean there was no danger to be found, it did lessen his chances of being eaten just a little. Emilio wasn’t so stupid as to assume that a human consciousness disqualified someone from making a meal out of him — he’d seen plenty of evidence to the contrary there — but he knew that most people who were planning on killing someone didn’t respond to their questions with jokes. (Most. Not all. Emilio’s paranoia would never quite allow for sweeping generalizations that guaranteed his safety. He was many things, but he was no fool.) 

Snorting at the response he received, he shook his head. “Then you let me know when you figure it out,” he called back, keeping things just as light as the stranger had. He waited to see if she’d come into view or not, the question answered only seconds after it was silently raised when she stepped out where he could see her. He offered her a small nod, taking in the outfit. Unlike Emilio, this woman was dressed for the environment they’d found themselves in. It told him that she hadn’t wound up in the swamp accidentally, and that she was here for some sort of purpose.

“Someone did,” he replied, making a face as his weight shifted and the ground beneath him squelched quietly. “Hired me to find it for her. If I’d known it was going to be like this, I would have told her no.” He wouldn’t have. He was a goddamn bleeding heart for shit like this, and he knew it. He wasn’t really fooling anyone. “You been out here long? Seen anything shiny?” He hesitated a moment. “Don’t think it’s worth much, but… Worth something to her. Like to find it, if I can.”

–

“Oh, trust me, you’ll know when I figure it out,” in actuality, if Anita wanted to kill this man she would not grant him any kind of warning before striking. If she wanted him dead he would know by her actively working to kill him. For the time being, however, she saw no immediate reason and had no particular desire to kill him. She continued to move towards him, taking gentle steps to not disturb the water or the creatures living within it more than necessary. Unlike her, he seemed woefully unprepared to be in the swamp. Which seemed odd since he appeared to come out to the area specifically, for a job that would logically require him to get into the water. 

“If you had known the swamp was going to be … swampy?” The water wasn’t exactly clear and the sediment beneath their feet was not so compact that an object would simply rest atop it unbothered. Anita gave him a run down once she got a few feet away, “No boots, no shovel, no metal detector, no sift?” An uneasy feeling washed over her as she became rather suspicious that his story about why he was out here was fabricated. He was too unprepared for it to be real. “What does the necklace look like?” 

Pretending to look around the area for it, Anita took a few more cautious steps in his direction, wanting to be in striking distance should it be necessary. “Silver? Gold? Any gemstones or pendants?” 

_ 

“I’m sure I will,” Emilio agreed. Maybe he ought to be a little more worried about how casually a stranger he met in a swamp spoke about murdering him, but… it wasn’t the kind of thing that concerned him. In a town like this one, he knew, odds of her actually trying to kill him were probably pretty high. But Emilio liked his chances if it came down to a fight, liked his odds of at least walking away with air still in his lungs even if his victory was never a guarantee. He was more of a cockroach than a man, some days; the things he was able to survive, even without wanting to, would surprise anyone willing to take a closer look.

Huffing a laugh at her obvious judgment, he shrugged. “Client’s a kid,” he replied. “Didn’t think a kid would be out getting deep into a swamp. I figured I’d find it hanging off a tree branch or sitting on a rock. Guess she’s more of an exploradora than I thought she was.” He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. Most of the kids in this town had strange hobbies. Wandering through a swamp was less weird than living in a crypt.

He dug in his pocket for a moment, retrieving his phone and pulling up a photo. It was zoomed in on a necklace around someone’s throat, the only photo his client had had to show him. It looked more like costume jewelry than anything remotely expensive — the chain definitely wasn’t real silver, and the purple stone seated at the end of it probably wasn’t worth anything. Its only value was in its sentimentality, which of course made Emilio more determined to find it. He didn’t give a shit about expensive jewelry, but he cared about a necklace that clearly meant something to a teary-eyed teenager. “Not even sure a metal detector would find it. Pretty sure it’s got more plastic than metal in it.” 

–

Oh this just got far more interesting, Anita thought. A child hired him. So he was either sentimental or a fool; or worse, a sentimental fool. She trudged through the swamp water closer towards him, the movements getting more difficult the closer she got to shore as the mud got denser. The necklace looked a bit gaudy. Not something she would ever wear around a swamp if it held any value: emotional or monetary. Standing closer to the man, Anita felt like there was something about this guy that was familiar. She couldn’t place why, yet, but she knew she would figure it out. 

Anita scanned the area around them briefly, already convinced that this was a lost cause. “There are some birds that like to collect shiny things they find. Others that like to use mud to construct their nests. How long ago did this child lose their necklace? Can’t you just go buy her a new one and pretend you found it?” she asked, settling into Spanish without any conscious thought to it.

Looking up at the treelines around them, Anita wondered how likely it was that one of the birds nearby had taken the necklace. Magpies, historic lovers of shiny objects, tended to avoid large wetland areas. Crows were always an option, could never count out those crafty little geniuses. Then she spotted a strange bird. It was large and she was captivated by its purplish plumage. Maybe that was the necklace thief. “I think you should cut your losses, vato.” 

_ 

He was hoping for an easy resolution. Maybe the woman had seen the necklace and picked it up, thinking it was valuable; maybe she’d give it back when she realized it wasn’t. But it was clear from her expression as she looked at the photo that she hadn’t seen the necklace before, and disappointment crawled down his spine like a living thing. He sighed, drawing the phone back to himself and slipping it into his pocket.

There was some relief, at least, when she slipped into Spanish; Emilio might not have been able to solve this case with ease, but at least conversation would be simpler in a language he understood. “A few days ago. Have you seen any birds around that look like they might have snatched it up? I’m not looking to buy her a new one. They probably don’t make any exactly like it anymore, and it’s… important to her. She didn’t give a lot of detail, but I get the sense it belonged to someone she lost.” The photo she’d given him was too zoomed in to tell anything about the person wearing it, but the throat didn’t belong to the girl who’d hired him. There were a few too many wrinkles on the skin for that. 

He followed the woman’s gaze, glancing around the area. The only bird he could see was a large, crane-like creature. He nodded towards it. “That could be something,” he mused, taking a step towards it. The bird turned towards the sound of his uneven footsteps, stretching out its wings. There was something odd about its beak, but Emilio was more focused in the gleam of shiny plastic caught in its feathers. “Shit! There it is!” 

—

“If this necklace was important to her she should have known better than to be wearing it in a swamp.” That didn’t seem to matter much at this rate, however, the child had already done the damage. A fitting lesson in consequences, perhaps, for the budding exploradora. Had she not spotted the strange bird, Anita would likely have been on her way already - back to collecting samples and enjoying her swamp time. But there was something so intriguing about the large creature. 

Anita was no ornithologist, standard or supernatural, nor would she pretend to know all of the species of birds out in the world. She had never seen anything like this one before though. “How peculiar…” she commented as the bird spread its wings out. “It seems equally unlikely that the necklace got caught in its feathers as it does that the bird put it there on purpose.” As if it knew they were looking at it, talking about it, the bird took off from its perch in the trees and began to fly around the air above them. There was something almost metallic about the way the sunrays hit off its beak and feathers. 

The bird had not taken to the sky to fly away, though. After doing a loop, the heron-like creature circled back around and seemed like it was swooping down on a path headed straight for the two of them. “I don’t think it wants to give that necklace back!” Without knowing where it was heading, Anita couldn’t decide if it was smarter to try and get out of the water or to go further into it. Based on anatomy alone this was clearly a bird that seemed built for aquatic activities. In her moment of indecision, the bird dipped down and flew around her - almost as a warning - its feathers brushing against her side. It wasn’t until Anita began to feel water trickle down her leg that she realized the creature had somehow torn her water wader pants. 

_ 

“Probably,” Emilio agreed with a shrug. “But she’s a kid. Kids don’t think about that shit, I guess.” Kids like this — kids without a duty of martyrdom hanging over their heads, kids who would get to grow up and get wrinkles — made stupid mistakes without thinking and got to live to wade through the consequences. It was what Emilio had wanted for Flora, before the world reminded him in brutal fashion that such things couldn’t make a home in the chest of a child who bore his name. He couldn’t do shit for his kid now, but he could find a stupid necklace for this one. And it probably wouldn’t matter much in the long run — she’d lose the necklace again in a month, or break it in a year — but it would make him feel… decent, for a minute or two. Maybe that could count for something.

He wasn’t expecting the woman to stick around after pointing out the bird, really. She seemed disinterested, and Emilio couldn’t fault her for it. After all, she was here doing her own thing, and Emilio hadn’t done much more than get in her way. But she seemed interested in the bird, somehow, and Emilio figured it wouldn’t hurt to have another set of hands to help him wrangle it. “Does a bird do anything on purpose? It’s a bird.” Emilio snorted, half amused. But then, the bird was flying, and he was scrambling just a little. Wading through the swamp and not finding the necklace would have been annoying, but seeing it and not getting it back would only serve to piss him off. 

But the bird wasn’t flying away; instead, it was circling back towards them, swooping down. Emilio cursed, scrambling after the woman as the bird dove towards them. There was something undeniably strange about it, the way the sun gleamed off it, but it didn’t matter much. What mattered the most was the stupid necklace. Emilio made a brief grab for it, but the bird was out of reach in a moment, circling back around for another swoop. “I don’t give a shit if it wants to give us the necklace back,” he ground out. “I’m getting it back.” He glanced down, making note of the rip in the woman’s pants before looking back to the way the bird reflected the sun. “Something weird about it. What weapons have you got on you?” He was assuming she had some, at least, given the fact that she was wandering around in a swamp in Wicked’s Rest alone and didn’t seem like an idiot.

—

Anita couldn’t help but scoff at the ignorance of the man’s comment. “You think animals cannot act with purpose?” But she didn’t have to go into a lecture about how wrong he was, fortunately, the bird decided to show off its self determination right there. She found it quite amusing to watch him scramble as the creature dove down and around them as he swatted at the jewelry dangling from its wings. It was possibly the least graceful thing she had seen happen in water. 

As perturbed as Anita was that the bird had, somehow, ruined her favorite swamp wading pants she was infinitely more intrigued by the question of how it had done so. “Well, you’re determined I’ll give you that. Even if your determination is delusional.” Her eyes stayed on the bird, watching it as it circled them - both sizing one another up it seemed. Truly she couldn't care less about the investigators quest for the necklace, however, Anita wanted to see what was going to happen so she decided to stick around. “Weapons? I know you are not going to kill this beautiful creature just to retrieve a necklace …” 

_ 

Emilio had always been good at saying the wrong thing. It seemed that talent was rearing its head now, too, pissing off a woman he’d just met by making a blanket statement about animals she seemed to find offensive. Emilio grimaced, preparing himself to sit through some annoying rant about how animals were smarter than people thought or something. He wondered if he ought to introduce her to the bat guy. Maybe they’d get along. 

Luckily, though, the bird saved him from the lecture with its attempt to take his damn head off.

Unluckily, his attempt to snatch the necklace back came up short.

Cursing quietly, he kept an eye on the bird so he wouldn’t lose sight of it. “Delusional works better in this town than it does anywhere else,” he replied flatly, watching the bird circle. It didn’t seem as if it was going to fly away, at least. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a relief, given the way it was dive bombing them, but it was. The necklace was important. Emilio didn’t want to lose it. (Fucking kids. He always got a little too ‘determined’ when kids were involved.) “I’m going to get the necklace from it. If I have to kill it to do that, I have to kill it. Natural order, yes? Survival of the fittest, whatever.”

—

“Survival of the fittest has to do with evolutionary progression. How does being killed because a little child lost a cheap necklace help this species evolve? Grow? Get better?”  It wasn’t a perfectly accurate recounting of Darwinism, but Anita was feeling more inclined to continue disagreeing with this man than actually educating him. “If anything, losing her necklace will help this girl learn to be more careful with her things. Survival of the fittest in that sense.” 

The bird kept circling the two of them, as if it had decided that they were invaders that needed to be taken care of - or at the very least taught a lesson. As much as she dreaded agreeing with his plan or killing this creature, Anita did in fact subscribe to survival of the fittest mentality. And she was undoubtedly the fittest. 

“Well what about you? What weapons do you have on you? I’ve got some stuff I could make do with but nothing very, uh, traditional, I suppose.” 

_ 

“It will teach the next bird not to try to take my head off,” he replied. “See? Lessons learned.” He disliked the idea of letting the kid lose the necklace; Juliana’s ring hanging around his neck seemed to burn his skin, brushing against the stake charm Teddy had gotten him where they sat on the chain beneath his shirt. The necklace was important to the kid; it didn’t mean shit to the bird. This wasn’t a lesson he thought she needed to learn. “She’s had enough hard lessons, I think. Maybe it’s better if the world gives her a break this time.” Kids deserved that. Kids might have been the only people who deserved that.

At least the bird was doing its part to prove that his plan was the best way forward, even if it was doing so by making obvious plans to take another dive at them both. Emilio liked being proven right enough that he didn’t mind the method with which the proof was offered. If he had to dodge bird attacks while knowing that he was correct, he’d do so gladly. 

“Knives,” he replied, pulling one out. He made no mention of the stakes; there was no shiver down his spine warning him that the bird was undead, so they wouldn’t be of much use, anyway. And bringing them out would be revealing a little more than he’d like to, to a stranger. “What ‘stuff’ do you have? I think we can use anything we can get.” 

—

It wasn’t surprising when the man pulled out a knife, or indicated that he was carrying more than one on him. There wasn’t much about the occupants of this town that surprised Anita. The bird kept swooping down at them, its motions and movements seeming to turn from just threats towards preparation for offensive action. She did not trust this man to pull out her real weapon, herself in true form, but it was evident that she was too vulnerable in her current state. 

Turning her backpack around so she could dig through it, there really wasn’t much that could qualify as a weapon. Anita pulled out a bag of breadcrumbs, which she had brought to feed some of the wildlife she encountered during the day, knowing it was unfortunately the best “weapon” other than trying to hit it with her camera which she was not willing to sacrifice. “I can try and blind it, I guess. Or maybe it will get distracted by food.” 

What she had really wanted to pull out was her fangs, or her tail to just reach up and grab the damn bird, but Anita did not have enough skin in the game right now to risk out-ing herself to this man - or any nearby hunters - in his efforts to kill this bird and get that necklace. 

_ 

The bird made a swoop towards them, and Emilio struck out with his knife only for it to bounce off the thing’s feathers with the distinct sound of metal crashing against metal. He cursed, pulling his hand back and narrowly avoiding losing the damn limb to the bird’s hungry beak. 

The woman was digging in her backpack, and Emilio grunted in response to her suggestions. “Knives don’t seem to be doing shit,” he commented. “Not sure how easy it’ll be to blind it, or what it eats. Breadcrumbs might not be in its diet.” It seemed more interested in eating the pair of them, really, which wasn’t something Emilio loved the idea of. 

The bird was flying circles, clearly preparing to make another swoop. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to do it quick. Maybe if I can get the knife between the feathers…” He trailed off, knowing the idea was an unlikely one. Running no longer seemed like an option, either, even if he’d wanted to (which he didn’t). Flying would allow the bird to move a lot faster than the two of them could trudging through the swamp. If the woman left him and his bad leg behind, she’d have a much better shot. Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted to point this out.

—

As could have been expected, given how sharp the feathers had been when they cut through her waders, they seemed to afford the creature protection from the knife. Anita knew that the breadcrumbs weren’t going to be effective, but already having prepped the attempt she was also sort of curious as to what was going to happen. As the bird circled around her, foolishly not perceiving her as the more direct threat between the two of them standing in the water, she opened the bag and tossed its contents in the direction of the bird's face as it passed by. 

“Okay… fine… that did nothing,” she conceded as she moved closer to the man with his knives as he was brainstorming. Anita did not know what this bird was but she knew that it was supernatural and that the other did not seem to be phased by that. If he was going to get the knife in between the feathers, they were only going to get one shot so it needed to really count. Sighing heavily, Anita knew what she needed to do. 

Reaching towards his arm that held the knife, she brought it towards herself as she let her teeth transform into fangs. “Don’t let any of this get into your bloodstream, yeah?” Anita warned as she let venom drip down from her fangs so it coated the blade of his knife. Frowning now, and singing again for good measure, she released her hold on his arm and took a few steps away. 

The bird seemed to be checking on a tree everytime it flew away from the two of them, maybe guarding a nest? Anita started walking towards it, not thrilled about the idea of putting herself in harms way just to assist him in this strange quest. “It seems to keep circling back around to check on that tree over there. Try and catch it when it’s distracted… don’t waste your shot. Or … your stab or whatever.”  

_ 

As expected, the breadcrumbs were… ineffective. It would have been a nice surprise to see them somehow save the day, but Emilio wasn’t really one for optimism. He grimaced as the bird paid no attention to them at all. “Any more ideas?” He was stuck. Problems he couldn’t solve with something sharp were never his favorite problems to face, after all.

She reached for his arm, and Emilio tensed briefly before allowing her to pull the knife towards herself. He had more, after all, and it wasn’t as if it was doing him much good. If she wanted one, he was more than happy to share. Except… she brought the knife up towards her mouth, and the motion made little sense to him. It made less sense when her teeth sharpened into fangs. She wasn’t undead; he would have known if she was, would have sensed it long before the bird was in the sky at all. 

Something dripped onto the blade, and then he was pulling his arm back to himself as her grip released. He eyed the substance on the blade dubiously, glancing between it and the woman with a furrowed brow. Don’t let any of this get into your bloodstream, she’d warned. It wasn’t the kind of thing Emilio needed to be told twice. He held the knife at arm’s length, looking up at the sky.

The bird was circling, paying extra attention to a nearby tree. It made its movements easy enough to track, to predict. Jaw set in a determined line, Emilio nodded. He had one shot at this with whatever she’d put on the knife; he couldn’t guarantee a second. He waited until the bird started its path over, reared back his arm, and threw the knife. It sailed through the air, striking the bird between the wings and going in far easier than it had before. Whatever she’d added to the knife, there was no denying its effectiveness as the bird fell from the sky.

—

Stepping back, both to give herself a better vantage of what was about to happen and to get out of the line of fire, Anita watched as the bird circled around again briefly diverting its attention from the two of them and to the tree it seemed to be attached to. Her eyes darted between the man and his knife and the creature, as she slowly backed out of the shallow water while she awaited some sort of action. 

His arm pulled back, the knife gripped expertly, and with a force that she imagined required exceptional strength the blade soared through the air and actually managed to close the distance between them and the bird. Anita was pleasantly surprised when she heard a slight shriek from the creature, cut short undoubtedly by the fast-acting venom that started working to incapacitate the bird. 

It was thankfully not the kind of creature that enjoyed immunity to venomous neurotoxins. Feeling content that the threat had been eliminated, Anita let her fangs shift away and she stopped her slow retreat from the area. “Nice aim.” She figured he deserved one, singular compliment for the work he had done. Without waiting to see what he was going to do next, she began walking towards where the creature had fallen. “I’m a scientist. I know how to dispose of this bird’s body safely. It can’t simply be left here, people could get sick. You should retrieve your necklace now, and wash it thoroughly before giving it back to that child.” Mostly she just wanted him to leave now, but thought saying so too directly might make him suspicious. 

_ 

A curt nod was the only response to the compliment. Emilio knew he had good aim; anything else had never really been an option. Hearing it from a stranger didn’t fill him with anything more than apathy, these days. Besides, he was far more interested in claiming his prize than he was basking in a compliment that was little more than stating the obvious… even if part of him was interested in knowing more about the woman who’d delivered it.

Her fangs disappeared as if they’d never been there at all. If not for the substance on the knife that had made it glide between armored feathers with ease, Emilio might have wondered if his addled mind was playing tricks on him, inventing scenarios that weren’t quite real. He fell into step beside her as she waded through the water, grimacing a little at the way his bad leg protested the uneven terrain with each and every step. Now that the adrenaline of killing the bird was dying down, he was sure he’d be feeling the effects of this ‘hike’ more and more.

But first, he had a necklace to retrieve. As they approached the bird’s corpse, Emilio leaned down. He pulled the blade from between its feathers, holding it out towards the woman. He couldn’t risk putting it in his pocket without contaminating everything else in there, and he couldn’t wash it in the murky water without knowing what was on it. He’d let her deal with it; he had plenty more knives. With his other hand, he untangled the necklace from the dead bird’s beak, shoving it into his pocket. At home, he’d wash it in the sink, soak it in alcohol. “Appreciate the assist,” he said to the woman, standing carefully. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me how you did that?”

—

They walked in silence towards the corpse of the creature after her comment, which was rather pleasant. While there were questions she wanted to ask, the curiosity fueling them was not strong enough to want to prolong the interaction any further. Watching him reach for the knife and then present it to her, Anita accepted it with a puzzled expression. He could have just left it in the bird if he was going to give it to her. It was a nice looking knife, though, so she wasn’t exactly going to complain about getting to keep it. 

“Yeah, well, by that point the bird clearly lumped me in with you and saw us both as threats. I did it to not die, not specifically to assist you with your necklace quest.”  Anita had expected a question about her venom but hadn’t thought to prepare a response to it. He didn’t seem overly shocked by it, even if he didn’t understand what she had done. Just as he wasn’t overly shocked by this bird. Anita looked at the necklace in his hands, then up into his eyes. There was something that told her he wasn’t going to challenge an outright lie. 

“Dental implants. Can fill the little capsules with anything. Guess we’re lucky I went with deadly venom this morning and not cabernet sauvignon, huh?” Anita shrugged a bit, a defiant look in her eyes as she practically challenged him to call her on her bullshit. But with him holding the necklace that he had come here searching for, and her now holding the knife that was still coated in her venom, she doubted that challenge would come. 

_ 

It didn’t matter much why she’d decided to assist him instead of leaving him behind, though he’d wager a guess that it wasn’t just self preservation that kept her in place. After all, wouldn’t it have been easier for her to make a run for it? Emilio wasn’t particularly fast; his bad leg was an obvious, glaring weakness. He had no doubt that she’d seen it. (Though, given his general default level of paranoia and his hyper-awareness surrounding the mangled limb, he tended to figure most people saw it before anything else.) Still, if she wanted to claim she’d stayed for her own self interests, he wouldn’t call her out on it.

He wouldn’t call her out on the obvious lie about her teeth, either, though his expression made it clear that he didn’t buy the excuse. She wasn’t human. Once upon a time, that would have been enough to find Emilio drawing a second knife from his pocket. Now, though, he only stepped away from the dead bird with a shrug. “Guess so,” he agreed, fiddling absently with the necklace in his pocket. “Well, I’ve got what I came for. Name’s Emilio, by the way. Something tells me I’ll be seeing you.” And with that, and with the necklace in hand, he was off. It wasn’t often these days that he finished a case with something that felt like a win. He figured some kind of celebration might do him good.

[formersacrifice]

PARTIES: Emilio @vengeancedemon and Wynne @formersacrifice LOCATION: Gallow's Grove TIMING: Present day (June 4th) CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of past familial death (all kinds, because Emilio), emotional abuse (cult/hunter type) SUMMARY: Wynne is walking home from work. Emilio is stalking prey. Their paths cross in a cemetery.

The cemetery was quiet. There were a few noises here and there — birds chirping, the breeze in the trees, the cars on the nearby roadway — but for the most part, the cemetery was quiet. When he was alive, Emilio had been at this particular graveyard often. It was near his apartment, it was prone to infestation, it was crowded and understaffed and generally a shitty place to be buried. He considered whether he might have ended up here if he’d stayed dead after the alley, but the thought was dismissed easily enough. Teddy would have buried him somewhere nice, because Teddy was bad at letting go. They would have found him a nice grave, a big tombstone. They would have visited him daily, probably. 

But Emilio hadn’t managed to die the right way, and so he was here instead. He was in the kind of cemetery where he belonged, among crumbling headstones and scattered, less sentient undead things. He couldn’t feel them the way he used to, but he had no doubt that they were here. Wandering between the graves, buried within them. No cemetery was ever as empty as it seemed. 

He leaned against a statue, pulling smoke into his useless lungs and trying not to think about the cemetery with Rosemary, the way she’d trapped him against a grave. He was a dead thing in a place full of dead things. That was as true now as it had been then, but he was glad to have no one to remind him. He was glad to have a stake clutched between his fingers, glad at the opportunity to use it even if he still couldn’t be as effective as he had been in life. He thought he was glad to be alone, but he wasn’t certain of that. Something in him ached, still. The pain ebbed and flowed like water, soaking every part of him. He didn’t know how to combat it.

A twig snapped nearby, but the gait wasn’t right to be anything shuffling around on dead legs. It was something more sentient, and so Emilio planned to ignore it. He doubted anyone would approach him here, doubted anyone would see a stranger smoking in a graveyard and assume they wanted conversation. But luck was never on Emilio’s side, and when the figure walking by got close enough for him to make out, it wasn’t a stranger at all. He wasn’t sure why Wynne was in Worm Row, didn’t know if they were looking for him or if they had some other business here, but the sight of them filled his chest with guilt and grief. Better, he thought, to try to duck away before he was seen. 

He pushed off the statue where he leaned, ready to duck his head and walk off towards the Wormwoods. But his miscalculated the sturdiness of the statue. He should have known better, really; in a cemetery like this one, there was no one doing any sort of upkeep. There was no one making certain that the statues were secure, no one ensuring that things were set up to last. The statue needed only a slight push to lose its balance and fall to the ground, and the sound of it landing echoed through the quiet cemetery loud enough to startle the birds into leaving and certainly loud enough to draw Wynne’s attention to the source.

—

Wynne liked their bicycle. It got them places relatively fast, offered them a little workout and was a good alternative to driving a car — which often made them stressed. A bike just had a steering wheel, brakes and a bell to ring. A car, however? It came with a lot of extra buttons and functions, as well as the risk of getting into a more serious accident. But sometimes, even cycling took too much mental capacity, and those times they preferred to walk.

Tonight was one of those nights. They were on their way home from work, crossing through town with their bike on their side, taking steady steps towards the dormitories. It was a long walk, and they might ride some of the last stretch, but for now they were glad for the rhythm of their feet on the ground. One foot after the other, just like life. Besides, it was nice to walk around some of the familiar corners of Worm Row — a place that had been their first home since abandoning their old one. Crossing through Gallows Grove was a risk, but they had always liked the state of things there. Sometimes when they walked through it, they imagined one of the headstones was dedicated to their brother. It was easier than to remember where his remains had ended up in stead. (A demon’s belly.)

They had taken precautions, of course. Wynne had pulled their cross necklace from where it usually hid, putting it on display on their striped shirt. They had their knife on them, sheathed but ready. Both gifts from Emilio, though they were actively trying not to think of him as they passed through a graveyard where he had most certainly hunted before, in the neighborhood where they had been neighbors, close to the woods where they had first met. It was hard not to think of him. It seemed their mind was intent on getting stuck on him. Especially when they worried they should have brought a stake as well.

Lost in worries about Emilio and the potential precarious situations that could arise in a graveyard post-dusk, they were easily startled. It was ironic — the way they got so lost in their head about the risks that they became more easily targeted by said risks. When the sound of stone hitting stone and then ground echoed through the air, they nearly jumped out of their skin. Wynne dropped their bike, grabbed the handle of their knife and unsheathed it, turning quickly towards the sound.

They froze. Relief spread through them, but so did dread. Emilio stood there and they stared at him, and he stared back. They swallowed, but it seemed to take hours before they finished, throat lodged with something sharp. The knife in their hand felt ridiculous. “It’s – it’s just you.” He had scared them, or rather, the noise he’d made had. But he had scared them, back in the apartment. They looked at the ground, at the source of the sound. “Oh. Oh, no that’s unfortunate.” What was? The situation at hand, or the ruined grave?

—

He froze as the sound echoed through the quiet cemetery, a rush of feelings ramming into him all at once. There was guilt for the broken stone on the ground, though the family whose loved one was buried in the grave beneath it would likely never know even if they were still living. Gallow’s Grove was not a place where people tended to visit their deceased loved ones; if anything, it was a place to plant bodies to be forgotten, a place to stash things you no longer wanted to see or think about. And still, Emilio felt guilty for breaking the statue. Still, he wondered about the body buried beneath it, felt the need to send a silent apology to a name so faded on the stone that he couldn’t even attempt to make out the letters. 

The guilt was not alone, though the force of it distracted him momentarily from the other emotions sauntering into the awful party taking place in his empty chest. There was anxiety, its thrum present even without a heartbeat to pick up at the feel of it. There was grief, a constant companion that sat in his ribs and rattled them like bars on a cage. More guilt, too, directed at Wynne instead of the cold corpses beneath his feet, even if the apology delivered to them was just as silent. 

He stared as they turned towards him, unsheathing a familiar knife. His eyes were drawn to it, the memory of gifting it to them an easy one to bring up in his mind. He’d never been much good at gift-giving, never quite understood birthdays. Hearing about Wynne’s, seeing that giving gifts in celebration of it was a standard thing, he’d panicked just a little. He didn’t regret the decision to gift them Victor’s old knife, though; seeing how natural it looked in their hand, knowing they carried it with them on nights when they were out in places where monsters roamed… It felt good, in spite of the other emotions swirling around in his chest.

The knife stayed out as Wynne’s mind caught up to the situation, and Emilio’s gaze focused on it as to avoid focusing on Wynne. They would put it away any minute now, he knew, with an embarrassed expression and an apologetic glance. He wanted to advise them to keep it out, wanted to tell them that they might need it, but it felt like saying more than he wanted to say. Wynne was in a graveyard with a monster, and he wasn’t sure it mattered that the monster was one who loved them. It was a monster all the same. A better man would have at least made them aware of the fact. 

“It’s just me,” he replied, flat and lifeless. (How fitting, he thought bitterly.) “I was leaving.” His eyes were pulled to the broken statue, the guilt stabbing through him again. “Wasn’t… sturdy. Fell when I moved.” I’m sorry, he wanted to add, but he didn’t know who the apology would have been for. For Wynne, who looked sad at the sight of him? For the long dead owner of the grave, who had died correctly and would never hear it? The words wouldn’t have been enough to make up what he owed Wynne, and they’d be lost on the rotting corpse, so he buried them beneath his tongue with a scowl. “You’re… in a graveyard. At night. That’s… You shouldn’t do that.” 

—

Back on the shores of Moosehead lake, there was no graveyard. The Protherians did not bury their dead: they burned them if they hadn’t been sacrificed to the demon, spreading their ashes in the water and keeping some in urns. There were no graves. There was only the altar and the remains. No gravestones with epitaphs, no central location to share in grief, no place like this. It seemed so much kinder, to dedicate a plot of soil to a body whose spirit had left it. To choose a headstone, to place text on it to commemorate something about them, to leave things at it. Like how they did at the place Cass had died, which was a naturally formed grave but one all the same.

Wynne wondered what had happened to the dead in Emilio’s life. Had they been buried, or burned? Or had there been nothing left, like with their brother? They knew why he sought out cemeteries, and that it wasn’t for sentimental reasons primarily, but rather because they tended to crawl with vampires and whatnot. But still, it was impossible to not think of ones own grief when surrounded with so many pieces dedicated to mourning. Even if there were monstrous creatures around, it tugged at something.

They stared at the statue on the ground, as it was easier than trying to read Emilio’s expression. It would be, as it often was, a mix of ugly things. Grief and guilt and anger, muted by the exhaustion of all three. They knew the expression well. They wore it sometimes, too.

Who had chosen this statue? What was the significance of it? Had the person who had been alive liked it, or had they had no say in it? Who would fix it? Would the relatives do it, or would Wynne return to this place to try their hand at it? It should be doable, to fix the statue once more. Maybe not in a perfect way, but it would be something at the very least. They swallowed thickly. Things could be fixed.

And so they looked back up at Emilio with that thought in the front of their mind. “Sometimes things break,” they said quietly. Sometimes the person you looked up to for protection yelled at you, unleashing emotions that shouldn’t exist because of him. Sometimes things broke. And then they would try to mend. “I was just … cutting through. On my way home. It’s nice here. I mean — I know.” They sounded very serious. “I know it is dangerous.” And he cared still. He didn’t have to say it for them to know it. It was most likely because he cared for them that he had severed himself out of their life — even if to Wynne that seemed like a very wrong way of caring. He cared, and yet he had yelled at them.

Sometimes things broke. Sometimes they could be fixed.

They sheathed their knife, looked at their fallen bike. “If you are leaving anyway, and it is dangerous for me to be alone…” They felt like a trickster. But they wanted to fix something here and they didn’t have materials for the statue. “You could always walk me out.”

—

Sometimes things break. They said it, and something broke in him, too, shattered with the same impressive sound as the statue hitting the ground. He looked at the stones, the way they had separated from themselves. Some of the cracks were small, but some were larger. Some of the pieces looked like they could be glued back together, but others were so broken that they looked more like dust than stone. Sometimes things broke. But, where Emilio was involved, it didn’t quite feel like sometimes. Sometimes things broke, but for Emilio, it felt like things did nothing else. Like it was inevitable, like everything he built was little more than a prelude to something shattering. 

He did not look at Wynne, though he suspected if he’d been brave enough to do so, they might have looked something like the broken statue on the ground. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Emilio wasn’t just good at breaking things. He was good at breaking people, too. He tried not to remember Wynne’s face in his apartment when he had yelled at them, but it was hard to remember anything else. He heard his own voice, raised and angry, and he saw them flinch. It played over the sound of the statue falling, the sound of it shattering matching up with the gentle way they’d closed the door on their way out. He thought he liked the statue more, thought it was better. It was terrible, to disrupt someone’s final place of resting. It was disrespectful. And yet, Emilio would rather hurt the dead than the living. It was better to shatter someone who couldn’t forgive you after. Forgiveness, he often thought, was the worst part. It hollowed him out like hatred never could.

He wanted to ask Wynne where they were on their way home from. Why were they in Worm Row so late at night? He didn’t think they’d been by his apartment again, though he hadn’t been there to know for sure. He thought they might have mentioned it if they had. Something else, then? Visiting a friend they’d made when they’d lived in the neighborhood, or attending some event? He spared a quick glance in their direction, not to meet their eyes but to see how they were dressed. Black and white stripes, with a black hat on their head. Not their usual style, was it? He looked away just as quickly. 

He didn’t think he had the right to question why they were here, though he felt anxious at their presence. The cemetery was full of things that could hurt them — and wasn’t Emilio included on that list? He saw another brief flash of the memory, their face when his voice bounced off the walls. He was the most dangerous thing in this cemetery, even now. Nothing here could hurt them as badly as he had. 

But they asked him to walk them out, anyway. And it was a good move. It was a good move, because they both knew how Emilio’s mind worked. They both knew that he would worry after them if they left alone, they both knew that he would be left in a quiet panic until the next time he saw them post online to prove that they were in one piece. It was a good move. A smart one. Emilio swallowed, still staring at the broken statue. “Okay,” he agreed quietly, nodding his head. “Sure. To the edge of the cemetery.” 

Was it selfish? He remembered Eve in the bugganes’ burrow, remembered the anger burning in her eyes that had no real direction. He’d thought he was helping her, been convinced of it even as he was enjoying his meal, and all he’d accomplished was to make her feel used. Wasn’t that what he was capable of now, what he was bound to do? A monster could only be benevolent until it was hungry, and Emilio would need another meal sooner rather than later. So was it selfish, to let the monster escort Wynne from the graveyard without showing them its teeth? Was it cruel to let them cling to a corpse whose heartbeat had left it weeks ago? He knew the answer. He fell into step beside them, anyway.

—

Were they supposed to be happy with this compromise? He wasn’t leaving them alone now, was agreeing with their proposition. They had gotten what they wanted, but it felt like a useless victory. He was going to walk them to the edge of the cemetery, drawing a clear line in the sand. They would go to there and no further. That was where this reunion would go and where it would end. Maybe Wynne could make it so that he would walk with them further, but they were hesitant to push him now. They remembered how he had sounded when he yelled at them. 

Even now, they didn’t hold it against him. It was their greatest weakness and strength simultaneously — their ability to forgive. There were parts within them that would always forgive their parents for what they had failed to do for them (though never for what they had done to Iwan), parts within them that had forgiven their elders at the commune, and almost all of them had forgiven their cousins and friends from back there. And if they could be granted their forgiveness in the quiet of their bedroom, then Emilio would certainly receive it. Especially because with him, it could still mean something. If he let it. If he somehow found a way to walk farther with them than just the edge of the cemetery.

They leaned down to pick up their bike again. It felt heavier than ever and they clutched the handlebars tightly, the whites of their knuckles the only sign of frustration they dared give off. Wynne didn’t want to let Emilio know how hurt they were. He knew, even without them putting it out there. There was no point in repeating it, in pointing out of unfair all of this was on them and on Teddy. 

These were instinctive responses. They knew how to handle angry people, even if they weren’t the cause of their anger, even if their anger was unfair. They knew how to remain calm, even if they felt like they were going to fall to pieces. They knew how to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, even though they really just wanted to scream into the endless void that was the sky, asking something out there why things were as they were. Wynne had grown in the time gone from the commune, but their nature was not so easily changed. They would always fall back in line. The meek sheep, compliant and testing the boundaries with a solemn shyness. Never going too far. 

They started to walk, looking sideways at Emilio. He was quiet. So were they. It was in the unsaid things that they had found each other most after all, but it wasn’t the same of comfortable silence that had lived between them before. Like on those afternoons where he took out the bike and they rushed past the coast, eating homemade sandwiches in silence before going back. 

There were unspoken things now too, but they weren’t the same ones as before. The air was thick with it. “Were you hunting?” It was a simple question. A safe one. They didn’t ask what they really wanted to ask — the why of it all. Especially not the how could you of it all. They just got him back, even if it was just to the edge of the cemetery. They didn’t want to push him away again. “I should start bringing stakes to work.” A beat. “Oh. I work here now. Not – here. In Worm Row.” Metzli had fired them and gone cold. Emilio was half gone himself. Wynne gripped their bike even tighter. Another instinct they had honed: ignoring their righteous anger.

—

Death was meant to put things into perspective. That was how people always talked about it, at least. People spoke as though death was the ultimate eye-opening experience. Your life would play out before you like a movie, the greatest hits spliced together in a highlight reel. You’d catch sight of old friends you’d stopped speaking to years ago, of family members who’d gone to their graves before you. You were meant to find some solace in it, at the end of things. You were meant to rest in peace. The world, without you in it, was meant to continue its spin, even if it felt frozen for everyone who’d loved you. To die, according to most of the kinder interpretations, was to know, at last, the end of pain. 

But whoever had said that had clearly never died before.

Death had put nothing into perspective for Emilio. He hadn’t been rewarded for his efforts with a playlist of all his best moments, hadn’t had his eyes open or found any peace. Even before he rose up from the dead, death was brutal. It was terrifying. There was no glory in it, no peace. There was nothing good about dying, and there was certainly nothing good about what happened after.

And it would have been easier, he thought, if he could open up about it now. If he could tell Wynne, plainly and carefully, what had happened to him. They would understand, at least to some extent. Perhaps it wasn’t something that anyone could understand without dying themselves — Emilio certainly hadn’t, despite his many brushes with death — but Wynne would open their mind and try, with everything they had, to understand the parts of it that they were capable of understanding. He knew that. That was the worst part. He couldn’t blame this on fear of rejection, couldn’t pretend, as he had with Jade, that he was worried about Wynne putting a knife to his throat and ending them both. Wynne loved him, and they would love him, still, even without a heartbeat in his chest. 

He could have told them. He knew he could have told them. But to tell them meant to say it. There was no way to tell the story without telling it, and telling it wasn’t something he knew how to do. In the immediate aftermath, in Eve’s van, rage and grief had allowed him to say the words. I’m dead. I died. He hadn’t been able to manage them since. He’d always hated the flowery language people surrounded death with, always hated phrases like passed away and left us and crossed over, but the brutality of plain language was an ache in his chest now. 

He died. He died. Alone and afraid, with his own knife in his chest. And if he told Wynne, they would grieve with him. They would understand. But if he didn’t tell them, then he was still alive. If he didn’t tell them, then someone still believed he was more than an empty corpse. It was selfish, he knew, to hold onto that. It was selfish to walk them out of the graveyard when he knew he would walk them no further, selfish to stay in town when he couldn’t let himself talk to any of the people who loved him, selfish to continue to exist like this instead of doing what a better slayer would have done and marching into the 3 Daggers to find someone to end the story. It was all so goddamn selfish. But Emilio had always been a selfish man. Emilio had always been less than what people wanted him to be, what they needed him to be. And so, he fell into step beside Wynne, and he pretended he was alive. It was shitty, but so was he. 

He cleared his throat as they spoke, nodding his head. “Yeah,” he replied. “Uh, just… keeping things clear.” Not as well as he used to. Even being a step up from starving after his last encounter with Eve, he was weaker than he’d been as a human. It would take time to build himself up, time and more meals that he wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue, but he was stronger now than he’d been in Eve’s van or in the cave with Owen. He stood a chance against most things now, at least.

Before they corrected themself, he had a moment of panic at the thought of Wynne being employed in the cemetery, but that thought was quickly squashed. He sighed a quiet relief, nodding his head. “Stakes aren’t a bad idea,” he agreed. “Uh, holy water, too. And… other things. Iron. That kind of stuff.” It felt awkward in a way things with Wynne hadn’t since their earliest encounters, when Emilio was still the angry man who lived down the hall and Wynne was still quietly leaving food outside his door. “Do you… like the new job?”

—

Jade had said there was a reason for his distance. Something was going on and he was being noble the only way Emilio knew how to be — in a stupid manner. Something had irreparably changed and thus, he was trying to irreparably damage the ties that bound them together. This much Wynne could understand on paper. In theory, this was how people acted, but in practice it was much harder to swallow. 

There had been a time – the majority of their life, really – where they didn’t ask why. To ask such questions was simply not an option back at the commune. When they did, they were met with various flavors of violence, some literal and some metaphorical. So they had stopped asking why, because they didn’t want to be hurt, chastised or frozen out. Silence had been a weapon there and it was one now, an invisible knife held in Emilio’s scarred hands. They knew he didn’t intend to hurt them, but he did. With his silence. With the unanswered messages. With the raised voice. And with this, too. The way he answered their questions now, but only because they were simpler ones. Back at home, it hadn’t been like all questions were off limits. You could ask about plenty, but never dig too deep, try to uncover too much, lest you seemed uncertain of the doctrine that life depended on.

He was out hunting, giving them advice on how to stay safe. It was familiar, but the way a dream was. Vague and not entirely rooted in reality, causing a gut feeling that could not go ignored. They wanted to ask why. They wanted to ask what had happened, what had changed, why he could tell Jade but not Teddy or them. Wynne kept walking.

“That’s good,” they said. At least he was still hunting. At least that hadn’t changed. The cemetery was a dangerous place, but safer with Emilio in it. Just like their life, they supposed — even though they seemed to disagree on that. They clutched the steering wheel, looking ahead and hoping that nothing would disturb them. Not only because they were afraid of vampires (they certainly were), but because there was something in the air between them and Emilio. A distant calm. A quiet acceptance. For at least this walk, he would talk to them. He would be near them again.

They could make a stake, that was easy enough. Surely there was a place in town where they could get an iron knife (though they didn’t want to start carrying more than one). But the other thing: ��I don’t know how to make holy water,” they admitted quietly, wondering if there was a recipe or if they would have to go to someone Christian to get it. Wynne knew biblical stories, but very little of actual church rituals and traditions. Those had died in the commune years ago. They had not spoken of holy things any more — there was the demon and its blessings, the worship and devotion, but holiness was gone.

They lifted their shoulders, “No.” They hadn’t really said that out loud yet. They did not like how weird the hotel was. They did not like cleaning rooms of people who didn’t bother to clean up after themselves even a little. They did not like how quiet it was, and thus left them alone with their thoughts. But they were there for a reason. It had to be connected to the Stripes. “But it’s a job. I make good money.” 

Their bike kept rolling down the path as they continued trotting on. They slowed slightly, wanting to elongate the interaction, even if it was painful and awkward. “So,” they began, wondering if they were brave enough to ask why now. Last time it hadn’t gone well. There was no indication it would go well this time. “How … are you?”

—

He didn’t like lying. He’d never been particularly good at it, for starters. His mother hadn’t seen it fit to teach her children to lie, because why should she? The skill might have been a necessary one for wardens, who often fought with their words far more than their bodies, but it wasn’t something slayers needed. Slaying was a physical, straightforward thing. The undead weren’t known for being honest, but they didn’t play tricks the way fae might. They were simple in their brutality, and slayers were simple in the violence of their response to it. You stick a stake in something’s chest; you remove a head from a neck. Most of it didn’t require speech at all, much less dishonest speech. Emilio, though not a man prone to idle chitchat by anyone else, was often too chatty for Elena. His wry humor grated on her, his tendency to speak when silence would do the trick just fine irritated her. She’d disliked most of the things he said, but even she couldn’t quite call him a liar. Emilio was many things, but he tended to be honest underneath them all — even when that honest was brutal and unkind.

And yet, in this graveyard with Wynne, he felt like a liar. Technically, the lies he’d told them were only ones of omission. Not telling the truth wasn’t strictly the same as lying, but Emilio disliked the semantics. He disliked the fact that it was coming up at all in regards to his relationship with Wynne, which had always been an honest one. He’d been the one to open their eyes to much of the supernatural world, after all. He’d told them about Mexico, about his siblings. He’d told them about Juliana, about Flora. They were one of the few people who knew every chapter of his story, and now he’d shut them out of the ending. He’d told them no lies, but he hadn’t shared the truth, either. And there was an ache that came with that, a painful throb. It left him to wonder if the part of him that was honest had died in that alley when his heart stopped, if this thing that he was now was a liar in a way the person he’d been before hadn’t been.

That’s good, they said, and he nodded. “Yeah,” he replied hoarsely, and that was a lie, too. It wasn’t good; not really. He thought of a cemetery just like this one, where a single spawn tackled him to the ground and Rosemary, in a bid to help, kept him there unknowingly. He thought of the cave with Owen, where he’d been so easily disarmed and trapped in place. He was hard to kill now, but he wasn’t hard to stop. He’d had that proven to him over and over again, would keep having it spelled out until he managed to kill or hurt enough people to earn his strength back. (And what sort of a tradeoff was that? He’d always been a weapon, but it no longer felt like he was one that served a higher cause. With this setup, he felt like a blade that served only itself.

Wynne didn’t know how to make holy water and, a few months ago, Emilio would have offered to help them. He couldn’t bless it himself — he wasn’t a priest, nor did he want to be — but he knew how to get an endless supply of it, had a contact who ensured he never ran low. A few months ago, he’d have told Wynne that any time they needed holy water, they could come to him. But now, things were different. Now, Emilio’s heart no longer beat. Now, Emilio was a ticking timebomb with an explosion that could not be avoided. He could help Wynne get holy water, but that wasn’t what they needed. They needed protection from something else, something holy water was useless against. They needed protection from him. 

(He thought of Eve, of the look on her face in that tunnel. He hadn’t given her her anger, but had he made it worse? Had he driven her to do things she wouldn’t have done otherwise, things she hadn’t wanted to do? He couldn’t look at Wynne; he didn’t want to imagine that expression on their face, too.)

“I can give you the name of someone who can get it for you,” he said, which wasn’t the same as I can get it for you. He could give Wynne a name, and they could get it themself. And he could pretend that this wasn’t different from the response he would have given if he were still alive. He looked down at his feet as he walked, one leg as unsteady as ever and the other not much better now, nerves shooting through it and making it want to tremble. It didn’t used to be this hard. He yearned for the way things used to be. 

Wynne didn’t like their job, and he wanted to ask why they’d gotten it. He understood not wanting to live off Teddy’s money — he hadn’t, either, back when he’d allowed it to be an option — but Wynne was plenty capable enough to find a job they enjoyed, weren’t they? They were good at a lot of useful things, even when they thought they weren’t. Was there a reason, then, why they were working a job they disliked? Was it only for the money, or was there more there? He wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure he had any right to, so he nodded instead. “Maybe you’ll get a different one,” he offered, letting stilted small talk swallow anything genuine that might have existed between them.

He swallowed as they slowed, knowing it wasn’t because they were tired or needed a break. He readied himself for the questions. It would be easier, he thought, if they’d react with anger. If they’d scream at him, insult him, tell him he was being shitty. He’d prefer that. Rage was so much easier to swallow than grief; for Emilio, it always had been. Even before it was the only thing he was capable of holding properly. But instead of yelling, Wynne asked him how he was. The words were so casual that he wanted to laugh. He choked on the sound, and what came out sounded animalistic. 

I died, he could say. I’m dead. I died in an alley. They used my own knife to do it. Don’t you think that’s a little funny? They stuck it into my chest and twisted it around. I’ve done that to people before, too. I’ve probably used the same knife. I was scared when it happened. That’s a little funny, too. I wanted it for so long, but I was still afraid. I wish they hadn’t used my knife. None of the words came out; his mouth was a prison cell, his teeth a barred window. He took a breath, trembling and unnecessary. He clenched his fist, then unclenched it. He said, “I’ve been all right,” and he’d never been a very good liar, so the words sounded hollow. He wanted to be better at this. He wanted to be alive, too. Each was as impossible as the other. “Have you been… okay?” Could he ask about Teddy? About Nora? It seemed unfair, and so he didn’t. And that seemed unfair, too.

—

They had never been big on words. They had talked, Emilio and them, but it wasn’t like they spent evenings and afternoons talking endlessly. They moved together in easy silence, talking here and then but mostly connecting through other means. But even if they hadn’t been particularly talkative with each other, they had talked about things. Emilio had been the first person in town Wynne had told about the things they had ran from. He had told them about what he had left behind, about the grief that clung to him. They had confided in him and sometimes he’d confided in them too. And some things still went unsaid and unspoken, but they had shared some of the most crucial parts of their life.

So it was hard to speak now. Small talk was not their forte to begin with, and then there was whatever was stopping them from making the conversation take a deeper turn. It was a trepidation, but what it was born from they didn’t know. Fear? Perhaps. Not of Emilio per se, but of being yelled at again, certainly. Of him leaving before they reached the edge of the cemetery, for sure. Of more loss, always — but that fear persisted outside of this place and never seemed to let them go.

Emilio could get them the name of someone with holy water. He wasn’t going to give it to them, which was what he would have done no less than two months ago. He would have given it to them by the gallons, in that paranoid and overprotective manner that still felt foreign to them but was so precious. He would have shoved bottles of it under their dorm room bed, gifted them some kind of easy-to-carry flask so they would never be without. He wouldn’t act like the concierge at the Motel, pointing them in the right direction and washing his hands off it. But that was what he did, anyway. 

“Okay,” they conceded, disappointed with the answer even if they hadn’t hoped for anything. It seemed every word out of Emilio’s mouth was a barb to hurt them, even though he spoke so softly now. So hoarsely. Wynne was still hurt by it. By all the implications, all the omissions, all the changes. “What is it? And where are they?” 

They lifted their shoulders. “Maybe,” they said. They wished that they could ask him about all of this. That they could ask him for advice on how to find a hidden society that was living among them. How to find the right clues and how to track them without raising suspicion. Wynne wasn’t as closely intrigued by the detective business as Nora was, but they were still a creature of curiosity and determination. He could teach them, if only they asked and if only he answered the call. But they didn’t, and he wouldn’t. So they left it at that word, not elaborating on why they were working in a silent hotel, lifting dirty towels from floors and changing sheets over and over again.

Their biggest question had been met with a guffaw of sorts. They didn’t know what to make of it. His answer was easier to process, as it was the most blatant lie they had ever heard come from his mouth. He hadn’t been all right. People who were all right didn’t ignore their loved ones, didn’t hurt them so purposefully yet passively. They didn’t steal their dog from their former home without as much as a message or a call. They didn’t sound that way when attempting to confirm that they had been alright. 

But what could they do with it? Confrontation hung over them like a threat and they just had to grasp it, pull at the curtains and open the windows. Demand answers once more. They could stop being meek and quiet, only projecting their anger in the way they held onto the handlebars. 

It felt as complicated as talking to Padrig. One wrong step and the conversation was over and forgotten, and they’d be left in the cold. Wynne was given to the edge of the cemetery to talk to Emilio and it was unfair, especially considering he could cut the walk short any moment he wanted. There was so much to ask. So many answers to try and peel from Emilio, slowly and carefully. The cemetery was too small, the space given to them too limited. It wasn’t fair, that this was how they got to talk to him. That they had to force themself into his house to see him, that it was only through a compromise that they could walk with him.

They grit their teeth. “You haven’t. And I haven’t, either.” They pressed their nails into the handlebars, the foam giving way to their nails. There’d be small half moons in it. “I know there are things you aren’t telling me, and I know that pressing you won’t make you tell me, so I won’t, because I don’t want to argue. Not again.” They looked at him, gaze unwavering as they tried to read his expression, seeing only proof that they were right. They were sure theirs held their lack of allrightness too. “But don’t lie. Don’t lie and say you’ve been all right when … when everything.” They had stopped walking, staring at him still. “You owe us that at least.” That and more. But Wynne didn’t want to argue. They didn’t want his abandonment to become more real by chasing him away and being left alone in the cemetery. So they left it at that.

—

“It’s a church,” he said, because it was easier to focus on the holy water than the rest of it. “A priest. That’s who makes holy water. They bless it. This one knows what I — what we use it for. He won’t mind giving you a lot of it.” If Wynne gave him Emilio’s name, he probably wouldn’t even make them go through the usual tests to ensure that they were human. He’d worked with the priest for a while now, had a relationship with him that was mutually beneficial. The church’s small cemetery was the safest one in Wicked’s Rest thanks to its own personal slayer ensuring it stayed clean. 

But holy water was not the bulk of this stilted interaction, and even it was not as easy as it would have been before. Wynne knew that Emilio would have done more than pointed them in a direction if they’d asked before he’d fallen off the radar; he could see it in their eyes. He could see many things in their eyes, reflected in the pale moonlight. Most were familiar. 

Though they weren’t a hunter, many of the ways in which Wynne had been raised were similar to how Emilio was brought up. Like him, they came to understand at a young age that they were expected to die before they grew old. The circumstances had been different, of course. While Emilio had been told to expect death at any moment, Wynne had been given a specific appointment. He thought that was worse, perhaps because of how deliberate it made it all seem. His mother made sure he knew that his life would one day be cut short, but he’d never had to fear that she would be the one holding the knife that killed him. (Perhaps he should have worried about it more; he thought of Lucio, of his explanation behind doing what he did. She was going to kill you. Sometimes, he thought it would have been better if she had.) He and Wynne both had been raised for a slaughter, but he thought it meant something that he’d been allowed, and even expected, to fight to prolong his life in a way Wynne hadn’t. They’d both been told their deaths would one day serve the greater good, but it felt more concrete for Emilio. 

There were other similarities, too, of course. Like Emilio, Wynne had been taught not to question things. They were not allowed to wonder why they had to die, just as Emilio had not been permitted to hesitate in raising his daughter just the same. Wynne could not mourn their own life; Emilio was chastised for his childishness in mourning Victor’s. When you grew up the way he had, the way Wynne had, you learned to swallow just about anything.

It was something he thought they’d both been trying to unlearn. Through their quiet conversations, through the way they supported one another. This dynamic, whatever it was called, served to strengthen them both. And Emilio had thought it a good thing. He wanted Wynne to be strong, wanted them to stand up for themself. He wanted them to question things that weren’t fair, wanted them to fight for what they deserved. He was proud of them every time they did it.

But now, here they were in a cemetery, doing it to him. And Emilio was a piece of shit, was earning the title of monster that had been stapled to him when he’d sat up in Eve’s van with his heart still and his lungs empty, because he wished, for half a second, that they would stop. It was such a brief thing, something that lasted barely the amount of time it would have taken his heart to beat once if it still beat at all, but it was there, anyway. Wynne questioned him the way he wanted them to question anyone and everyone who treated them in a way that was less than they deserved, and Emilio wished they wouldn’t. Emilio wished they would take the lie and carry it the way they would have years ago, and he hated himself for it. He despised everything he was, even if the inclination passed so quickly, even if it was barely a blip on the radar. This, he thought, was proof of concept. This was a clear and simple sign that, yes, he was exactly the sort of monster Wynne needed to avoid.

He wasn’t okay. They knew it, even though he stated otherwise. And they called him out on the lie, and they should have. They deserved the truth, even if Emilio didn’t know how to say it. The words were just words, and yet he hadn’t been able to force them out in weeks now. He didn’t know how to tell them, didn’t know how to tell anyone. Eve had watched him rise from the dead; Owen, Jade, Regan, and Siobhan all sensed the change. Rosemary trapped him against the ground while reaching out for dead things. None of them needed to be told the way Wynne did, and perhaps that was what made it so difficult. He’d never been good with words; no language had ever suited him quite right. He didn’t think there were words for this, anyway. Some things just wouldn’t fit on the tip of your tongue.

“Okay,” he agreed quietly. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ve been shit, Wynne. I’ve been — I’ve been really shit. Is that what you want to hear? You want me to tell you about how I don’t get off the couch at all, some days? You want to hear about how I sit and stare at the wall and do nothing and still feel tired, somehow? It’s not — It isn’t good. I’m not good. You don’t need to hear about all that, kid. Nobody does.” Aches, when they were his, were meant to be swallowed. He’d gone from being a knife to being a rotting corpse; neither were worth asking after. “I’m sorry. I am. I’m sorry that I don’t — that I’m not better at this. I’m sorry that you’ve been bad. I didn’t want to hurt you. Everything I’m doing is because I don’t want to hurt you.” And wasn’t that the only thing he was good at? He hurt people; it was what he was for. Even more so now.

—

At least the mystery of how holy water was created had been solved now. Wynne had gotten one answer, and even though it was far from the question they had wanted answered it was something they could do something with. A church. These were not the kind of buildings they ventured into. They and their commune were heathens in the eyes of God, if not worse — they had worshiped a demon and even though Wynne had aided in killing it, they felt unworthy of entering a church. Besides, they weren’t even sure if they believed in God. Protherian scripture said God had created the earth, but all worship had to be directed towards their demon, as it was It who bestowed them with earthly gifts. 

It was too much to think about now. They would consider it later, in the relative comfort of their own home, when this was all over and done with. Wynne nodded. “Alright. Just let me know the address. I can figure it out from there.” Emilio and them both knew that they could. Despite all the help he had given them over the two years since their meeting, they also both knew of their independence. How it had grown and transformed. How it had originated in a cult that had raised them to die, but had become something different when they made life about survival.

Because of that, they had never been self destructive. It was not something they had ever allowed themself to be, something for which there was no room nor right. Before their abandonment of the cult, their life had been bigger than theirs. They could not be reckless or negligent with themself, because to risk themself was to risk the cult. Their body had not belonged to them. These days, they could not afford it because their life still wasn’t just theirs to live. It was their brother’s, too. It was for him that they had to try and take care. Of themself, of the world, of what they left in their wake. 

That wasn’t to say they didn’t understand the instinct. Wynne did not reach for bottles and did not abandon their contacts, but they did crawl under the covers and freeze there. They gave into their exhaustion and laid staring at the ceiling, not sure how to move their body ever again. They thought about the purpose of it all, and wondered if there was any to begin with. They felt the urge to throw in the towel, abandon their ambitions and cease their forced hopefulness. To isolate, properly. But they didn’t. They held onto their hope, onto their people, so tightly that their knuckles shone white and their heart felt heavy. 

And it helped.

Maybe Emilio had lost too much. Maybe he was tired of his body not being his, of him having to live to honor all those that had died. Maybe he was tired of his survival being such a heavy task. They understood that. And he knew they would.

So maybe it wasn’t that.

As he spoke their heart sunk. They felt his defensiveness that lingered on attack, the way he laid the words on thick to try and push them away again. Not to exaggerate, but to seem like something best turned ones back to. Wynne wasn’t going to fall for it. They pressed their lips together, biting on the insides of them as they let the words echo between them. They didn’t look away from him, not even now that he’d laid some of his cards on the table. Not all of them, but some. 

Of course it wasn’t what they wanted to hear, but there was nothing here that he could have said that they wanted to hear. What they wanted was honesty and trust, to be let back in. To extent their forgiveness and pave the way towards moving on from this interlude in their relationship. To cling onto hope with both their hands again, rather than waver.

They felt their eyes shine with tears when he apologized. Wynne didn’t know what a full apology looked like, a proper one where responsibility was taken, so to them it was almost enough. They shook their head. “But you hurt me anyway,” they said carefully, “By not saying any of this. By disappearing. By coming and taking Perro and leaving again.” They frowned. “Of course I’m not happy to know that you’re doing bad, but I’d rather hear it than hear nothing at all. You can’t just do that. Go away and leave and ignore us all and then say you’re doing it because you don’t want to hurt us.” 

They blinked and two tears slid down their cheeks, silently. There was a moment where all they could do was focus on their next breath in, to make sure it wouldn’t be a sob. “What happened?” 

—

He had never been an easy thing to love. As a child, he had thought this was a good thing. Hunters weren’t meant to be loved or coddled; to love a knife too thoroughly to ever use it meant letting its blade grow dull, and if you did that then it would be useless when you needed it. If he was unloved, it meant only that he was respected. It meant that he was doing as he was supposed to do, being what he was supposed to be. It wasn’t a bad thing; it was better. And so, he was unloved and good at it, and he’d always hoped that could be enough.

It wasn’t. Because while Emilio was good at being hard to love, he was bad at remembering to adhere to the inverse, too. He loved more than he was loved. And he loved with so much of himself that there was often little left over for what needed to be done. He loved his mother enough to want to impress her; he loved his brother enough to mourn the loss of him; he loved his remaining siblings so much that he would have died for them, even if it was an unnecessary sacrifice. Later, he loved Juliana, too, experienced being loved back just as intensely even when it was hard. He loved Rhett, loved Jaime, loved Lucio. He loved Flora so thoroughly that he’d have burned the world for her, would do it even now that she was gone. 

He loved Wynne, too. And Nora, and Teddy, and Xóchitl. He loved all the people he was hiding from in his shitty apartment, ached with missing them just as much as they did. He could stand here with Wynne, could talk about holy water and give them the address of a church where they could get gallons of it without being questioned, but he could not soothe the ache that was shared between them. He could not undo the damage he’d done; he couldn’t even promise not to do any more. He loved them, and it would be better if he’d left. He loved them, and he wished he’d been able to die the right way to avoid this complexity that lived within them now. Because this was worse, wasn’t it? More often than not, ghosts loved the people they haunted. It didn’t make them any less dangerous.

Wynne’s voice was tight when they spoke again. He wasn’t looking at them, but he knew the expression they wore, anyway. He’d seen it before, knew exactly what it looked like when their heart was breaking. How many times had this town shattered it, shattered them? He’d always tried to help them gather the pieces, always worked to glue it back together as best he could. And he’d never been good at it, but he liked to think he’d helped, anyway.

He couldn’t help them now. There was no way to fix what was broken here, because there was no way to fix him. He was a twisted hodgepodge of sharp edges; anyone who tried to fix it would only succeed in cutting themselves open. He could tell Wynne the truth, but it wouldn’t resolve anything. It wouldn’t repair what he’d lost in that dumpster. 

(He wondered if hearing about his death would make Wynne think of their brother; he wondered if they’d find themself, again, in the position of having lost something without having been present, of having no body to bury.) 

“I hurt you anyway,” he agreed. That’s what I’m good at, he wanted to add. You know that’s what I’m good at. I’ve been honest about that from the start, haven’t I? I am a thing that hurts people. Did you forget? But he couldn’t quite force those words out, either. It had been easier to push Wynne away in the comfort of his apartment than it was in the cemetery. The world seemed smaller in between the walls where he’d gone to rot. Here, out in the open, everything felt so much different. 

He swallowed, shifting his weight onto his bad leg just to send the jolt of pain through his body. It grounded him a little, kept him where he was. He was good at hurting things; he himself was included in that. “You know you’re all better off. You probably always have been.” Because Emilio had never been easy to love, and trying must have been exhausting. Trying to hold him was like trying to hold a wild animal; it would bite and scratch and do everything it could to escape your loving grip. Some things, he thought, didn’t know how to be loved. It was better not to try. 

The question was inevitable, but the answer was impossible. He thought of the alley, the knife, the dumpster, the van. He thought fear pulsing through him, of Juliana’s voice that he knew better to think of as anything more than an imagined thing. He couldn’t put it to words, still. He couldn’t tell Wynne what happened without reliving it, couldn’t say it aloud without returning to the scene of the crime. “Something — Something bad,” he replied, as though that weren’t obvious. As though anything short of the end of the world could have been enough to prompt him to raise his voice at them. “I can’t — It’s better. It’s better for me to not be around any of you now. I need you to trust me that it’s better.”

—

They knew, yes. They knew that Emilio thought they were better off without him. That the world might possibly even be better without him present. It wasn’t news to them that this was his philosophy not only on life but also on love — he’d reiterated it last time in his apartment and let it shine through a hundred times before. 

And not only did they know that this was how he thought, they knew the feeling itself. Scholars called it survivor’s guilt and Wynne supposed it was an apt term. They hadn’t read too much about it, their curiosity stifled by their grief and pain — but they had found the name at the very least and knew to apply it on both themself and Emilio. If you were alive at the cost of others, your life felt like a dirty thing. It could only exist because there had been violence. It could only continue because it had ended for others. There was something inherently wrong about an existence growing in dead soil.

But this wasn’t like that any more, was it? Nothing had changed. No one else had died, as far as they knew — and though grief surged and pulled like the sea, they didn’t think that was what had happened. Something else. Something unspeakable, so bad that it could not even be shared with Teddy. Wynne burned with the wish to know, to be able to give shape to this hurt (their own, Teddy’s, but also Emilio’s) so they could try and grasp it. They understood some parts of Emilio, saw the twisted reflection of their own life in it. But with this, they didn’t know yet.

He couldn’t say it. It seemed like he almost choked on the word bad, and though Wynne was aware that Emilio was an exaggerating pessimist, this wasn’t just any kind of bad. This wasn’t as bad as what had happened with the demon that had almost sacrificed him. They remembered how back then, they had asked him not to lie too and he had eventually told them what had happened to him. He had danced around it, had wanted to protect them with a lie of allrightness, but had given in. He’d given them the truth and the opportunity to care about him, to offer him poor words of comfort.  

So this was worse. It had to be worse than being a near-demon sacrifice, having stared death in the eyes and coming out alive. It was a terrifying realization, that whatever had happened to Emilio was this bad. That something could be so ugly that the man who had survived a family massacre, a kidnapping by a demon and other horrible things could not put it to words. Their mind was coming up with scenarios, one uglier than the other. 

They shivered. More tears pooled in their eyes and they wished he could understand that none of this was helping. That the ignorance he hoped was blissful was just cold and scary. That their imagination was an ugly place, plagued by vampire fangs and horned demons and large monsters, and that in the unknowing they got lost in it. They blinked furiously, letting them drip down their eyes onto their shirt. They used one hand to rub at their eyes, frustrated with the tragedy of the situation. 

Because they knew how sometimes things were too ugly to put into words. Because they didn’t want to force him to tell them, but they needed to know. Because this wasn’t a way of living, for either of them. Because they would forgive him and already had, even if he hadn’t properly apologized yet. Because he would hurt them again, if only because he believed it an inevitability himself.

They swallowed their tears, hoping to keep their voice as steady as they could. “I wish you would tell me. I’m — I make myself crazy, not knowing. My mind keeps trying to think what might have happened and everything it comes up with is horrible and scary. And … yes, you hurt me, but not irreparably, you know that right? You can … you can fix this, we can, it doesn’t have to be like this. Because I am not better off.” Wynne thought of the people back home, all of those individuals who had sanctified them for their impending death. They thought of Emilio, who had been one of the first to so certainly tell them that it was wrong. Who had played such a fundamental role in the way they had changed. There was no better off without him. Without Emilio, they just felt more scared. “I am not. And that is for me to decide.”

They had actually sounded steady at the end there, certain of their right to decide. Wasn’t that all they wanted? Autonomy. A little bit of authority on their own life. They started moving again. “I won’t – I’m not going to force myself in your life. I can’t do it, it’s … it hurts too much. I believe you believe that this is for the best, but I don’t think it’s the truth. I don’t think so, and maybe I am wrong but I wouldn’t know, because I don’t know.” They felt their voice lose its strength. It was shivering like them. They added one last note: “But – if you can’t tell me, I won’t make you.” 

—

He’d never been good at stillness. It had been a source of great contention as a child, when his mother had expected profound obedience and Emilio was incapable of being still when ordered. He’d always tried, of course, but some part of him could never cooperate. His fingers twitched; his knee bounced; his eyes darted and caught something in the corner, and his head turned to follow on instinct. The details never mattered as much as the act. It didn’t matter why he’d moved, only that he had. Elena had tried to explain the importance of stillness to him; there were things they faced with poor eyesight, sometimes, things that needed to track your movement to know where you were. Sometimes, you had to wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. Playing dead could save your life. There were so many reasons why stillness was important, and Emilio had known all of them. But his fingers still twitched, his knee still bounced, his head still turned to track whatever his eyes had spotted. 

Right now, he thought, he was stiller than he’d ever been back then. Not entirely — he was walking in step beside Wynne, his footfalls quiet but uneven — but more than he could manage as a child. His fingers no longer twitched, his knee ached too much to bounce, and his eyes didn’t dare dart in any direction that might find his face turning towards them. He didn’t want to see the pain etched into their face, didn’t want to see the tears he could hear in their voice. It was cowardly, he knew, to avoid looking at something he himself had caused. But Emilio had always been a coward. He’d been a coward as a child, trying so hard to be still just to avoid the punishment that came with moving. He’d been a coward in that alley, with his own knife twisting in his chest. And now, he was a coward as a corpse, a ghost who thought refusing to look at the things it was haunting made it any less harmful to do so. It should have been comforting, that one thing hadn’t changed. It wasn’t. Nothing really was now.

He could imagine, of course, what Wynne was thinking. He could picture each scenario they’d made up in their mind, could unravel them bit by bit. And still, he thought, whatever they were thinking was probably better than the truth. There was nothing Emilio could picture that was worse than what had happened to him in that alley. There was no existence he wanted less than the one he had now. Even before, as paranoid and pessimistic as he was, he’d never imagined this sort of ending for himself. He’d always thought death would be an easier thing when it was happening to him, that it would be a bookend on a shelf that had been too full to take on anymore for years. He’d never imagined he’d get up after, never thought he’d wake in a bodybag with all the parts of him worth keeping stripped away.

So maybe it was kinder, in a way, to let Wynne keep imagining. Maybe it was better to let them have a thousand worst case scenarios that weren’t quite as bad as the truth. They would always wonder, but sometimes wondering was kinder. He thought of the people who had come to him for closure and gotten it in the worst ways, thought of the people who’d wanted him to bring their loved ones home only to be presented with whatever small pieces he managed to recover. Hope could only breathe until there was a body to bury. After that, it was left to choke on the dirt with the rest of them.

He swallowed, letting out a quiet huff of air. His lungs didn’t ache for another breath, but he took it anyway. “Some things can’t be fixed,” he said quietly, and what he meant was, I’m too broken for repair now. What he meant was, you can raise the dead, but you can’t put their souls back into their bodies. What he meant was, you would be better with a body to bury, but I can’t even give you that. He wanted to give them something, because they were right. They deserved more than what he had offered them. So did Teddy, so did Xóchitl. The people he loved deserved better than the shit hand he’d dealt them, but those were the only cards he had. He couldn’t give them any more, didn’t know how to reshuffle the deck. 

That didn’t mean he liked it. He hated it as much as Wynne did, as much as all of them. He wanted better for them. On some level, he thought, maybe he wanted better for himself, too. He wanted more than a walk to the edge of the graveyard, but he didn’t know how to leave it. Dead things, he thought, belonged among tombstones, anyway.

“I know,” he said quietly, because he did. He knew that Wynne wanted to choose for themself, knew that they deserved to. But what of his choice? Didn’t he get one, too, after it was taken from him in that alley? Wasn’t this what it was — Emilio, choosing for himself?

(Or was it another attempt at martyrdom? He’d always known he’d do anything for a sword to fall on, always known he’d die for the first thing to give him a chance. He thought of Juliana, in the midst of the worst fight they’d ever had. Emilio had stepped between her and a beast on a hunt, had his arm torn apart so thoroughly that there were places where the skin still didn’t line up quite right. He remembered the fire burning in her eyes when he’d responded to her fury by pointing out that she’d have done the same for him, had their roles been reversed. That’s the difference, Milio, she’d spat, glaring daggers down at him. I’d do it for you, but you’d do it for anyone. I’m not built to be a widow. And Emilio, who was always better at saying the wrong thing than he was at saying nothing, had laughed. Then maybe you shouldn’t have married a hunter. He wondered what she’d think of him now.)

Emilio swallowed, stopping abruptly. He stood still, like a statue or a corpse. Nothing twitched, nothing bounced, nothing turned. His chest moved, but only out of habit. He closed his eyes. He clenched his fist. He tried to will himself back to life, but there was no use in it. “I was… It was… Something happened.” They knew that already. It was the only thing they knew. “Something happened,” he said again, the words sticking to his throat. “To me. And it wasn’t — It was bad. It was the — whatever you’re imagining, it was worse. For me, it was worse. And I don’t — I don’t have the words for it, Wynne. I don’t have the words. I know you want me to tell you. I know you deserve to know. But I try to say it, and it just gets stuck. I try, I try, and it isn’t — I can’t do it. I don’t have the words.” 

He brought a hand up, rubbed it across his face. “It hurts. I know it hurts. It hurts me, too, okay? But I’m not… I’m not the person I was. I’m not who you need me to be, who you want me to be. Maybe I was something before, but I’m not now. I’m just — something happened. And I can’t be who I was before, and you deserve more than what I am now. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m trying.”

—

When they had left their commune behind, Wynne had not known what they had left in their wake. For months, they had lived in the scary world of ignorance. It was indisputable that something terrible had happened once they had abandoned their duty and left the commune without a sacrifice to offer the demon. But that was where there certainty began and ended. So all that time, they had sat with their imagination. They had fantasized worst case scenarios — a mass sacrifice, forced by the demon. Total annihilation. Their parents, forced to give up their own lives and then some. A fire that swallowed the whole community whole. All the youths killed. All the livestock killed. A yearly sacrifice. Total annihilation. Death and destruction in their wake, while they lived in their ignorance, in their shitty flat, in their body that was supposed to be theirs now.

And then, once they were brave enough, and once they trusted Emilio enough, they had asked him to get them the answers. Because even if they were afraid of the truth, they could not live with ignorance. They could not suffer their self imposed penance if they did not know the consequences of their actions. They had to know, even if it would hurt, even if it might pull the rug from under their feet.

It had. The truth had wrenched its claws between their ribs and pulled out their heart, brought its sharp nails down and punctured it until all they could do was bleed. The truth – that their sacrifice had been replaced by their brother – had been worse than all they had imagined. Not even because it was the worst possible outcome (there was worse carnage than just their brother dead, which was a terrifying thought), but because it was the one that was true. Out of all scenarios, that had been the real one.

They had, for a few moments, wished they hadn’t known. That they could have wrapped themself in the powerless of not knowing and punish themself in vague little ways. But in the end, it had been better, hadn’t it? To know. To be able to mourn Iwan and what had become of him, so they could try to make it up to him. It was better, to honor him rather than not know what had happened to him. It was better, to live with the horror of it all rather than the horror of unsure scenarios.

Wynne had a feeling that Emilio understood that about them. Maybe that was why they could accept the fact that he wasn’t telling them — because if it was only about protecting them from the truth, then they couldn’t agree. If it was just because he thought it was better for them to continue on in ignorance, then they might fight it. But the way he was speaking, not even able to explain how hard it was to say what it was that had happened, pointed at something else.

Some horrors were too hard to say out loud. It was why they were evasive about their past, why they didn’t share it — not the details of it, anyway. They could say that they had come from a cult more easily now, but they could not divulge the truth. That their brother’s throat had been slit open. That he had woken up to his older sibling gone and had been tied up in their stead. That he must have been so scared. There was no putting those things to words without succumbing to that large pit within them.

They understood. They were mad, but they understood. They halted when Emilio did, watching him quietly and without interruption. It was like they were standing on an edge together. Telling them the truth would be like jumping — it might free them both, but it would do irreparable damage to Emilio. Wynne felt their stomach twist with agony and fear for what had happened to break him apart so neatly, so suddenly. He had put so many horrors to words: the demon, what had happened to their brother, his daughter. But this could not be said aloud.

“It’s okay,” they said, even though it wasn’t. “You don’t have to.” Even though he did. Wynne was no longer the person they had been at the commune. They no longer rolled over without question whenever someone wanted something of them. They no longer honored every demand made of them, spoken or unspoken. But they still offered Emilio grace. They still folded for him, lifting their fingers from his bruises that were more like open, salted wounds. They placated and lied while doing so.

It would be more honest to tell him that this wasn’t the right thing, that the right thing would be to be braver and come home. To let them all figure it out together. That was what they wanted in the depths in their being. But Wynne was still like the person they had been at the commune, too. Compliant in the name of love. Even if it was for the worse for everyone involved.

“Emilio — hey, you don’t have to say it. It’s okay. We –” They wanted to say something like all in due time, but they could not keep feeding their hope when it was already running on fumes. “But maybe … you don’t have to … maybe you can …” They were stammering, fighting a lost fight with their tongue and vocabulary. “Just don’t turn your back forever.” They tried to find something else to say but couldn’t. Everything would be a lie, an attempt at placation or a bit of potentially false hope. So in stead of saying something Wynne let down their bike, placing it on the forest ground and moved slowly but with intent. No sudden movements, everything done so that Emilio could reject them if he wanted to.

He was not even that far from them, so it didn't take long for them to find the shape of his body and pull it in their arms. 

—

People often said that the truth was a thing that would always come to light sooner or later. Some used it as a mantra, a quiet reminder that things would be known when they were meant to. Juliana had been like that, always so sure that things would fall into place exactly how they were supposed to. Emilio had admired her certainty, had wished that he believed in anything as much as she believed in the truth. Though he wouldn’t have admitted it back then, he liked her viewpoint more than that of his mother, who used the inevitability of the truth as a threat instead. Sooner or later, she’d assure them all, everyone would know everything you were trying to hide. It was better for everyone involved if you didn’t bother. And though he liked his wife’s views better, it was his mother’s viewpoint that made Emilio honest. The truth would come to light one way or another.

Except… that wasn’t always the case. Throughout his time in Wicked’s Rest, Emilio had learned that sometimes, the truth died in silence. There was no big, dramatic end to it, no big reveal. The truth didn’t always come out; people didn’t always get to know the end of the story they were living. He thought of Eve, who gave everything she had to keep it that way. He thought of the families back home in Mexico who would never know what happened to their loved ones, thought of the video he and Eve had watched of a teenage girl who died at the same hands that took Emilio’s life years later, thought of the way Eve had described covering it up after the fact. It doesn’t look like it, she had told him as they sat surrounded by her notes, but this is kindness. Swallowing up the truth, giving grieving people a pretty lie to hold… he’d been so furious at the concept of it then. People deserved the truth, didn’t they? That inevitable thing, the one that would come out eventually one way or another. People deserved the truth.

Wynne deserved the truth. Teddy, too. Emilio knew that. He hadn’t believed what Eve said, hadn’t been able to accept easy to swallow lies as a kinder alternative to harsh truths. And, though it would have made it easier for him to give his family something better than he had so far, he still couldn’t quite adhere to that manner of thinking. The truth stayed hidden, sometimes. It was swallowed up in the dark, or buried in a bottomless pit. It died, alone and afraid in a dark alley, and it didn’t get up afterwards. But none of that meant that the people seeking it didn’t ache with its absence. The truth would hurt Wynne; the lack of it hurt, too. And Emilio couldn’t decide which thing to hurt them with. He couldn’t figure out if one was kinder than the other. There were no good choices, no happy endings. For them, there never really had been.

They could have screamed at him, and he would have deserved it. They could have told him he was an asshole, could have left him in the cemetery to rot. He’d raised his voice at them, first, and if they’d chosen to do the same to him, no one would have faulted them for it. If Wynne hated him now, he thought it’d be easier. If Wynne decided they never wanted to see him again, never wanted to speak to him, he knew it would be so much better for everyone involved. They’d be safer without him, and he’d be free to rot in the shallow grave he’d dug for himself, to decay in the tomb he’d made of his apartment. But Wynne was a better person than most. Wynne didn’t repay his anger with anger of their own, though he knew they carried it. They didn’t yell at him, didn’t insult him, didn’t leave him alone. Instead, they offered him an out. They said it’s okay as if anything was. A better man might have rejected it, might have told them what they wanted — what they needed to know. And the thing about Emilio, the thing that he thought probably made him a monster long before anything else had, was that he always knew what a better man would do. He always knew what the honorable thing was.

He just never did it.

He took the out they offered with all the desperation a man lying in desert sands would accept a cold bottle of water. He didn’t have to say it. He didn’t have to fold those words up into something small enough to fit onto the tip of his tongue, didn’t have to find some way to speak the apocalypse into the small space between tombstones. He didn’t have to say it, and so he wouldn’t. He didn’t have to say it, and so he would swallow it instead, would keep it locked in his chest for another day. There was something unspoken in Wynne’s words, he knew; there was an implication that someday, he’d need to speak the truth aloud. Someday, he’d have to say the thing that didn’t need saying right now, and he knew it wouldn’t be any easier weeks or months or years down the line. There were things that gripped your throat and never let it go. There were dead girls in living rooms, there were men bleeding out in dumpsters. It didn’t matter if you locked them behind your teeth and never spoke them aloud; some words would strangle you all the same.

Don’t turn your back forever, Wynne pleaded, and part of him wanted to laugh again, because that was an option now, wasn’t it? He had forever stretching ahead of him, and it was the worst part. It was worse than the knife in his chest, worse than the bodybag. Forever stretched out in front of him, not as a possibility but as a truth that couldn’t be buried as easily as the ones Eve wiped away. He wanted to tell Wynne that he didn’t want this. He didn’t want to turn away from them, from anyone. He didn’t want to let go of the people who loved him, but he no longer knew how to look them in the eye. He no longer knew how to be a thing worth loving. He wanted to tell Wynne so many things, but none of those would fit on his tongue, either. 

And then, they were moving towards him. Slow and deliberate, giving him ample time to move away. He didn’t. He stood still, stood steady, and they wrapped their arms around him. Emilio’s feet hadn’t held his weight very well in years now, but with Wynne’s arms around him, it didn’t seem to matter much in the moment. It was as if they were holding him up, keeping him on his feet. He should have pulled away, should have steeled himself, should have shut the door and locked it. 

He didn’t.

His arms came up, slow and uncertain, returning the quiet embrace. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah. Not forever. I’m sorry.” 

And it was true, even if the truth still only stretched to the edge of the graveyard.

—-

Emilio let it happen. As their arms wrapped around his body, there was a trepidation in their entire body, awaiting another bout of rejection. This was their last olive branch, their last display of what they could no longer put into words. This hug was meant to explain that deep buried sentiment — the unconditionality of their love for him. They would not swallow and take the way he hurt them without complaint, that was no longer who they were. But they would forgive it, if they were given the chance. They would keep being there, waiting in the wings of his life, until he figured it out. They would listen once it was time. And they would wait, and remind him that they were waiting. But they would wait.

He took it. He crossed the bridge towards something that was yet to be named and he let them hug them. Wynne felt their body grow a little more relaxed, holding on tight. Sometimes this was all there had to be — the silent meeting of two people. He had given them little answers and plenty of excuses and apologies, but this was the most important thing Emilio could have given them.

Gentleness. Reciprocation. Proof that there was still this between them too. He returned the embrace and echoed their plea, and offered one last apology. This was the one that mattered the most, because it was a promise in a way. Not an official one, but something that rang close to it. He would not turn his back forever, which meant that one day he would turn around and return home in one way or another. One day, he might come back and let them help him. He would not sever himself definitively. He returned the hug and Wynne let themself melt into it for a while. Let themself be held the way they were holding him.

There were some more tears, silent and angry. They weren’t tears of relief, as there was no reason to be relieved as of yet. But the returned embrace did offer them the room to let the water flow for a moment, to simply give in to the release. It came close enough.

“I –” They didn’t say it yet, did not yet extend their forgiveness. It was theirs to keep for now, but they hoped it was clear that their door was open, that their phone was reachable and that he only had to ask for them. Emilio had helped Wynne so many, countless times before, and they had tried to do the same for him. They just had to hope the day would come where he was ready to ask for their hand. At least he let himself be held, for a little while.

Their mind went to Nora and Teddy for a moment, and they wondered how either of them would handle this situation. If they would be angrier or more forceful. If they would be more convincing. Maybe they were being too kind to Emilio, but they remembered how he’d been in the apartment. How like a beaten dog he’d been and how now, he still seemed to drip from his wounds. But he wasn’t barking now, and it had to in part be because they were trying to give him the room he was so sure he needed. And he was wrong, they really did think he was, but Wynne was no good at fighting such causes.

Maybe they were still that person, from back home, except now with more insight. Now able to see through the lies and performance, capable of understanding what might be happening underneath and still going along with it. They weren’t sure. They weren’t sure what the right thing to do was, especially not in a situation that was so wrong. But they knew this felt good, this embrace. This interlude of peace and proximity.

They pulled back after a while, looking up at him. “Okay,” they said. “I accept your apology.” It was not forgiveness, but it was a hook he was being let off of. “And I’ll be waiting.” Wynne could be patient, but they could also be stubborn. It was a combination that would keep them steadily present on the edge. They swallowed, looked down at their bike. They were at a crossroads. They had pulled Emilio over the bridge, at least for a moment, and they could try continuing to tug. Or they could pick up their bike again and keep walking. They didn’t move. Again, leaving room for him to decide. 

—

He’d never been very big on physical affection. It hadn’t been an option for most of his life. Elena Cortez wasn’t much of a hugger, and while Lucio had been marginally gentler, even he wouldn’t have risked contaminating a new generation of hunters with a softness they couldn’t afford to carry. Someone must have hugged him before the massacre, someone must have embraced him before he’d wound up in Wicked’s Rest, but he couldn’t bring up any specific examples of it in his mind. He could say for certain that it hadn’t been a frequent thing before this town, knew without doubt that he’d been embraced here far more times than he ever had in his life before his arrival. He still wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, still always took a moment or two longer than was natural to react. 

Maybe it was worse now than it had been before. If you didn’t count Owen holding him down in the cave — and Emilio certainly didn’t — he thought this might have been the first time someone had hugged him since his death. And even though he’d never been very big on physical affection, even though he’d never seen it as an option that was available to him, there was something nice about it. Maybe it was just because it was Wynne. The confirmation that he hadn’t completely destroyed their relationship should have come as a disappointment, because he’d been trying to. He’d been trying to push them away, to keep them safe by ensuring that they were so far from him. He should have been disappointed by his failure. Instead, he was relieved. They were still here. They did not hate him. Despite, despite, despite. 

They didn’t forgive him quite yet, didn’t speak the words with ease, and that was a relief, too. Emilio had never been one to accept forgiveness he did not deserve, and he knew he hadn’t earned Wynne’s. And it was better, really, if they stayed angry at him. He didn’t want them to hate him, even if he’d tried to make it happen, but he didn’t think they should be around him, either. He loved them, but that didn’t make him any less of a ticking time bomb. He loved them, but that wouldn’t lessen the inevitable explosion. All Emilio had ever done was hurt people. He could even add his own corpse to the pile of ones he was responsible for now. He couldn’t bear the thought of adding Wynne’s, too.

So it was better, then, that they didn’t forgive him. It was better that they accepted the apology without offering absolution, better that they acknowledged it without saying it was all okay. It wasn’t okay. Nothing was. Not the way he treated Wynne in his apartment, not the way he was treating them now, not the way he’d likely treat them in the future. And maybe what happened to him hadn’t been okay, either. Maybe the way he’d had his own knife shoved into his chest in an alley was just as terrible as the way he’d made Eve feel in that buggane’s tunnel, or the way he was making Wynne feel now. Maybe it was okay to think, even if only for a moment, that he hadn’t deserved to go out that way. Maybe he could be angry on his own behalf, too.

“Okay,” he said. It didn’t feel like enough, but would anything? What could he say or do that would make up for anything at all, even if only a little? He was as bad at words as he was at physical affection; he was starting to wonder what he actually was good at, if there was anything at all. 

He wasn’t particularly good at walking, either — even death couldn’t fix his shitty knee, as Owen had put it — but at least it was something he knew how to do. He took one step forward, and then another. These days, he thought, that was all anyone could expect of him.

[bypeau]

for as long as he could remember, ashley clemmons had been drawn to bad boys. it was his one and only vice, but he did everything he could to fight it off. he surrounded himself with the right kind of people, he joined the right clubs—he did everything right, yet he had still fallen into emilio's trap. dark hair, dark eyes, and an even darker aura? emilio mansi was just the type of guy that ashley was willing to risk it all for—and he had, time and time again, without learning his lesson. given the opportunity to wield his newfound strength, in emilio's presence for the first time in months, he simply held his arms out and fell straight back into those murky, enticing waters. "that's not exactly what i'm saying, but... if the shoe fits, thou must wear it with pride!" ashley retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "emilio! you can't—you can't say things like that here," the smaller boy whispered, latching onto the other's sleeve and tugging him into the nearby hall. "i have a new life now, emilio. with jacob, with his friends... and i haven't told them anything about you, nor do i plan on it! but... if you must know—no, no one's touched me since you." as determined as he was to leave the past in the past, old habits died hard. ashley hadn't put up the slightest bit of a fight as he was carried off to a nearby bedroom, hadn't tried to wriggle out of emilio's grasp; he wanted it just as bad as his stubborn lover, if not more. his eyes widened as his own underwear were pressed to his face, but he quickly fell back into the role that he was all too familiar with. ashley whined softly as he breathed in his own boyish musk, eyes fluttering shut as he allowed himself to sink in deeper. "we... you can't, daddy. my parents would kill me if they found out about us," ashley cried. chills covered every inch of his body as emilio's large hands roamed it, trembling under the dark-haired boy's touch even as he tried to remain in control. "you feel too good, you know my body too well," he admitted softly. his pale pink lips curled into a giddy smile as emilio's cock sunk into him. he missed everything about it—the weight of it, the way it stretched him to the brim and still left him wanting more. his legs folded around emilio's waist, pulling him in closer as he nipped at that impossibly sharp jawline. "i think... i think i'm a bad girl, daddy," ashley moaned out, back arching obscenely. "i think you pulled me away from my boyfriend's party, even though you know that you're supposed to stay away from me, and i think that means you should give me whatever i want—and r-right now, i want that fat cock splitting me open and filling me up with your thick nut, daddy."

[orphvc]

LOCATION  : @gxldenonce's flat, ofc. SITUATION  : well, he didn't hide his key good enough.

key under the welcome mat, really ? it’s almost like he wants her to break in. clementine observes the silver object with a stupid smile, squinting at it, teasing it with her fingers ; cat lazily flicking a mouse’s tail. it stares back, glinting, daring her … and, naturally, her impulsive response is to jam the little sucker into the keyhole with a vengeance  — because she refuses to be beaten by one of emilio’s games, refuses to not rise to the challenge. she’s supposed to drive him to the party anyway, right ? why not wait inside ? get comfortable ? snoop a little ? yeah … her bizarre brain decides that plan sounds reasonable enough. the fridge robbery, on the other hand, is completely unwarranted, just for her twisted pleasure ( but, to be fair, almost everything she does is that same way ). she saunters from one corner of his home to the other with a bottle of beer in hand, teeth digging into the head until it finally snaps open, cap sadly rolling onto the floor. as it hisses its fizzy death, the greatest treasure of all finds her —  a bedroom. his golden boy bedroom. “ sick … ” there's a victorious shimmy of her shoulders — fringes shaking with it — and a snort as she pushes the door fully open with her foot, poking her head in with hungry curiosity, already amused. each step she takes transports her nearer to the inner workings of his mind. that's what she believes, at least. step : what does he dream about ? step : what is his most suffocating fear ? pariah passes the pile of dirty clothes, the spare change scattered about ( she’ll pocket that, thank you very much ), the soft bed — feathers within working like a magnet for her messy hair, she doesn’t even try to resist. compared to this, the pillows back home suddenly turn into bricks.  “  sleepin’ like a fuckin’ prince …  ”  she mutters, rolling her head around with an irritated s cowl ; maybe she can slip some rocks into the case later. and, as if her words or evil schemes summoned him  —  in comes radcliff royalty, letterman jacket his crown. clementine doesn’t even attempt to sit up, pretend she isn’t doing what she’s doing. hey, i didn’t drink your booze and i totally didn’t casually sniff that shirt lying like a sad corpse on the carpet. she’s never been one to keep up appearances … what’s the point in that ? “ bit fuckin’ stupid. your spare key hidin’ spot …  ”  she takes a sip of his beer, liquid spilling down the sides of her mouth, onto his expensive belongings. tacky girl leaving her mark : clementine was here.  “  some crazy person could easily slip in in the middle of the night, man.  ”  it’s a bit funny, how she says it like she didn’t technically do the same. as if she isn’t the crazy person in her own story.  “  don’t think y’want that. they could, like, totally grab one of your fancy fuckin' knives and —  ”  stab ! delivered to the innocent air. then another. then another. sloppy and vicious. big grin remains.  “  not pretty, man ... y’know, unless you're into that sorta thing.  ”

[bountyhaunter]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Daiyu's house PARTIES: Alistair @deathsplaything, Emilio @mortemoppetere, Vic @natusvincere, Zane & Daiyu @bountyhaunter SUMMARY: A conspiracy meets to plan an ambush. CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A

She had never had this many people in her house. Scratch that: Daiyu had never had people in her house, ever. Not this one, anyway, this small cabin that she’d been able to rent through hunter connections and had been living in for about half a year. It was kind of overwhelming, if she was honest, but she never was to herself and so she didn’t pay it any mind. 

She returned to the living room with a stack of mismatched cups and a bottle of soda, placing them on the table where a few other key ingredients for a strategy meeting already resided. A package of grocery store chocolate chip cookies and a bowl of potato chips, for one, and then all the bits and bobs of paper like the blueprints and guard schedules Alistair had provided. She looked around the strange combination of people — from Emilio to Vic (who she’d just thought a very sweet suburban mom up until recently) to a guy named Zane (whoever that was) to Alistair. Brutus and Nugget were hopefully entertaining each other in corner. She’d be very sad if they didn’t get on.

“Alright,” she said, ignoring the cups and soda now that she’d placed them on the table. These people were capable of pouring themselves a drink and she wasn’t very good at hosting, anyway. To the dismay of her father — but well, that wouldn’t be the main thing that’d bother him about this ordeal. “Where were we? Us …” She gestured at Alistair and herself. “On the inside. We’ll make sure there’s not a lot of peeps on schedule.” Daiyu tucked her legs underneath herself as she got comfortable on the floor. She didn’t have enough chairs. She barely had enough forks for one person. “Whatever. Getting in’s not the issue.” She was down to brush over those details, because something else was nagging at her. Daiyu wasn’t very good at boring planning details. She pulled a messy list of captives toward her. She’d worked on that over the past week. “What do we do about the people?”

—

Tension turned his body into a coiled spring, ready to leap up at the slightest irritation. Emilio stood in the kitchen with his back against the wall, eyes darting periodically between Alistair and the woman he didn’t know with the occasional uncertain glance towards Daiyu. The only person in this room he trusted fully was the one he’d brought himself, and he was already feeling a little guilty for dragging Zane along. 

He looked to the table, to the blueprints and papers and things he probably wouldn’t understand. This level of planning was new to Emilio. Most of the time, his plans consisted of ‘go in, kill what needs killing, try not to die.’ (Except for the ones that omitted the last point — he tried not to let himself think of those for the moment.) This kind of strategizing was foreign to him. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. Part of him wanted to protest, wanted to point out that it wasn’t necessary for the blade to know what the hand was planning. Point him in the direction where he needed to slice, and he’d do it. Everything else seemed wasted on him. 

But… he wasn’t sure he trusted any of them, even Daiyu, enough not to know the plan. If he was going to put Zane’s stupid life on the line, he was going to make sure the plan was a decent one. He owed the vampire that, at least. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a flask and took a swig, ignoring the soda and snacks Daiyu had set out. This was more his style. “Case by case, I think,” he piped in, glancing at the list Daiyu had provided. “Some of them might not be the kind we want to put back into the world.” But Emilio wouldn’t leave anyone locked up. A quick death was kinder, he thought; he’d give them that. It was what he’d want for himself, when the time came. “Okay. So, we need to… look into this. Right? See why they were brought in, decide what to do with who. We don’t want to send serial killers loose on the town.”

—

It had taken a lot from Alistair to leave Tommy at the apartment to come to this meeting. The two had become dependent on each other since the loss of Melody and both of their worlds crumbled from under them. The only thing that propelled Alistair forward on this mission was that his life was on the line, and there was no way they would leave Tommy alone. They owed everything they could to make this out alive. And if that meant going against The Good Neighbors and Winnifred herself? Then so be it. Brutus had been playing with Nugget in the corner, but Alistair gave the command, and Brutus ceased his playtime and made his way over to his owner, eager to work. 

A case-by-case basis was necessary. Alistair remembered a lot of the names that went into those cages and remembered the atrocities that were committed. “Winnifred has a better-kept log that has names, dates of imprisonment, and reasoning,” Alistair spoke up, arms crossed over their chest as they stared blankly forward. “Daiyu and I could call her to the keep to discuss overcrowding,” Alistair suggested, knowing that the keep was getting seriously overcrowded. It was something they’d have to talk about eventually, whether Winnifred wanted to or not. “She’d bring her book with her and make decisions for ‘the good of the town.’ or whatever she tells herself.” 

“Listen, this mission is not going to be easy,” Alistair warned, hand gripping around the hold of Brutus’s harness. “People are going to get hurt, people are going to die. Not everyone you release will be happy to see you.” Alistair knew from experience how wily they could be. They knew they had to prepare for the worst, a spell that they’d already begun to prepare for. Alistair was going to die there, they knew they were. But they didn’t want anyone else to get killed along with them. If they could warn them of the dangers, they’d at least have done their part.

__

Vic had turned back home three times before she finally convinced herself to join this meeting.  This was why she’d joined the Good Neighbors in the first place, right?  To protect the vampires she’d suspected were being targeted and start the path toward righting the wrongs of her past.  Sure, she may have gotten a little distracted by the delicious little taste of neighborhood power joining the group had provided her (she’d made more citizen’s arrests in the last month than probably her entire time in Wicked’s Rest, but littering was down a good 10%). But after finally overhearing the truth from Alistair and Daiyu a few days ago, it felt like something substantial was finally about to happen.

As she sat straight-backed in the chair that had been offered to her, pursing her lips at the menu offered to them, a punch of guilt invaded her stomach, scolding her for even thinking of freeing monsters from their cages.  She had known for nearly 300 years that they deserved to die, and if she were in this meeting three years earlier, she would have elected to kill them all on sight.  What kind of world was she leaving for Rosie-... for humanity… if she let monsters like herself walk free?  But then her mind flipped again, to all the work she’d done to be better, to all the ‘monsters’ that had proved her wrong… Why couldn’t this have been easier?

“Why do we get to decide which of them deserves death?” Vic chirped from her corner, the first thing she’d uttered the whole meeting.  “Is that not just as reprehensible as what Winnifred is doing?  Who’s deciding morality here?”

__

Zane had rarely felt as out of place as he did here, working very hard to piece together the bits of information Emilio had provided with the people in the room and the words they were exchanging. It probably didn’t help that he’d chosen to stand, wanting to fade into the background with his ill-defined role here but realizing it probably made him look like Emilio’s bodyguard or something equally silly. How the slayer would have seethed at that notion. Moving to sit now seemed worse but he did uncross his arms, trying to match names and what they were to the faces in the room. 

It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn grim - who gets to live. He’d had this conversation with Emilio, about how locking up things like Zane wasn’t a viable option. Not humane, either, especially for something that would practically live forever. It still made his skin crawl but the naivety he’d possessed last year existed no more, gone up in flames when that barn did. “Someone has to do it,” he found himself speaking up, not sure how much of it was his own opinion and how much was simply support for Emilio, which seemed his only true role here. “At least this way it’s… informed.” Was he even supposed to take part in the conversation? Well, too late now. 

—

This was why she shouldn’t get caught up in affairs. Not human affairs, not supernatural affairs — none. Daiyu functioned best on her own. If she had never joined up, she would have never known about this and she would have been able to spend this night watching Buffy. But here she was. Hosting the revolution for a place that should perhaps not be overthrown, hearing people talk about what she preferred to avoid. Morals. She tended to let herself be led by the bounty board, not by what felt good.

She started stuffing a cookie into her mouth so she had an excuse not to talk (which was nonsensical, considering she talked with a full mouth all the time) and felt herself grow agitated. “Yeah, we could totally get the book off her, no doubt,” she said, “Whatever, but — even those are — you know.” Vic was making good points. All of them were. She wanted to slam her head into the table.

“Way I see it, Winnifred isn’t … she’s just a human. Trying to do what she reckons is best, but she doesn’t … she’s clueless, yeah?” She glanced at Emilio. “Cortez and I, we’re hunters. We know this shit. We’ve been raised for this. We know what’s a risk, what’s not.  What beast to take out in the woods and which to let run its course, ya know? So it’s the same as that. Just … more …” She wiped a crumb off the table. “Premeditated. Whatever. Most important is that it ends here. And yeah, for many that’s gonna mean it ends-ends.” Daiyu’s job was to figure out who in town should be targeted, hadn’t it? She knew in some cases why some of the prisoners had been put there. She’d made that judgment. None of them were innocent. (None of them at this table were either. Well, maybe Zane and Vic, she wasn’t sure.) “I’ll make sure there’s plenty of weapons around for when push comes to shove.”

—

Zane had his back, though Emilio wondered how much of what he was saying was what he really believed and how much came from his perception that he still owed Emilio for what happened in that barn a year ago now. He didn’t bring Zane along to have a yes man in his corner, didn’t want someone who would agree with everything he said. He needed Zane for the same reason he needed Teddy, or Wynne, or Xó: because sometimes, Emilio led with something that wasn’t his head. Sometimes, the past got muddled in with the present, and nothing was quite right. If he was making the wrong choice here, he needed someone to tell him that. He needed it to be someone he trusted, someone who understood him. He had to hope that Zane was speaking his mind and not saying what he thought Emilio wanted to hear. He spared the vampire a quick glance, hoping to communicate all of this in a simple look. It was a lot of pressure to put on an expression that really wasn’t much different than his usual.

He glanced to the necromancer, scoffing quietly. “I don’t think anyone here walked in that door thinking this would be easy,” he replied flatly, crossing his arms over his chest. “If it were easy, we wouldn’t need this meeting.” This was going to be rough. It was going to be hard and it was going to be dangerous and people were probably going to die. People at this table were probably going to die. Emilio felt a surge of guilt for the fact that he hadn’t shared his plan to participate in this with any of the important people in his life. If he died doing this, none of them would know until after. They’d probably be upset about that. 

He nodded as Daiyu spoke, glancing around the table. “Look, I think… These people got into this shit thinking they were doing something good.” He let his eyes go from Daiyu to the clean-cut looking woman beside her to the necromancer. Maybe all of them had gotten into the Good Neighbors with good intentions, and maybe they hadn’t. Emilio wasn’t sure it mattered. What mattered more was their intentions now. “Some of the people locked up there are bad. There’s no denying that. But some of them aren’t. Some of them are just people who have made mistakes, maybe, and they can learn from this. And the ones who can’t…” He trailed off, clenching his jaw. “I would rather die,” he said simply. “If I had to choose between being locked away for as long as these people live or dying for what I’ve done, I would rather die. It’s better. It’s faster for them. It’s safer for everyone else. It’s better. So this is what I’m doing. If someone has a problem with it, you can try to stop me, but something tells me we’re all here because we’re on the same page, yes? So we figure out who gets what, and we figure out how to give it to them. That’s what we do. Anyone who wants to leave can leave, but I’m all in.”

—

When it came to killing, Alistair was no saint. They’d done it before, they’d probably do it again. They’d done it for the sake of saving Tommy, they’d done it to save countless others. But they’d never killed someone without someone else benefitting from it. They’d never killed on a scale such as this. And that’s what they were doing, wasn’t it? All those people who couldn’t be set free were going to die. It caused Alistair to shift their weight from foot to foot, head downcast as they thought about the implications of taking more lives. They wanted no part of it anymore. Still, if it had to be done to keep people safe, then the benefits outweighed the costs in their minds. 

“There are alarms.” Alistair piped up, looking through Brutus’s eyes to point in the correct placements. “Once when the front gate is breached, once when the button on the cages is hit.” Alistair pointed to the center control panel with a frown. “If you want to set them all free, that’s where you want to go.” He tapped his finger against the paper before removing it.

Alistair pulled out a set of keys that Daiyu had. “This one opens cages.” They explained, pulling out a rather large key and laying it on the table, then pulling out a passkey. “That’ll get you in the building without detection. We’ve made sure that security is lighter that day by putting ourselves on duty.” Alistair put the pass key down on the table alongside the large ring of keys. “Daiyu and I will stick together, so we don’t need both of us to have this on us.” 

“As for who lives and who dies, we’ll deal with that when the time comes when we have that book from Winnifred. What are we going to do about her?” They implored, knowing that Winnifred would go down kicking and screaming if it came to it. “She’s a human, but she’s a human that thinks what she’s doing is justified and within reason.” 

__

Vic had known some of them were hunters before she arrived.  Of course there’d be hunters in a situation like this.  For years, hunters were probably the people she felt most comfortable with, as long as her bracelet was functioning properly.  She was practically surrounded by them, whether at her old bartending job where they frequented or her more nefarious meetings where she was trading information about vampires for cash.  But now, with everything between Rosie and her change of heart, she found herself actively avoiding them.  She felt herself toying with the cloaking bracelet as they argued.  

As Emilio spoke, Vic couldn’t deny the familiar feeling that fluttered through her stomach, the one she felt after she was presumably betrayed by her first love, and again after she was sired.  “I’m still not comfortable with us being so egotistical as to think we get to be the deciding factor, but…”  People were still important.  Humanity was still important, as much as it sucked.  There had to be a nuance between the belief that all vampires were monsters and all vampires were saints.  Her sire was no saint.  Neither was she.  She sighed before she continued.  “It seems with the time crunch, it’s our only option.”  She wasn’t happy with it, because morality in general felt so gray these days, but she couldn’t sit by and watch them all be prisoners.  Not with everything she knew now.

The group that they had gathered seemed valuable, and willing to work together, and for a moment, she doubted her place amongst them.  Would she be much help?  “There won’t be much use in us trying to get through to her”, Vic said.  She was the newest member of the group, the one who knew Winnifred the least, but she knew more than her fair share about having the wrong idea about supernaturals and using it to try to rid them of the world.  “Perhaps she needs a taste of her own medicine.  At least until we figure out what to do with the others.”

__

It would be even more difficult when the time came. This discussion was one thing, even looking over names on paper might be easy but when the time came… Zane wondered briefly if rehabilitation was an option. Where was the line? For humans, those who would eventually perish during a life sentence, there were cases of atrocities bad enough that redemption wasn’t in the cards, would never be on the cards. Was this scenario that much different? They did lack a judge and jury but if murder, especially repeat offenses, meant a life sentence, wasn’t that what they were executing in a way? At least for the ones like him, hadn’t they already used up all their allotted time and simply cheated death? The brief ethics course in nursing school hadn’t exactly prepared him for this. 

Emilio was staring him down, face unreadable as always. Did he not want him to talk? Or maybe not agree? Who knew, honestly. At least it seemed settled that not everyone would be released into the wild from their prison, the older man with the dog moving on to plans that made Zane feel eerily like this was a heist movie. The odds for an end scene showing how they pulled everything off smoothly with no casualties didn’t feel great, though. “What are we dealing with in terms of the people… running this? Are they all… human?” Zane found himself asking as they discussed the fate of the ring leader - it was hypocritical in some ways but the idea of harming humans didn’t sit well with him at all. It had been over a year but he still felt more of a kinship with them than his fellow undead. 

—

All of this went against all Daiyu had made herself know for the past years. She was a bounty hunter, plain and simple. The Good Neighbors had been a gig, a lucrative one at that — but she’d joined with that stupid notion of doing something good and it seemed she hadn’t given up on that. “We don’t touch that button, then. The one that opens everything at once. That’s disaster.” She looked at the keys, then at the would-be intruders. “Just get in with those, don’t raise any fucking alarms, and the first bit should be smooth. It’s when start opening the cages that we should be more alert.”

She took her list back. It had names, species, some transgressions on it. It wasn’t Winnifred’s color coded book, but it was something. “Let’s get through some, at fucking least. We’re here now.” She didn’t want many more of these meetings. Daiyu splayed it on the table, pointed at the name Mack Ross. “Like, I can tell you now what and how. She killed a buncha people, isn’t in control, which is …” She made a motion. “Ludacris, ‘cause it’s Mack fucking Ross. Then, Johnny no surname, he’s a vampire. You know, I think he’s alright, he loves Snicker Snackers, he could totally do an animal based diet, maybe.” She pointed to another name, “Svetlana, serial student killer. Stake.” Daiyu motioned staking a vampire, wooshing sound and all. She pointed at another name. “Chang, dunno his first name. Kept the bones of all his kills after he ate ‘em whole. Probs best to not release him into the world again.”

To speak about killing undead and shapeshifters was something she did with an eerie ease, as it was who she was brought up to be. Later that night, she’d reflect on her lackadaisical attitude with distaste, but for now it was something to hold onto. She felt something stir in her stomach at the mention of Winnifred, though, and her eyes moved to Emilio. Hunters were supposed to protect humans. Winnifred had tried to do the same, foolishly and cruelly, but she had. “We destroy the keep. We make sure they don’t make one again. And yeah, all human. Or like, human with some zest, like Al and I.” She wasn’t going to kill them. “So yeah. We destroy their means and that’s that.”

—

“Agreed,” Emilio said, nodding towards Daiyu. “Setting everyone free at once would be a bloodbath.” The more violent offenders would kill each other, the ones offended by the time they’d lost behind bars would kill anyone who got close. And that was to say nothing of the ones who might just be hungry. That wasn’t the sort of chaos any of them could afford. They needed to do it slowly. It would be risky, sure, but… less risky than setting loose a whole slew of problems. “Whose cage gets opened first, then?” The ones with the best shot of actually getting out would be the ones freed in the very beginning. But beyond that… “Any prisoners who might help us out? Without killing any of us, ideally.” His eyes darted towards Alistair and Daiyu, who’d both had some kind of a hand in the… acquisitions. 

Daiyu, at least, seemed to be on the same page. She was already pointing to her book, and Emilio felt a little uneasy at the first name she pointed out. Mack Ross. Kaden and Monty were both fond of her, weren’t they? “We should spring her early on.” He pointed to Mack’s name. “At the beginning.” He offered no explanation as to why. “Johnny no-name, too. Get the ones out who we think will need the… least amount of help staying honest. The ones we know we’re going to kill, we should get to last. That way if something happens and we can’t get to everyone…” At least they could free the ones who needed freeing before going out in a blaze of glory. He let the thought hang unfinished. Looking at the list, he pointed at another name. “That’s my client’s friend. We free her early, too.” After all, that was why he’d gotten dragged into this whole mess to begin with.

Winnifred, though… That was more complicated. He met Daiyu’s eye, then glanced to Zane. Did it matter if a human didn’t think they were doing harm, as long as harm was done? How much did good intentions matter, in a case like this? Emilio had to believe they meant something. After all the bad shit he’d done with good intentions, he wasn’t sure he was the best one to judge. “We don’t have to kill any of them.” But would he stop any of the prisoners, if they tried? He wasn’t sure. “We destroy the place,” he agreed. “How… detailed are their records? We should destroy those, too. Make it impossible for them to start up again next week or something.”

—

Staying silent as the others deliberated who lived and who died, it was like he was healing people all over again. The wellbeing and life for one, was the only way to help another. Some of the people who were locked up in those cages were less monsters than Alistair was, and they knew it. They stayed silent as they deliberated, then perked up at the name of Mack Ross. “Yes, definitely free Mack,” Alistair spoke up finally, knowing that she was a sweet girl who had already been through enough. What she did to land her in the Good Neighbor’s in the first place be damned. They, like Emilio, also offered no further comment. 

“I’m all for destroying the place.” They muttered, knowing that their opinion on matters held little sway. “Winnifred will fight for this place, it’s her baby, it’s been her sole purpose for so long,” Alistair explained, tapping a finger against their other arm as they thought. “The records are kept here,” Alistair spoke, tapping the map to a back room. “It’s got fireproofing, so you’ll need to go in there first.” Alistair frowned, realizing the problem with that. “Only Winnifred has access to that room, not even I can get in there.” 

Winnifred had good intentions, but she didn’t know what the real world was really like. She saw what she wanted to see, and turned a blind eye to all the rest that made the rosy picture anything else. They’d learned that after being close to her after all these years. “There will be after-effects of this we should think about as well. Just because the keep is gone doesn’t mean they won’t try to reform somehow. People will always find a way. The top hitters are the ones you’ll want to keep an eye on, like Winnifred if you decide to leave her in the ruins of her keep.”

__

Vic shifted in her seat, uncomfortable as the names down the list were being read.  None of them sounded familiar, even the first one that Daiyu seemed to imply would be well known, but the talk surrounding them didn’t make her any less uncomfortable.  What had kept her from the same fate as these vampires?  What if they were freshly sired, or hadn’t had a chance to learn yet?  What if an old, grumpy bitch of a vampire had betrayed her own kind and caused them on a path of destruction, somehow?  She stood up from her chair suddenly, crossing her arms over her chest.  “You don’t have to speak of this so crassly.  It’s almost as if you’ll enjoy killing them.  If that’s the case, you’re no better than them.”

She was no better than her old self, if she was allowing this to happen.  Perhaps she could find a way to rescue those they were intending to harm.  She could buy a property in the outskirts of town, far away from Rosie, and teach them to be less monstrous, somehow.  It felt wholly cruel to take someone’s second chance away.  What would these people say about her if she had found herself in the keep? Their words sounded muffled around her as she concocted it. Victoria Larsson, reformed vampire hater and only feeds from what she calls ‘ethically sourced’.  Currently brainwashing a slayer child.  Monster. Stake. 

She sat back down with a huff.  “So our moral code includes deciding that some prisoners die for their crimes, but all of the people who locked them up just get to roam free with some property damage?  Alistair is right.  They’re just going to find a way to do this again.  Maybe with more permanent consequences, as a backlash to our success.  Letting them walk without consequence would be as foolish as not doing anything at all.

__

The one with the notes, Daiyu, started moving down the list in a way that so clearly established her as a hunter. It was crass but not necessarily… wrong. There seemed to be a distinction made between pure malevolence and mistakes, a lack of control. Zane felt relief, realized that if his own transgressions were being judged, he would have stood a chance at this proposed reform. “Is it safe to assume no one’s been… feeding them?” he wondered as Emilio suggested letting the previously captive help. “Because I can… provide blood.” He didn’t offer any explanation as to how - skimming from the hospital seemed like a necessary evil in this scenario. 

—--

Daiyu felt her stomach sink as Vic chastised her, eyes blazing as she looked at her, “You don’t know shit about shit, lady,” she bit, before trying to turn to other matters. A headache was forming behind her eyes and she looked at the list before pulling it towards her again. With a pen she found somewhere on the table she added some asterisks next to names they’d discussed and X’s next to others. “This isn’t about being better or worse than ‘em, it’s about ending it. So. What the fuck do you suggest we do about the rest of the good neighbors? Should we punish ‘em all? Hang ‘em from their thumbs or something? What about you? Me? Alistair? Should we throw ourselves under the rubble to repent?” She was mostly talking to Vic now, even if she spoke to all of them. They were humans. Daiyu might not really keep to a code, but hurting humans? You didn’t do that. That was the main hunter rule. 

She tried to refocus. “The cages are split in different rooms. We can make a plan, an order of operations. I can … Alistair and I can list who seem aggressive.” Daiyu considered suggesting they just kill them all, but that was too crass, even for her. “We just light all the shit on fire. Getting a flamethrower shouldn’t be hard.” She would like to have one on hand, anyway, for totally legal reasons. 

She glanced at Zane. “Sometimes. When there’s stuff. I give them some of the … leftovers from my regular hunts sometimes. But if you’ve got proper shit, sure. Smuggling stuff in isn’t too hard.” Getting it out was what was harder. “Might be better if the vamps aren’t starved. Can you get brains too?”

—

“I don’t think trying to keep serial killers off the streets makes us shitty people,” Emilio added, nostrils flaring with brief irritation. “We’re not talking about killing the people who were tossed in cages for fucking up. We’re talking about the ones who carve people’s fucking hearts out for fun. You really want people like that running around this town?” The thing was, he understood where the Good Neighbors must have been coming from, in the beginning. Their philosophy wasn’t that far off his own. The only real difference was that Emilio killed the people he deemed worthy of his judgment, while the Good Neighbors locked theirs away. In Emilio’s opinion, killing was kinder. In the opinion of others… Well. There were different schools of thought.

He glanced to Daiyu, nodding his head. “Good idea,” he agreed. “Go in with a plan for the order, get it done as quick as possible. And destroy everything we can. Maybe they try to pick up again later,” he looked to Vic, acknowledging her concern, “but it won’t be easy. We take away their base. We show them that their plans can go wrong. We put the fear in them. If they’re smart, they go underground, try to put distance between themselves and the people they locked up. If they’re not smart…” He trailed off, letting it hang. Odds were, they wouldn’t have to kill any of the people involved with the Good Neighbors. If they didn’t disappear… someone else would take care of that part. Emilio found he didn’t have any real desire to stop that. He wondered if he ought to feel guilty.

He nodded at Zane’s question, looking at Daiyu again. Her smuggling shit in was part of what had clued him in that she might be willing to join his side of this shit. “They’re probably not well fed,” he replied, “so more blood is better. I… might know someone who can get us brains.” He grimaced, unsure he wanted to ask Monty for a favor. But if the zombie was really as into peace as he claimed, he’d probably be on board. And Emilio figured he owed it to him to let him know what was going on with Mack, anyway. He’d want someone to tell him, if it were Nora or Wynne. 

—

For a while, Alistair stayed silent, listening as people listed off what to do, about what they would do with what. For a moment, they found themselves completely detaching from the conversation, dissociating as they thought about the very real possibility of dying here. Some people were locked up who wanted them dead, they’d been too close to Winnifred for too long. They were responsible for their cellmates disappearing and never returning. If anything, Alistair was just as much a monster as those who were locked behind those cell doors. It’s something they’d been wrestling with for quite some time, but now? Now they had to finally address it. 

They couldn’t let themselves simply die, they had to continue preparing for the worst-case scenario. While everyone else planned who to set free and what to do, Alistair was making a mental checklist of what they needed to gather for a spell. “There’s no world where Winnifred wouldn’t come after us if she was allowed to walk away unscathed.” They finally spoke up after some time, still distant, still somewhere else in their mind. 

“I say we let the prisoners deal with her.” It was harsh, it was crass, but it’s what they thought. “I’m sure the prisoners will take care of Daiyu and me if we’re not careful,” Alistair added, crossing their arms over their chest. “We’ve been to the keep countless times, they know our faces.” They spoke to Daiyu, though they didn’t look over to her. “It’s something to keep in mind, that’s all.” They nervously scratched at the side of their nose, knowing that they were opening a can of worms with their words.

__

Vic felt her grip tighten around the arm of the chair, staring Daiyu in the eyes as her sharp words echoed around the room.  For her part, her expression remained stoic and still, but inside, she was seething.  “Those who wish to take down positions of power inherently have to be better.  It’s the whole goddamn point of what we’re doing.”  This was a bad idea, she should have never agreed to join this overtaking- never eavesdropped on Daiyu and Alistair in the first place.  “I suggest that we do anything other than stick our thumbs up our asses and hope for the best.”  Perhaps she should be one of the ones to be punished.  Not for crimes involving the Good Neighbors, but for all she’d done to vampires for centuries.   

But Emilio had a point.  Some of the people in the cages were bad.  That was the long and short of it.  The problem, to her, came with who got to decide what bad was.  “No”, she said quietly, and she stood up again, walking to the other side of the room in a huff.  She wasn’t used to having to work with people, or having to compromise on her beliefs to make  someone else’s plan work for someone else.  But she wasn’t naive to the fact that she was the newbie in all of this, and that everyone here thought they were doing the right thing.  No matter how ignorant some of them sounded.

She glanced at Emilio, then at Daiyu, and then at the others, feeling calmer than she had a moment ago.  “Then I think it’s worth discussing continuing to meet up after everything.  Periodically, to make sure she doesn’t try this again.”

She raised her eyebrows at Alistair’s suggestion, not hating it in the slightest.  It would be the truest justice to let those that were scorned by Winnifred be the ones to decide her fate.  Even if it were just the supposed ‘good’ ones.  She looked between the rest of the group, eager to hear their thoughts.

__

All of the arguing wasn’t exactly inspiring hope. This was a group of people clearly not accustomed to working in a team, basically a bunch of Emilios struggling to find ways to make this collaboration work. Zane wondered if he was the only one in here with actual experience of working in a team - granted, a team focused on saving lives and not… whatever this was. “We’re not gonna get far if the four of you tear each other’s heads off, first,” he muttered, finally moving from the perceived safety of his position backed against the wall. “It’s a shit situation and there’s obviously not going to be a conclusion everyone is comfortable with. So we’re all going to be uncomfortable and really morally compromised and we either deal with it or actual, good people are going to continue to rot away in cells.” It had come out a bit more… scolding than intended and he backed down again, arms once more crossing over his chest. “Up to you, I guess,” he added, withdrawn and hoping he hadn’t overstepped any boundaries as the ‘random fifth addition’. 

Maybe all of this would work. Maybe it wouldn’t. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t and something would go wrong. Zane thought about the last ‘jail break’ he’d been a part of. It had definitely gone wrong but… overall, it had been worth it. All he could hope was that this would be worth it, too. And he needed to remember to ask Emilio later where in the world he was procuring brains from.

—

It was easy to keep looking at Vic. To stare her down and take her words and consider throwing the soda bottle at her head. “Then you can fuck off if you want. There’s no better. There’s just ending it. And we are better, for ending their suffering, rather than keeping them there to rot.” Daiyu’s eyes glared darkly at Zane, another person she barely knew who was suddenly mounting a moral high horse as if there was any morality to be found here. Violence begot violence. This would ripple out. It was just another punch thrown in a never ending brawl. “Fine.”

Speaking of brawls, she’d prefer one of those rather than planning this. “M’fine with meeting up after this.” Then, to Alistair: “She can try to come after me. I wish her a ton of luck fighting her hired muscle.” Daiyu didn’t think herself above harm, but there was no way that Winnifred would win in a fight against her. “Best to keep her away from the Keep when we destroy it, if you ask me. Not alert her and all that shit. Just more trouble.” She rubbed her forehead. “And yeah, people will be pissed. I can deal. I’ve dealt with pissed off supernaturals before.” Kind of part of the job description. “Will watch your back though.” 

She wanted to beckon Nugget over and bury her face in his fur before rushing out and going for a run (where she punched trees). In stead she exhaled. “Alright. Emilio and Zane, blood and brains duty. Alistair, spells. Me? Weapons.” She glared at Vic. “Explosives?” 

—

“If the people she’s fucked over want to go after her, that’s between her and them. I’m not risking my ass to save her from shit she brought onto herself,” Emilio added, crossing his arms over his chest. He wouldn’t kill Winnifred, but he wouldn’t stop anyone she’d wronged from doing so if they chose to. After all, he’d hope that anyone who came across him on his never ending quest for vengeance would offer the same courtesy. People got what they deserved, sometimes; Emilio had no intention of standing in the way of that. “If you two want to get out before we start freeing the ones who might be a little angrier at you than others, that’s fine, too,” he added, looking to Alistair and Daiyu. The latter, he figured, would turn down the offer. The former was more likely to take it.

Zane spoke up, and Emilio was reminded why he brought him in the first place. Having someone he knew he could trust was good, but having someone he knew he could trust who could also wrangle people in a way Emilio himself was incapable of? It was a good thing. It made Zane kind of perfect for this shit. He offered the vampire a curt nod. To the rest of the group, he said, “We shouldn’t wait long. They’re likely to figure out someone’s planning something soon. We need to act before then. Catch them off guard. If everyone knows what they’re doing… I say we move in sooner than later. Good with everyone?”

—

The slayer was giving Alistair an out, an out that they very well thought about taking before frowning and shaking their head. “I’m seeing this through.” They spoke, voice harsh and determined. There was so much that they still had to get done, and now was the time to expedite everything they’d worked so hard to accomplish. They were going to do this. They were doing it for Tommy, no one else. Not even themselves.  The plan was set into motion, and there was nothing to do but go ahead with it. From helping to create the Keep and the Good Neighbors to taking it down, Alistair knew they were nothing more than a hypocrite and a traitor. But if this is what it took to keep themselves alive, then so be it. They gripped Brutus’s lead tightly, then nodded their head. “Then so be it. As soon as we’re ready to go, we go. Not a moment later.” Alistair waved a hand, and the papers in the middle of the table began to move around until they were in a neat pile. “Then next we meet, we burn it all to the ground.”

[faustianbroker]

TIMING: Recent LOCATION: The Jones residence PARTIES: Leviathan (@faustianbroker) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Levi finally emerges from the basement, and runs into Emilio in the house. They have some things to discuss. CONTENT WARNINGS: none.

—

If it was the type to be dramatic, Leviathan would complain that it'd been down in that basement for what felt like an eternity… and actually, it was, so it had. Eventually though, the demon did conjure the strength to return itself to its human form, and not finding any remaining wounds that would threaten its life, it finally walked up those stairs on two legs instead of four. 

Opening the door, Levi squinted against the light. It was early evening and a warm golden glow filtered in through the large living room windows that faced the sea, and the sight brought a smile to its face. Unsure about who might be around in the home, Levi made its way toward its old bedroom to get some clothes, slowly climbing the steps to the second story of the home, pausing halfway to rest. 

As it crested the top of the staircase, it heard a sound. A lazy glance was thrown down the hall, away from the double doors to the master bedroom in front of which it now stood, hand sitting still on the handle. That blank stare turned into something more like a smirk as it saw a familiar silhouette moving out of Teddy’s room and into the hall, stopping when it was noticed. “Emilio,” it said in a friendly tone, pushing down on the handles and letting the doors swing wide as it stepped inside.

The room was just as it had been left nearly a year ago, and Levi moved to the dresser, pleased to find that its clothing still filled the drawers. Grabbing a few items to help make it a bit more decent, it was pulling the shirt on over its head when it heard that uneven gait come to a stop in front of the open doorway. It looked Emilio’s way again, wondering how much Teddy had talked to him about… everything. Would he still be as mad as he was when Leviathan had left? There was only one way to find out.

“Enjoying the fruits and comforts of my labor?” it asked him with another knowing smile, something dark flashing across its expression. It certainly wasn't ever going to be above giving someone a hard time, least of all the hunter that had threatened it several times. 

—

Since Teddy’s announcement that Levi was back, Emilio had felt a little like he existed upon the backdrop of a ticking clock. It wasn’t that he thought Teddy’s father was going to kill him — they might have had their disagreements when Levi had left, but at the end of the day, Emilio liked to think they both understood that those disagreements had come from a place of wanting what was best for Teddy — but he doubted that his life would remain as it had been for the last few months. 

Moving in with Teddy hadn’t been a plan so much as a quiet manipulation, with Teddy insisting upon its necessity while Emilio’s apartment was trapped beneath goo and both of them pretending not to understand that it was no longer necessary when the goo dispersed. From where he stood, it felt a natural thing. But from Levi’s point of view? It was probably a little jarring to come back to your kid living in your house with a guy they’d at least pretended to hate the last time you saw them. 

So, he figured it was only a matter of time before Levi sent him packing. It was lucky he’d kept the apartment in Worm Row; he wouldn’t mind going back there, even if it was saddled with memories of things he’d probably be better off forgetting. He hoped Teddy wouldn’t feel the need to move with him; they’d be better off staying with their father in the nice, big house. He really hoped they wouldn’t try to convince him to move onto their boat with them. Emilio loved Teddy, but living on that damn boat certainly sounded like a level of Hell he wasn’t ready for just yet.

In any case, it was probably easier to rip off the bandage quickly rather than dragging it out. When he heard Levi moving around out of the basement (which he’d largely been avoiding under the illusion of giving the demon space), he made his way dutifully towards the noise. Levi called his name and he hesitated, hanging in the doorway as it made its way into its room. He watched it pull a shirt over its head, made note of its movements. It was clearly in some amount of pain. He wasn’t entirely sure on the details of its return, but the fact that it had spent the time since in the basement instead of bothering everyone in the main house probably spoke of some physical damage there. 

In spite of everything, he raised a brow as it addressed him. “What labor? I don’t think much work went into all this.” His tone was flat, though there was the slightest hint of amusement to it. He was trying, in any case. Even if Levi evicting him was unavoidable, he’d like to keep things as civil as they could be for Teddy’s sake. 

—

It really wanted nothing more than to go out the back of the house and down to the edge of the sea. While changing its form again was going to be off the table for a while until it had fully recovered, it could still enjoy the waves and salty breeze that came off of them. But in due time, because there were more pressing matters standing in its doorway right now. Turning to face Emilio fully, Leviathan held a hand over its chest in feigned offense. 

“Excuse me, I’ll have you know it’s very tiring work talking people out of all their worldly possessions,” the demon answered with a grin, allowing the humor to shine through whatever antagonistic reflex had been there before. “But it’s a burden I’m happy to bear. Only the best for my darling Teddy,” it added with a hint of challenge in its tone, its dark gaze raking over Emilio like it was sizing him up and determining if he was best for the spellcaster. It stepped toward him, still very obviously casting some unknown, silent judgment in its head. 

“I asked you to take care of them for me… I see you took your duty very seriously.” It narrowed its eyes at the hunter, but there wasn’t any malice in that gaze. Quiet curiosity, maybe… trying to figure out what had changed their relationship from barely tolerating one another to… whatever it was they liked to call themselves these days. To the hunter moving in with Teddy. To Teddy confessing their intent to marry him. While Leviathan was loath to deny Teddy anything that they wanted, it did want to make sure that Emilio was earnest and honest about this relationship. After all, the hunter had been a bit more loose the last time they’d crossed paths… and even though it’d been over a year ago, Levi hadn’t forgotten that night at the bar, or how the two of them had ended up here that night, in this very bed. As much as it might want to, now that Emilio was sharing a bed with its child. 

—

Levi seemed to take to the humor well enough, and Emilio wondered if he ought to be relieved. He didn’t particularly want to make an enemy out of a demon — the still-healing scars on his arms and legs left by Aesil itched at the thought — but he certainly didn’t want to make an enemy out of Teddy’s father. It was clear, in every word Teddy spoke about their father, that they both loved and respected Levi. What would they say if it disapproved of Emilio’s presence in their life? They loved him, he knew that. But their father’s displeasure would weigh on them, and Emilio couldn’t imagine that he was capable of outweighing a thing like that. 

Levi’s mention of Teddy now sewed more tension between Emilio’s shoulderblades, uncertainty clinging to him in a way that felt utterly unfamiliar. He’d never been in a situation where he needed to impress a significant other’s parents. The only real committed relationship he’d had before Teddy was Juliana, and her father had been mostly indifferent. Emilio had had a last name that carried enough of a reputation to satisfy him. But if anything, that same name worked against him where Levi was concerned. He had no idea if his family’s reputation was a thing the demon was aware of at all but if it was, it probably wasn’t something it viewed positively. Only the best probably wasn’t the kind of thing that Emilio fell into. He knew that.

He shifted his weight, defensiveness crawling up his back as he tried to force it down. Snapping at Levi probably wasn’t his best bet here. “Wouldn’t have let anything happen to them either way,” he said carefully, and he meant it. Even if Teddy had never returned his feelings, even if they decided to end what was between them now, Emilio would do everything he could do to keep them safe. That wasn’t because of any promise he’d made to Levi, though he thought it might be better not to reveal that part. “I know this probably isn’t what you wanted for them.” Flora had never gotten old enough for Emilio to even consider worrying about who she might one day decide to date, but he imagined he’d have wanted the best for her, anyway. Someone better than him, in any case. But… “I think they’re happy. With me. For… whatever that’s worth.”

—

Levi only hummed at Emilio’s insistence that he’d still have protected Teddy either way, not fully believing him, but deciding it wasn’t worth bringing into question. Hypothetical situations served no purpose here, and Emilio had taken care of Teddy, which was all Leviathan had asked of him. 

It moved around Emilio, very much like a shark circling its prey in the water, brows rising when the hunter admitted that he knew he might not be what Leviathan had envisioned for its ward. The demon clicked its tongue, coming to a stop in front of Emilio again. “That remains to be seen,” it offered, cocking its head to one side and listening as the other tried to explain that it felt like Teddy was happy. 

“It could be worth a lot,” Levi responded, turning its back on Emilio to move to the dresser again, snatching up an elastic from the top of it and pulling back its long hair. “Are you happy with them? Do you feel content to be the keeper of their heart? Only their heart?” It sighed. “I know it’s a long-standing human cliche for the parent that still needs convincing to threaten violence, and while I don’t like being predictable, I think we’re both already well aware of… situations that could arise.” It looked at him hard, expression stoic for only a few seconds before it smiled again. “But I don’t want to get caught up in hypotheticals. Just tell me how you feel.”

–

It was hard not to tense as Levi circled him. Emilio turned his head, following it with his eyes as best he could to avoid having his back turned on it. He wasn’t sure whether or not he genuinely thought Levi was an active threat. Paranoia played up every look the demon gave him, reminded him how easily it could get rid of him if it wanted to… but logic dictated that it probably didn’t want to. He had done what it asked, after all, and it wasn’t as if Teddy didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. They loved him; no part of him doubted that. 

The question, of course, was about what Levi felt. It seemed willing to at least give Emilio a chance, which felt like some relief. There was still the matter of the living situation — the slayer found it doubtful that Levi wouldn’t kick him out of the house, even if just for fun — but that was less important than the rest of it. 

The fact that it turned its back on him offered some relief, too, some quiet idea that it must at least not distrust him enough to assume he’d make a physical attack against it. Emilio relaxed a little, though it was impossible for him to relax entirely. He considered Levi’s question, weighing it in his mind. Happy was a big word. Over all, he wasn’t sure it was one he could apply to himself. But where Teddy was concerned… “There’s nobody else for me.” Teddy was it, as far as Emilio was concerned. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, nodding. “I won’t bullshit you,” he offered. “Never been one for that. Can’t say I’ll never do anything to upset them. We both know who I am. What I am. We both know I’ll be the one going out before they do, and we both know it’s better that way. But… I’d never break their heart on purpose. That’s a promise I can make. When it’s something I can control, I want to give them what they need.”

—

It was a good answer, as far as these things went. Clearly honest, as it didn’t paint Emilio as a glowing beacon of light when they both knew there were shadows that enshrined him (and his ilk) that would never be shaken off. But Leviathan was nothing if not used to the shadows, and by extension, Teddy was too. It was one thing to have to impress a guardian that was lawful and good, but a greater demon? Honestly, Emilio had a better shot with Levi than he might have with anyone else. It was just that the stakes were higher, if he were to fuck up. Instead of angry phone calls, it would be annihilation. You win some, you lose some. 

The demon nodded. “I believe you,” it said in a low, even tone. “And I want you to remember that I am what they need. They said it themself, down in that basement.” It lowered its chin. “I am the paterfamilias. I had to leave to protect them, and now I have come back to protect them.” From what, it would not — could not — say. But the sentiment was what mattered: Leviathan would not be separated from Teddy again, come hell or high water. And Emilio, though the demon had no reason to believe he would attempt to separate them, would suffer the same fate as anyone else inserting themselves where they did not belong. That was the message, and it hoped that it was conveyed clearly. 

With that out of the way, Levi slipped into a familiar role, one that was easier for all those around it to engage with. It cleared its throat and clapped Emilio roughly on the shoulder, letting out a short, barking laugh. “Well then, Cortez—welcome to the family. You know, I half expected to have to kick the both of you out of my room,” it added, gesturing at the bedroom they were standing in. “But I see Teddy was far too sentimental for that. That’s good. It could have been awkward.” It raised a brow, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man still expected to be removed from the household. And it would let him continue to think that for as long as the charade amused it.

—

He watched the demon’s face, trying to determine if his statement had been well received. It was difficult to tell, with Levi. It had had centuries upon centuries to perfect its poker face, after all, and while Teddy might have known it well enough to see through the smooth, careful expression it wore, Emilio didn’t. All he could do was guess at the thoughts that might be going through the demon’s mind, and he’d never enjoyed guessing. Emilio liked to have clear, concise answers. Anything less made his palms itch.

So it was a relief, the way Levi stated its belief in his claim as a simple matter of fact. He wasn’t sure he liked the follow up — Levi being something Teddy needed around wasn’t a thing he could argue with, but he didn’t like the idea of needing to trust the demon to stick around when Teddy needed it. He kept that uncertainty to himself, though. If Levi was telling the truth, if both leaving and returning had been designed to keep Teddy safe, then it had proven it would do what was best for Teddy. Emilio was reckless, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with the demon and risk his death in this hallway, even if only because he knew Teddy would feel guilty for it.

Then, Levi seemed to relax. It cleared its throat, it clapped his shoulder, it laughed, and Emilio surmised that the ‘threat’ part of the conversation was over. He still didn’t relax entirely, but then, he rarely did. He raised a brow at Levi’s statement, eyes darting to glance to the room behind it. “Yeah,” he said flatly, “I wasn’t really looking to move in there.” He had no desire to share a bed with Teddy in their father’s room, for… many reasons, really. Looking back to Levi, he sighed. It was probably time to bite the bullet, in any case. “Look, you give me to the end of the day, I can be back in Worm Row. Not like I’ve got much shit to pack.”

—

He was jumping right to it then. Not leaving much room for vague interpretation, confusion, or worry. How dull. How practical. Still… maybe the demon’s fun could be salvaged. “Kept the old place, did we? Hm… lots of ways to interpret the fact that you’re living here, but still paying rent there… fear of commitment? Difficulty letting go of that bachelor lifestyle? A backup plan, in case things go wrong? In case I ever came back?” Leviathan smiled knowingly — these were all shots in the dark, all things that it was more or less certain were untrue, given what Emilio had said and done thus far. All but the last one. That could still very well be true. It let the accusations hang in the air for a moment before speaking again, interrupting Emilio as he no doubt went to defend himself. “Never you mind, never you mind! You can stay…” It raised a brow, clearly enjoying itself in this new dynamic they shared. “For now.” 

Moving back into the room to pluck a pair of sunglasses off of the dresser, the demon gestured broadly with its hands after situating them on its face. “Well! Now that’s settled, I am going to go park my ass on the beach out back. Please tell Teddy where to find me if you see them first, hm? There’s much pondering to be done and work to consider…” It ought to check in with Ichabod and see how things were operating in its absence. Like a well-oiled machine, it suspected, but nevertheless… confirmation would go a long way in helping it relax. 

It moved toward Emilio again, that satisfied grin never leaving its face as it stepped past him and called down the stairs. “Oh Gabagool!” It looked over its shoulder toward the slayer as it walked over to the top of the staircase. “Have you seen the little gremlin? I missed him something fierce.”

—

Of course Levi would question the reason behind Emilio keeping his old apartment. The detective scowled, crossing his arms over his chest as the demon cycled through different excuses, focusing only on the ones that made Emilio look bad. Well… except the last one. Maybe, subconsciously, some part of Emilio had considered Levi’s return a possibility but mostly? He’d held onto the apartment for Teddy’s sake. So that if Teddy ever wanted him gone, they wouldn’t have to grapple with the idea of kicking him out on the streets, wouldn’t let him stay out of guilt or obligation. There was a little more to it, of course; with an apartment in his name, anyone who was looking for him would likely go there before they showed up at Teddy’s, giving an added layer of safety to the house. But before Emilio could say any of this, Levi was barrelling forward, clearly not concerned with the possibility of interrupting Emilio’s explanations. And, surprisingly… not kicking him out. Emilio’s mouth, which had been open in preparation of defending himself, snapped shut in surprise. The for now was a clear threat, but it was still a step above being kicked out entirely, he supposed. “All right,” he said cautiously, eyeing Levi carefully. There would be a catch. He was sure of it. He wasn’t looking forward to learning what it might be.

He watched Levi saunter back into its room, grabbing a pair of what he’d often described to Teddy as asshole sunglasses and rambling on about the beach. If that was where it planned to spend most of its time, Emilio thought, it at least lowered the risk of the two of them running into one another often. The slayer wasn’t much of a fan of the sand or the sea. “Sure,” he replied good naturedly. “I’ll let them know.” 

Relaxing a little, he moved back towards the bedroom he shared with Teddy, only to falter when Levi asked after Gabagool. Shit. There was no way that little asshole wouldn’t do everything in his power to sully Emilio’s good name here. “Ah, haven’t seen him,” he lied smoothly. The little shit had been napping in the living room with Perro when Emilio walked by. He’d have to get to him first, find a way to bribe or threaten him into keeping himself from spreading shit with Levi. “Probably off doing whatever he does.”

—

“No? Hm, right… must be out gathering gossip for me. Such an eager little beaver, always looking to please papá.” Leviathan smirked, having little reason to not believe Emilio, though it did recall that he and Gabs were perhaps not the best of friends. Ah well. Maybe Levi could convince the badalisc to be nicer, now that it was home. Perhaps he was just feeling sad in the absence of his father figure, and was lashing out. It served Emilio right, anyway. He hadn’t given the poor thing any of the lamb he’d been promised while being babysat. 

With a nonchalant wave of its hand, Levi drifted down the stairs to the main level of the house, moving past the large, open living room and toward the wide glass doors that led out to the patio, and beyond, to the beach. It spotted Gabagool quite quickly, but the fuzzy ne'er do well was napping happily with that scruffy mutt that’d been clicking around Emilio’s shitty apartment when it last visited, so the greater demon went on quietly so as not to disturb them. It unlocked the door slowly, pulling it open and slipping outside, sucking in a deep lungful of salty sea air. Its gaze was drawn to the horizon, settling on a distant point where storm clouds seemed to perpetually hang over the ocean. Those dark eyes narrowed for a moment, the whisper of an eldritch curse on its tongue before it pushed away the negative thoughts and forced itself to smile again. No. Not right now. Focus on the warmth of the sun, the coarse sand underfoot, the feeling of home. Focus. Just for today.

[necrosemancy]

Location: Mother Morta’s Nursing Home

Timing: Current

Parties: Emilio( @mortemoppetere ) & Rosemary( @necrosemancy )

Summary: Rosemary accidentally calls Emilio while looking for assistance of a necromantic variety. Needless to say, Emilio strongly disapproves.

Content Warnings: mentions of child death tw

Rosemary was happily humming ding dong the witch is dead as her thumbs tapped across her phone screen, and hastily hit the call button. She was in the blessedly empty staff break room of Mother Morta’s and she had big news for her necromancy teacher. She hadn’t yet attempted reanimating an actual person, but that was only due to a lack of uninhabited bodies. But all that was about to change.

Mister Latimer from room six-thirteen had passed. Rosemary had done her level best to seem saddened by the news of the man’s death, but in reality she was elated. Mister Reginald Latimer had been, frankly, a god damned son of a bitch, and Rosemary had hated him. No, hate was to kind of a word. Loathed entirely would have suited nicely. Not counting the innumerable times he had very intentionally run over the witch’s toes with his wheel chair, or the number of times he had been incredibly rude on the basis of her outfit, her gender, or whatever the issue d’jour was that day, he had been a firm believer in his own superiority and that young women like Rosemary ought to be home. Preferably making her husband and two-point-five kids a sandwich or something.

The pointed toe of her heel tap-tap-tapped against the laminate floor as the phone rang for what felt like the millionth time. At long last, the ringing stopped and she heard rustling on the other side that meant she hadn’t been sent to voice mail. “Alistair!” She whispered into the phone excitedly. “You’re never gonna believe this shit. Creepy rude old man Latimer is dead! He kicked the bucket sometime during the night shift. I’ve heard mixed reports on the cause of death but I can only hope that he had some Christmas Carol esque dream where he was visited by three ghosts, except they all decided he sucked and was irredeemable and dragged his ass to hell.” Rosemary paused, listening to make sure there was no one coming into the room before she continued.

“So I know you’re probably busy with Tommy since school has started back up, but I could really use a hand getting Atimer-lay out of the orgue-may. Like if I pick you up tonight, can you come and like reanimate him to walk into the trunk of my car? Because I really need to practice reanimating something other than skeledog or the boy band mice, and there’s a perfectly good corpse here for me to borrow while they try to track down his relatives that never visit.” Rosemary crossed her fingers, waiting for a ‘yes’. She’d been working so hard, and had made so much progress in her practice. She could only hope she would be given a reprieve from healing to work on something more interesting.

______

The phone rang, and Emilio’s first response was an irritated exhale of breath through his nose. This wasn’t a particularly good response for a business owner who relied on his phone to bring him new cases and, therefore, new revenue. Emilio knew that. A few months ago, when cases had been dry and he’d been desperate for distractions, he would have killed to hear the phone ring. But here lately, he wasn’t exactly hurting for cases. There’d been an influx of missing people around town, and Axis had been pretty busy collecting information on them. Emilio suspected something sinister… but Emilio usually suspected something sinister.

All this to say, he didn’t really need to pick up the phone. He could have let one case go to voicemail, could have let them leave a message and decided after the fact if it was worth his time. But Emilio was bad at that. The idea of leaving someone hanging made his fingers twitch, so he picked up a few rings in. He went to grunt out his standard greeting, but before he could get a word out, the person on the other line was talking. She said Alistair, and it hit Emilio that her voice was a familiar one. A beat later, it hit him that she hadn’t meant to call his number.

Now, someone else might have cut her off right there. Someone else might have told her she had the wrong guy and save her from giving away more than she meant to. But Emilio was nothing if not a nosey fucker, so he listened. He let her ramble, even when her words made little sense (what the hell was orgue-may?), allowed himself to piece together what she was talking about. There was a dead body in a morgue, and she wanted it. His skin crawled a little at the thought, distaste sitting heavy on his tongue. A body was just a body. He knew that. There was nothing inside of it, no one left to care. A body was just a body, but the idea of using one as a toy made him… a little pissed off, really.

When Rosemary finally stopped talking, when she finally awaited a response from Alistair, Emilio grunted. “I’ll be right there,” he said, not bothering with any kind of impersonation. There was no way in hell he was helping her steal a body… but he’d figure out what the fuck she wanted to do with it. And keep her from succeeding.

Maybe it was a good thing he’d picked up the phone after all.

—

Four words. That was all it took to utterly rob Rosemary of her glee. In what felt like slow motion, she looked down at the contact in her phone. Horror dawned on her as she realized that she was happily chattering away about stealing a body to a literal fucking private investigator. Her phone slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a clatter.

She was going to be sick.

After ten minutes, she was pacing back and forth outside of the nursing home. She bit her knuckles, trying to distract herself from her impending doom. She didn’t know what she was waiting for exactly. A sea of blue and red lights and sirens perhaps. Maybe a crowd of people swarming her, pointing and jeering ‘grave robber!’. Or maybe the cartoonish idea of the devil would appear with his little red pitch fork and bring her down the red brick road to hell.

She was frantically firing off texts to the number in a plea to spare her when they arrived. It seems her insisting that it was all just such a funny-haha-joke had done abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Her now shattered phone screen went dark as she hastily pocketed the device. “Didn’t you get my texts?” Rosemary asked in a strained voice. “It’s a joke! A total joke, I was kidding! Like a prank call! Did you never do prank calls growing up? It’s almost Halloween so I thought I’d be on theme and make macabre prank calls! Sooo funny, right?” Her voice had gone up in pitch with every sentence. She was going to cry. “Right?”

____

He stayed on the line just long enough to hear the phone clatter against the ground, a small, satisfied smile on his face. If there was one thing Emilio enjoyed, it was catching people off guard. If there was another, it was pissing people off. Rosemary had so helpfully handed him a gift wrapped opportunity to do both at the same time. He might have thanked her if he didn’t find her so irritating.

Hopping on his motorcycle, he made his way towards the address he’d hastily looked up. Unsurprisingly, he had no idea what a nursing home was, much less where to find the one in town, but he wouldn’t let a little thing like that slow him down. He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket every few seconds as he drove, and it didn’t take a detective to guess who was trying to get in touch with him. Part of him was curious as to what she might be saying. Was she the type to threaten him with things he didn’t want, or promise him things he did? He pulled over at the entrance to the nursing home, glancing down at his phone screen to satisfy the curiosity. Ah. Pretending it was a joke. Not the most effective strategy.

Pulling off his helmet and hanging it off the bike’s handlebars, he made his way towards the figure pacing near the door. “Very funny joke,” he said dryly. “Maybe I tell it to the people who run this place. I’m sure they’d like to laugh, too.” It was an empty threat. Emilio had no intention of letting the necromancer make off with a corpse, but he wasn’t the type of guy to rat someone out, either. He preferred to take care of problems on his own.

—

Rosemary’s eyes widened, and she shook her head furiously. She darted into the man’s path, holding out her hands as though she were trying to soothe wild animal. “Woah, woah, hey, no need to do that.” She cooed, panic pitching her voice higher and higher. She hoped the soft pastel packaging she carefully curated to sell herself as just a regular woman would help to dismiss his suspicions.

But then she remembered one tiny fact from a conversation on her now shattered phone.

Wide eyes narrowed to slits and she took a step toward him, jabbing a manicured finger at him in accusation. “You knew!” Rosemary couldn’t believe how unlucky she was. Of all the people she could have accidentally dialed, it had to be the one that Alistair had described as being ‘judgy’ and ‘thinking he was better for not being a necromancer’.

“You knew the whole time I was sitting there telling you everything I knew, and meanwhile you knew Aleksander’s body was walking around with another guy occupying it!! And you let me think you were going to help me!! What were you going to do? Take my money and fuck off to Tahiti or something?” The necromancer took a long, deep breath. She tried counting down from one hundred to calm herself down- gods forbid any of her coworkers see her in the parking lot having a meltdown of epic proportions.

“How about this. You don’t tell them I made a ‘tasteless joke’ about a shitty old man who I’m pretty sure the only good thing he did with his life was maybe donate his body to science, and I won’t blow up your spot for scamming me. Sound like a deal?” It wasn’t like mister judgy anti necromancer would deign to help her steal the body anyway.

——-

She was talking to him in the same tone Teddy used when trying to convince Perro to spit out a piece of food he’d found in the floor, and irritation flared up like a fire in his chest. If she thought Emilio could be talked down the same way a terrier was, she had another thing coming altogether. Emilio had been reliably informed that he was a damn stubborn asshole; when he set his mind to something, there was very little anyone could do to stop him.

And tonight, he’d set his mind to ruining her plans. The corpse in the nursing home morgue would remain there, even if there was no family to claim it. Emilio wouldn’t think too much about the fact that, as little as a year and a half ago, his own corpse probably would have gone unclaimed if he’d dropped dead in some hospital somewhere. The necromancer would continue to be annoying, but it’d be someone else’s problem. Everything would be fine.

…except for the fact that, apparently, Alistair had a big fucking mouth.

Irritation gave way to a more secure sort of anger at the realization that the necromancer must have blabbed everything to this woman without running it by the rest of them, as if they were the only one affected. Emilio pressed his tongue against his teeth, nostrils flaring briefly. “Actually, I was hoping you’d fuck off somewhere,” he replied, unapologetic. “I don’t know you. I barely knew your friend. Only information I had about him was that he spent his spare time kidnapping people and locking them up in cages to starve so, yeah, I wasn’t looking to help you figure out what happened to him so you could pick up where he left off.”

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “What are you going to do? Write a bad review?” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, no. How will my business ever survive something like this. My stars will never recover.” His reputation was bad enough that he didn’t care about her promise to ruin it… but he also had no real intention of telling anyone about her bodysnatching plan. She didn’t have to know that, though. “If you know I knew your teacher, then you know I know this was a little more than a joke, hm?”

—

It was entirely possible that this man was sent from hell to torment her specifically. But from the expression on his face that said she was irritating the shit out of him told Rosemary that she might just have been sent to torment him too.

“Sorry to rain on your parade sweetness. I have a mortgage to pay off and enough petty stubborn pride to stay here for an eternity. Even if he had left town and he hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed and body snatched, I would have broken into his house, taken all of his books and materials I needed, and figured it the fuck out.” She hissed through clenched teeth.

The automatic doors of the nursing home slid open with a squeak, and a woman walked out pushing and older woman in a wheelchair, the two chatting away as they moved toward a car on the other side of the parking lot. Rosemary forced her gritted teeth to become a grimace of a smile, and she waved to them. She wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of thinking he had her backed into a corner. “Have a nice time at your granddaughter’s birthday, Phyllis!” She called as they packed themselves into a car and drove off. The smile fell from her face and turned back into a scowl as she swiveled her attention back to Emilio.

“Listen. Clearly I have questionable taste sometimes. But so do you, since you left the house wearing those shoes with that belt. We all have our lessons to learn. And obviously if I had known that Aleks was gunning for the title of Mister War Crimes Universe, I wouldn’t have asked him for help! Does this look like a face that would want to commit war crimes?” Rosemary asked before shaking her head. “ Actually, don't answer that. Your fashion choices here today have made it clear that you may need glasses. To answer my own question- no! I watch fucking hallmark movies in my free time, for fucks sake. I don’t spend my time plotting for world domination or looking for ways to hurt people.” Of course there was the question of what the cost for healing people was, but she could cross that bridge when she got to it. Which based on her current studies wouldn’t be for a while.

Rosemary knew that talking this much at a man who had clearly already made his own decisions about her probably wasn’t the wisest idea. But apparently the wire that connected the wise decision making part of her brain to her mouth had been cut.

“Yeah, I do know that. Which sucks for me. But somehow I don’t think the town authorities would be peachy keen on believing a guy who clearly got his private eye badge in a box of Frosted Flakes that nursing home Barbie is trying to steal a body. Tell me, if you knew and had evidence that a man was taking people and holding them hostage to do truly heinous things, why the fuck didn’t you call in some reinforcements? And why, if you didn’t call for backup in that situation, would you stop me from taking the very dead, very not-in-use body of a man who made one too many misogynistic comments in my presence for me to feel even remotely bad about practicing on him?”

——

“Yeah, well, no point in getting you out of town now, anyway, is there?” Besides saving himself the annoyance, maybe, but… Frankly, if everyone who annoyed Emilio left town, Wicked’s Rest would have a population of maybe ten people. And as nice and peaceful as that sounded, it wasn’t really feasible. Life meant dealing with people who irritated him endlessly, and that was a list that Rosemary was quickly making her way to the very top of. Alistair was bad enough, all self-righteous and self-serving. He hadn’t wanted to add a second necromancer to that list, but… the world very rarely gave Emilio what he wanted, didn’t it?

His eyes darted to the doors as they opened, body tense like he was expecting a fight, because he always was. Instead, it was an old woman — named Phyllis, apparently — who was there and gone in an instant. Rosemary clearly wasn’t phased by her presence, greeting her with a smile before she disappeared into a car that drove away.

Emilio turned back to her, letting out a sharp laugh. “His boss was the kind of person who makes cookies for new neighbors and wore expensive shoes,” he pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think people always look like what they are? I’ve seen monsters that pass out food at the soup kitchen to help them find someone to kill on their way home. People who look like you and spend their free time murdering kids for fun. You can’t tell shit about someone just by looking at them or knowing what their hobbies are. I mean, Christ, if you really think that, you must have been born fucking yesterday. Someone’s clothes, what movies they watch, what their face looks like, none of that shit means anything. People are who they are. You can’t know any of that just by looking. For all I know, you’ve got a basement full of people whose throats you’ve slit for more bodies.”

She had a point, of course; the authorities would believe her over him, for a lot of reasons. He didn’t trust the cops as far as he could throw them, anyway. “I did call for backup,” he huffed, rolling his eyes. “The police weren’t going to do shit. They’d rather close their eyes and pretend things like that aren’t happening. I called people who could help, and they did.” If he’d gone at it alone, without Zane and Daiyu and Vic and even Alistair, he probably wouldn’t have made it out in one piece. “I didn’t call for backup here because you’re one person. If I need to stop you, I can. And I will, if you try shit.” Something tightened in his chest a little, some quiet rage. “It doesn’t matter who he was, what he was like. He was a person. Not a fucking toy for you to take home to play with. If he was shitty, he was shitty. He’s dead now, that’s great. Doesn’t mean you get to keep his fucking corpse.”

—

After the conversation ended, Rosemary decided she would put the words ‘DO NOT EVER CALL’ in all caps in place of the investigator's name.

His ranting caused the tendril of guilt that had snaked its way inside her upon learning of Aleksander’s extracurricular activities to coil around her chest. She drew in a sharp breath, trying to keep herself calm. Rosemary knew she’d done nothing wrong, at least according to her own code of conduct. And she couldn’t expect people who hadn’t grown up in the Kane family to understand the intricacies of her family legacy. The legacy that her family didn’t want her to carry on… she pushed her shoulders back and lifted her chin. She knew her rules. She knew she was a good person. It didn’t matter to her what this one man thought. Or at least, it shouldn’t have mattered.

“Contrary to popular belief,” she began, trying to sound as cool and collected as she could manage. “Not all necromancers relish murdering people. The only bodies in my house are a few taxidermied mice and a skeleton of a dog. Slitting throats is kind of like. The exact opposite of what I do. Or what I would do, if I was even a full necromancer, which I am not yet, if you would actually listen.”

She pressed two fingers to her temple, willing the headache she could feel beginning to dissipate. “Listen, if people like Aleks were your only experience with necromancers, I’d get your grudge against them. But clearly not, if you know Alistair. If you know anything about them, it’s that they’re not running around killing people for their own diabolical gain.” Rosemary crossed her arms. Maybe if she held herself tight enough, she’d collapse in on herself and simply disappear from existence and be excused from the rest of this debate. “Especially if you know anything about the kid.” Tommy had become an unexpected fixture on her daily life. The boy had been through far more than any child should, and she’d taken a liking to him. She’d been plying him with baked goods since her lessons with Alistair had started. Rosemary didn’t have any siblings growing up, but she’d decided the universe had saved up to give her a little brother in the form of Tommy.

She knew there was no winning the debate. Emilio did not like her, or the concept of stealing a body, even for practice. “I won’t be able to heal anyone or bring anyone back from the dead later down the line if I don’t learn everything leading up to that.” She admitted. Maybe humbling herself before this man was the only way to win, even just a little. “I don’t have any use for a body in my house, and in truth, it would likely be more of a hassle than my over eagerness to progress as a necromancer is worth. And your good friend Alistair would likely tell me the same, were they here. I won’t remove the body from the premises.” Rosemary was sure to pick her words carefully. She wouldn’t promise not to practice her craft- she didn’t want to lie outright. But obscuring the truth was really the only solution she could see.

______

“And how do you think you’re going to do ‘the exact opposite,’ exactly?” He was hardly a pro when it came to necromancy; in all honesty, he knew only the barest of basics, and most of that came with his relationship with Javier, where talking had never been either man’s primary concern. He’d really only delved into the dirty details of necromancy once before the shit with Alistair went down, when a case seemed to involve a necromancer and he’d badgered Javi for information. The bartender had been uncharacteristically hesitant to oblige, but he’d given Emilio enough to understand what needed to be understood to solve his case and get his payday: that nothing could be gained without losing something of equal value in return. To gain a life, you had to lose one. That was what had happened to his client’s boyfriend back then, why he’d suddenly been dead while his rival had been alive again.

So Emilio didn’t know much, but he knew Rosemary was either misinformed or full of shit. And he couldn’t decide which was worse, really — an inexperienced necromancer playing with things she didn’t understand, or one who knew exactly what she was doing and could seamlessly lie and say she didn’t.

“Aleks isn’t my only experience,” he confirmed, thinking again of Javi. He and Javier got along best when neither asked what the other was doing. He figured it made both of them shitty people, but it put them on even footing, at least. “And Alistair’s not exactly a fucking saint. They tell you how they knew Aleksander? They tell you how they came across my radar? They tell you they were one of the people who built the shit we tore down when Aleksander died? From the ground up, yeah. Spent years kidnapping people just like Aleksander did. Only stopped when they figured it was going to come back and bite them in the ass.” He huffed a quiet, bitter laugh. “You can love your kid and still be a shitty person.” Emilio was proof enough of that. “You can give your kid everything you’ve got and still ruin the fucking life of someone else’s. If you’re trying to tell me most necromancers are good people, you’d better find a better example than fucking Alistair.”

It was clear with her confession that she was inexperienced; he wondered to what extent. How long had she been at this? How much did she know about it? “You won’t be able to bring anyone back without killing someone else,” he told her bluntly. “And that’s fine. That is what it is. I won’t sit here and pretend I don’t think there are some lives worth more than others. But you kill someone, you need to own up to it.” For years, for decades, he’d done something a lot like what she was doing now. He killed undead people without any kind of prejudice, told himself it was about protection. Things were different now. He still went out night after night, stake in hand, but he called it something else now. He called it what it was. It didn’t make him a good man, but it made him an honest one. He liked to think that was better than nothing.

—

Rosemary really, really hated when people acted morally superior just because they weren’t necromancers. She hated it even more when they had a point. At the end of the day, everything in the world came down to balance. Especially necromancy. A life for a life was an adage as old as time. Rulers of civilizations long since past had written entire codes that upheld the concept. An eye for an eye may seem archaic to some, but to Rosemary it had always made sense. It was an exchange and nothing more. And if upholding those ideals meant she was playing god, well, at least her self ordained divine status came with less fire and brimstone than some other gods people prayed to.

There was no real point in debating this man. Emilio had already made up his mind on the practice. Rosemary had decided long ago that she needed no man’s permission to do anything. No matter how many times she fallen short of living up to that promise to herself, she still strove for it. And at that moment, she knew this stranger's perception of her would never matter more than her perception of herself. She was a good person. Or at least, she tried to be. She’d never be able to shelter everyone from the butterfly effect of every action she made. If she tried, she’d go mad. All she could do was make her decisions carefully. Measure the strings of life twice, and cut only once.

“I’ve always known the cost.” Rosemary had only ever known the cost. It was the one lesson her father would impart. In only one thing was everyone equal- death. So the cost of a life saved would always be the death of another. And so it was for her. The birth of her enlightenment was the death of her relationship with her family. And perhaps that would prove for the best. “It was practically my birthright to know that price. So please don’t lecture me on the cost of teachings that I have fought long and hard to even begin to yield. I know it ends with blood on my hands. But the scales balance for everyone in the end. Me included. I’m a student, Emilio. Don’t you think I’m learning lessons from the mistakes of those who came before me? Especially when those mistakes got them both killed. Alistair was simply better at utilizing the deaths around him for the sake of self preservation. But he’s clearly learned his lesson from the ordeal.”

—

It wasn’t as if Emilio didn’t understand the concept of trading lives; it was something he did every day. He killed bad people so that good people could live, and he made his peace with that. He wasn’t a good man; he’d never claimed to be. He was quick to correct anyone who did, quick to make sure that no one got the wrong idea about him. He knew what he was, knew what he did. He just wasn’t sure Rosemary could make the same claim about herself, or Alistair for that matter. Necromancers, in his experience, tended to hold themselves to different standards. In the minds of some of them, it seemed, the lives they took didn’t count if someone else was alive at the end of it. As if you could swap one person for another and have nothing change, as if there wasn’t at least one idiot who loved the person who was dead at the end of the ritual. Emilio got his hands dirty. He turned killers to dust, and he accepted what that made him.

What he did, in his mind, was a necessary thing. He took lives to prevent more lives being taken. Was necromancy just as necessary? Was it the same to undo the damage once it had been done, to cause more in the process? He didn’t know. He knew that, if it were him, he wouldn’t want someone taking a life to restore his when he was gone. He knew he’d never tried it for his daughter, even if he ached every moment she was gone. He knew he disliked the way Rosemary spoke about it, the way she wanted to take a corpse home with her like it was a toy she could practice with. He knew he disliked the way Alistair spoke about it, too, like having the ability to do it meant they had to, as if they didn’t make a choice each time they removed a wound from one person by carving it into someone else. Emilio wasn’t sure he could judge necromancers for doing what they did, but he would certainly judge them for the lack of responsibility they seemed to take with it.

“Then maybe it’s time to start fucking acting like it,” he snapped. “You want to learn, you learn to be better than them. Learn not to treat people like they’re fucking puppets for you to move around however you want. That dead guy in there,” he motioned to the building, “was an asshole. That’s fine. But he was a fucking person. Somebody gave a shit about him. Maybe not when he died, maybe not for a long time, but someone gave a shit about him once. You want to use people to practice on, that’s on you. But you could at least have the goddamn decency to remember that they were people. You do what you do, but you fucking own up to it. You call it what it is. And you call yourself what you are, too.”

—

Rosemary could not believe that as a grown woman she was standing there letting a veritable stranger lecture her like a spoiled toddler who broke into the cookie jar. It was taking everything in her to not find some dead bird to reanimate to come sit in the man’s hair and peck him. She had left home because she was tired of hearing the men in her life dictate what she could and could not do. If she could leave them, why should she take it from a private investigator who barely knew her, had lied to her face, and yet was still standing here trying to claim the moral high ground?

“How, exactly, is what I do any different from what medical students do? They go down to the morgue and practice procedures on cadavers. They do it to learn. You wouldn’t stop a resident from practicing something on a cadaver that could one day allow them to help save someone else. But the cadaver was a person once too. Yet here you are, acting like a sanctimonious jerk to me for doing what is essentially the same thing. Why don’t you go to the hospital and find some second year resident to make cry instead of wasting the-“ she glanced at the time on her now cracked phone screen “two minutes I have left on my break?”

Rosemary shoved her phone back in her pocket and fished her wallet out of her bag. She found a crumpled up twenty dollar bill, and thrust it in the man’s direction. “Here. For your services rendered.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I should have waited a few more days before hiring you, I could have saved myself money and spared myself the drama.”

—

“Well, med students don’t kill people to ‘save’ other people, I think,” he replied flatly. He didn’t know much about how medical school worked, didn’t know enough to say more than that, but he thought it made sense to claim that the cadavers on those tables consented, before their deaths, to have such things done with their corpses. If the man whose body Rosemary was trying to steal from the morgue had agreed to be a puppet for a bored necromancer after his death, Emilio would have cared far less. But something told him that, if that were the case, she would have brought it up before now. She was full of nothing if not excuses, and that would have been one worth touting, if it were the truth.

He raised a brow as she thrust the cash towards him, reaching out and plucking it from her hand if only to make himself more difficult. Whether she’d been genuinely offering the money or only proving a point in the same way a spoiled child stomped their feet during a tantrum didn’t matter much to him; if he could make life harder for someone who was annoying him, he’d jump at the chance.

Shrugging at her outburst, he tucked the twenty into his own pocket. “Probably should have,” he agreed. She didn’t strike him as the patient type, though he was the last person who could point out something like that. He was hardly patient himself, after all. “Look, I hear about you killing people or hurting them to play with necromancy, we’ll have problems. Other than that, you can fuck off to play with your dead animals without hearing from me again.” And he really, really hoped he wouldn’t have to make sure she heard from him again. She was nails on a chalkboard, at this point; Emilio would be happy never to see her again.

—

She barely managed to bite her tongue. Rosemary didn’t get a medical degree for a reason, so she was really in no position to argue her case further. And the jerk on the opposition of the debate would no doubt rub that fact in her face. She gritted her teeth together in what she hoped was a dazzling smile. In reality she looked more like a cornered animal baring its fangs in hopes that the bigger creature would get lost.

The witch rolled her eyes. “You’re going to be really fucking bored as my paranormal parole officer. I haven’t even commited a crime.” Everyone thought they were above necromancy until they lost something they didn’t know they couldn’t live without. Or at least, everyone who’s moral code burned to ash the moment that one thing stopped breathing. Rosemary couldn’t say why that particular train of thought resonated with her. Or she did, but she didn’t want to admit to herself that it would be nice to have someone choose her over everything else.

She shook her head as she glanced back at the time. So much for a nice break. “As lovely as this conversation has been, I have to get back to work. Have the day that you deserve.” Rosemary turned on her heel and stalked back into the building and to her desk. The witch wondered if some light hexing would be appropriate in this particular case. Nothing harmful- maybe just cursing him to hit every red light for a month. Or that his milk was always expired. She’d have to be more careful from then on, especially if Emilio was planning to make good on his word to watch her.

[morendodifame]

" hey, " emilio made his way through the open dorm room, not bothering to knock or even announce himself. he studied the person on the other side, he was just looking for some fresh blood at their parties. " we're throwing a party this weekend, wanna come? " he smiled, tilting his head to the side, " rarely see you at them. "

[howdy-cowpoke]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Farmer’s Market PARTIES: Monty (@howdy-cowpoke) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) (+ Hector) SUMMARY: Emilio is at the farmer’s market picking up some groceries for Teddy when he unexpectedly runs into Monty. He’s curious about the man accompanying the cowboy, and tries to get a read on both of them — but doesn’t really like what he’s seeing. CONTENT WARNINGS: Emotional abuse/manipulation

—

Emilio wasn’t usually tasked with doing the shopping. It was something that predated his living situation in Wicked’s Rest, went all the way back to Mexico when Juliana sent him to the store while she was making dinner to pick up a zucchini and he’d come back with a cucumber instead, earning him an eye roll and a kitchen towel tossed at his face. He was probably worse at it now than he had been then, addled mind easily distracted by the creeping feeling of uncertainty down his spine and the question of whether or not the guy with the manbun running the booth full of artisanal dog treats was planning on killing him or not. 

No, the farmer’s market really wasn’t his scene. But Teddy had asked him to pick some shit up and had given him a pretty detailed list, and Emilio was more than willing to do whatever they asked him to do whenever they asked him to do it, so here he was. Weaving through the crowd of the farmer’s market, glancing behind him periodically, and reminding himself that dog treat guy probably didn’t even own a damn knife. 

“Tomatoes,” he murmured to himself, staring down at the list. “Yeah. All right. Know what those look like.” He steeled himself, limping over to a booth full of them. Some were green, some were red. Emilio had no idea if there was a difference. He picked up one of each, holding them in his hands and staring down at them. “Didn’t say how many,” he mumbled. “Might as well get a few of each. Yeah. All right. Tomatoes.” He turned to speak to the girl running the booth, faltering when he felt a familiar shiver run down his spine. He forced himself to ignore it, because it didn’t matter if someone nearby was undead. Emilio wasn’t going to stab a stranger at the farmer’s market. (Not unprovoked, at least.) 

He grit his teeth, unable to prevent himself from doing a cursory sweep of his surroundings in spite of the adamant internal insistence that it wouldn’t change anything. His eyes darted over a few faces before stopping on a familiar one. Some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. Monty was an annoying, self-righteous ass, but Emilio was pretty sure the guy wouldn’t kill him. He didn’t even think the zombie noticed him, the way he approached the stand. He seemed focused on the guy next to him, who was more unfamiliar to Emilio. The slayer couldn’t keep himself from making a comment as Monty moved into earshot, humming in acknowledgement. “Didn’t think they sold food for your diet here.”

—

Despite the farmer’s market not having things that either of them needed, there was one man living at the cabin who very much needed human food, and while Monty wasn’t much of a cook, he was determined to have something nice waiting for Kaden when he got home that day. Hector, the cowboy was surprised to find, had significantly advanced his culinary skills somewhere along the way, so he could at least take solace in the idea that what they cooked would not be bad, if only… heavily spiced. And it might have been something of a peace offering, if Monty was being honest with himself. While Hector and Kaden had not been at odds, necessarily, he knew that Kaden still felt very wary of the man. So had Monty, in the beginning. But it was hard to not fall into familiar, comforting patterns, and so he’d relinquished all concern and hesitation in favor of having someone around who shared in his struggles, diving headfirst into repairing the friendship that had so heavily defined the person he’d become. And Kaden… well, there was a chance that Kaden wasn’t exactly happy about that. So they’d do something nice for him! A gesture that would hopefully help to convince him that Hector had changed, that he meant well! Monty was sure it was a good idea. 

List in hand, Monty squinted at it a few times before passing it to Hector (who was a faster reader, too), and let himself be led from this stall to that, just enjoying the mild weather and his less mild company. The two were conversing in Spanish for the entirety of the trip — they both preferred it, and since Kaden wasn’t around, it didn’t feel exclusionary. 

Both men glanced up as they were addressed, Monty’s expression quickly darkening. But Hector, who hadn’t heard anything of the (un)healthy rivalry these two shared, smiled. “Shut up,” Monty groaned at Emilio, glancing at the tomatoes in his hands. “It is for Kaden.” He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to explain their presence there — it wasn’t like Emilio actually cared, he was only looking for a chance to start another argument. Hector, who had several very important questions lingering in his mind, was finding that many of them were answered purely by observing how the two were interacting. 

“Ahh, yes, we are preparing a feast for the young man!” he interjected brightly, looking from the stranger to Monty. “... well, Montaña, aren’t you going to introduce me to your… friend?” Monty scoffed, keeping his eyes down on the produce and picking at it absently, pretending that he was trying to pick the best specimen when really he was just praying that Emilio would buy his damn fruits and move on. Hector, sensing that no such thing was going to happen, laughed and turned to Emilio, holding out a hand for a moment before realizing the stranger was a bit preoccupied with tomatoes. “Hm. Well, it’s nice to meet you, I’m Hector,” he introduced himself, instead pointing at the tomatoes the man held. “Good eye, by the way. Those ones look tasty.” 

—

It was clear that Monty wasn’t happy to see him and, in a way, this helped to ease Emilio’s mind a little. The market was an unknown entity full of unknown entities. He couldn’t predict most of its occupants, couldn’t determine how the people running the stalls or the ones buying from them would think or act in any given situation. Monty, however, was a touch more familiar. The two of them were far from friends, but Emilio understood him, to a certain extent. Certainly not in the same way he knew other people, but well enough to carry some comprehension of what he did and how he would react. It was ironic, in a sense; he disliked Monty immensely, and Monty was the safest person at this market. Few people understood how Emilio’s mind worked, least of all Emilio himself.

The man with Monty was still an unknown, of course. Emilio could pick up on the barest of basics from the way he’d approached with the zombie — he spoke Spanish, he was someone Monty was clearly familiar with and comfortable around, he was in charge of the list so he clearly carried some of Monty’s trust. The way Monty responded to his light goading offered another hint — he’d specified that the shopping the two men were performing was for Kaden. No second person, just Kaden. That implied the man with Monty had the same disinterest in the groceries as Monty himself. Emilio’s eyes flickered between the two briefly, and he wondered if the hair on the back of his neck stood on end not for one undead presence, but for two. 

“Brave to cook for a Frenchman,” he commented, sliding into Spanish with little thought. He preferred the language, but rarely allowed himself to be the first one to switch to it in conversation. Somehow, it felt a little too much like exposing his throat in a fight, like admitting that English was still a complicated, clunky thing even now. “He’s probably not going to like it. I know you’ve heard him complain about food.” Emilio certainly had, and he wasn’t the one sharing meals with the guy. (Or watching him eat? He wasn’t sure how dinner dates worked when one party was undead.) 

His eyes slid back to Monty’s companion as he spoke, carefully studying him in a way that tried to make it seem like he wasn’t. The guy seemed friendlier than Monty, though Emilio supposed Monty himself might have been friendly to people who weren’t Emilio. He looked down at his hands, still full of tomatoes, when the stranger held one out for a shake. It was something of a relief when the guy pulled back; Emilio didn’t particularly like handshakes, anyway. Deciding Monty would probably be irritated if Emilio struck up conversation with his friend, the slayer nodded and vowed to do just that. “Emilio,” he replied. “I don’t know shit about tomatoes, man, I’ll be honest. Is there a difference between the green and the red? I’m not really in charge of the cooking.”

—

Rolling his eyes, Monty chose to try and ignore Emilio’s attempts to belittle their decision to do something nice for Kaden — just because he was incapable of feeling anything other than anger didn’t mean that everyone else was, too. Putting down the tomatoes in his hands, he was about to ask Hector if they could go look for some nice green beans instead when he heard the other man laughing at what Emilio had said. 

“Well, we’re going to try our best to impress him! And yes, they’re very different. The greens are great for pickling, baking, or frying! They’re less juicy than the reds, and way more acidic. What is it you’re making?” It was a bold assumption, but maybe Emilio was just new to this — everyone had to start somewhere! Monty watched as Hector started to chat him up with a slight look of disbelief, then an indignant snort. 

“Please, he is not the one cooking anything, that I can guarantee you,” he sniped. “It is for Teddy, his partner.” Hector raised a brow as an amused smile crept over his face. 

“Ahh, I see… Well, in that case, if you were sent off for tomatoes, there’s a very strong chance that Teddy only wanted the red ones. That’s the safe bet.” Okay, so this Emilio person was not a friend of Monty’s, and had in fact brought out a very catty side of the other zombie that Hector hadn’t ever seen before. “I would say… the ones you have there, plus those two,” he added, gesturing at a few more that sat near Emilio. “This really is a small town, eh? I feel like every time we leave the cabin, we are running into someone else that Montaña knows.” He wanted to ask how they’d met, but could already tell that Monty was primed to shut that conversation down as soon as it began. So instead, because he was genuinely enjoying himself at his friend’s expense… “What do you do, Emilio?” 

—

Monty’s friend was… well, friendly. Somehow, Emilio was caught off guard by it. It was entirely due to the fact that Hector was here with Monty, of course; Emilio tended to expect most people would try to kill him upon first meetings, and anything less than that was always something of a surprise. But the fact that this man was here with Monty made his eagerness to help seem all the stranger. Was it arrogant to have assumed Monty might have spoken of him? It would make sense for the zombie to offer Hector a word of warning, if Hector was what Emilio suspected he might be. Evidently, though, the cowboy hadn’t seen this as something that was necessary. Emilio wasn’t sure how to feel about that, wasn’t sure if it felt like an insult or came as a relief. When you’d been one thing all your life, it was jarring to realize that no one considered it to be true of you anymore.

He was about to tell Hector that he wasn’t the one doing the cooking when Monty beat him to it, sounding rather irritated in the process. Emilio let his eyes slide over to the zombie, brows shooting up in an expression that could really only be described as smug before he looked back to Hector. “They like to cook,” he added. “Always ‘experimenting’ in the kitchen. Half of it looks like it’ll eat you before you have a chance to eat it, but it’s usually good.” Not that Emilio ate most of it; his appetite had never quite returned to him after the massacre and, most days, Teddy had to trick him into eating anything at all. But he liked complimenting their cooking, and he liked how pissed off Monty looked at his conversation with Hector, so he kept it going anyway.

And… it turned out, Hector was helpful. This, too, came as a surprise. Emilio nodded thoughtfully, putting the green tomatoes back in the stand. He picked up the ones Hector indicated, nodding again. “That’s very helpful,” he commented. “I appreciate that. I’m not much of a shopper. Someone else is usually in charge of this kind of thing, but I guess I’ll do in a pinch.” Were it not for Monty’s presence, he might have turned away there and let the conversation end. Emilio wasn’t social, after all, and had no real desire to continue getting to know… anyone, really. But Monty was there, and he was irritated, and that was enough for Emilio to decide this conversation was worth his time after all. “I’m a private investigator. I have a small firm in town, take on as many cases as I can keep up with. How about you?”

—

That was a curious way to describe someone’s cooking, Hector thought. Monty, having been inside the house before, felt that it sounded appropriate — but he wasn’t invested in this conversation. In fact, he’d rather be anywhere else, talking to anyone else, but Hector was doing what he always did. The man had never lost that ability to command a room, or in this case, strike up conversation with the unlikeliest of strangers and immediately get on their good side. Of course Emilio’s willingness to continue talking probably had a lot to do with the way Monty was frowning at them from the other end of the stall’s display table, but pretending he was happy to see the slayer wasn’t going to make anything better. 

Hector chuckled, giving Emilio a shrug. “Ah, me? I’m kind of… in between jobs right now. Just got into town not that long ago, you know? Always on the lookout for opportunities. I guess that makes me a freelancer for… odd requests.” He always had to be his own boss, Monty knew that much. “But hey, if you still  have some things you need to pick up for Teddy, we’d be happy to help! Wouldn’t we, Montaña?” Monty looked absolutely gobsmacked. 

“Have I not suffered enough?” he answered lamely.

“Oh, come on now, it’s just some vegetables,” Hector argued with an amused grin. He nodded at Emilio and his handful of tomatoes. “Pay for those, then let’s figure out what you need next, ah? I’ll make sure whatever you grab isn’t going to put a spanner in the works.”

Monty could have continued to argue, but he knew better. Hector had his mind set on this for whatever reason, and honestly, he was too damn beaten down from everything that had happened lately to complain about it any more. He might’ve told Emilio (or both of them) to fuck off at one time, but he didn’t have the anger in him for it anymore. So he just rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head, hoping that Emilio had a short grocery list.

—

The ever-present unease that had lived in his head for years now meant that Emilio was dissecting every word from Hector’s mouth as soon as the syllables settled. He was new to town and between jobs, which meant his friendship with Monty likely predated his time in Wicked’s Rest. The two seemed too comfortable around each other to have only just met. How far back did it go, then? Hector’s accent was from Mexico, but Emilio had no idea how much time Monty had spent in their shared home country after being turned. Had he fled the moment Emilio’s ancestor refused to kill him, or had he stayed longer? Had he met Hector in Mexico, or had the pair run into one another out in the world, just as Emilio and Monty had? The questions swirled in the detective’s mind, eyes darting between the pair carefully as he tried to narrow things down further.

It was hard to say if it was the mystery or the promise of bothering Monty that made Hector’s offer to stick around feel tempting instead of annoying. Most days, Emilio had little desire for companionship from someone he’d only just met in a casual setting. There were too many people in this town already who’d fooled themselves into thinking he was someone worth hanging around, and he didn’t tend to jump at the opportunity to add to that list. But he wanted to know more about Hector, even if only for the sake of his own suspicious curiosity, and he wanted to annoy Monty, even if only to satisfy his petty streak, so he nodded. 

“Ah, I’d appreciate that,” he said, flashing Monty a shit-eating grin. “I’m a little out of my depth here. Never been much good at groceries.” Especially not when there were so many options available to him. It was a stupid thing to feel overwhelmed about; Emilio felt like he was drowning all the same. 

Turning back to the person manning the tomato booth, Emilio passed some cash over with a nod. At least that part was the same no matter where you were. With the tomatoes bagged for easy transport and his wallet tucked back into his back pocket, he turned back to the pair of undead men. Pulling out the list he’d been provided with, he held it up. “Got a few more ingredients I need to pick up,” he commented. “No idea what it’s all for.” He’d found it was better not to guess, with Teddy’s cooking.

Scooting away from the tomato booth and immediately finding it a little easier to breathe with a few less people surrounding him, Emilio headed towards the next target. He glanced back to see if Hector and Monty would follow, nodding to Hector again. “So, what brings you to town?” Was he here for Monty, or had running into him been a surprise? 

—

Arms folded across his chest, Monty followed after the pair, taking up the rear with his head down. It felt familiar, in a way. Back in their livelier days, Monty had often followed the other man around, trying to learn how it was that he managed to charm everyone he talked to, or even just as a support in case he needed anything. He’d often fade into the background while Hector talked jobs with other, more experienced gang members, absorbing as much as he could until their leader would eventually turn to him with a grin and clap a hand across the back of his neck, announcing that Monty would be joining the team for this one. So, as he walked and the other two talked, he felt somehow comforted more than he felt annoyed or awkward stepping back into those very well-worn shoes. 

“Well, if I am honest, I heard about the fire.” Hector glanced back at Monty, who failed to acknowledge the statement and instead just kept his gaze focused on his boots. “I had been looking for him for some time, but he did not make himself easy to find. Then one day, I saw his name in print and had to come see for myself. So I set up camp on his farm and waited.” He seemed proud of this, wearing a satisfied smile. “And he turned up, of course. He’s always been very good at coming when called — I do not even have to speak the commands anymore.” Monty lifted his head now, furrowing his brows at Hector, wondering what on earth he meant by that. Why would he say something like that to a perfect stranger? There wasn’t any time to protest, however, because Hector was barrelling through the brief pause with a sharp inhale and a very animated glance downward at Emilio’s list. “So! What is next, my friend? Ahh, yes… I think those are this way!” Lifting his head and pointing to their right, Hector motioned for the other two to follow. Monty hugged his arms to himself a little tighter, avoiding Emilio’s gaze as they carved their way through the thin crowd and over to the next booth.

—

There was something off about the way Hector spoke about Monty. Emilio sent a subtle glance back towards the cowboy, trying to gauge his reaction. If Monty made himself hard to find, had he been hiding from Hector? The pair seemed friendly now, but he figured Monty was more likely to put on an act in front of him than anyone else. And the rest of it… saying Monty came when called, as if he was a dog responding to his owner’s sharp whistle… It didn’t sit quite right in Emilio’s chest. He wouldn’t pretend he was Monty’s biggest fan, but the fact that he knew the guy put him above Hector on the list of people Emilio wasn’t entirely uncertain about. He didn’t trust Monty — he was pretty sure the guy would leave him to die in a heartbeat, even if he was too self righteous to kill him directly — but he was, at the very least, a known entity. Hector was something else; something dangerous, maybe.

Or maybe Emilio’s paranoia was getting the best of him. He’d thought the guy with the manbun and the homemade dog treats was dangerous, too, after all. 

He tried to push his uncertainty to the side, tried to remind himself that he didn’t really care one way or another. Monty was surely capable of taking care of himself, so it made no difference to Emilio what his ‘friend’s’ intentions might be. Presumably, Kaden was aware of the situation, too, and that was someone the slayer did trust. He figured, between the two of them, a skilled ranger and a guy who was probably pushing two hundred could take care of themselves. 

“I was sorry to hear about the farm,” he commented, glancing back to Monty again. The apologetic tone was a genuine one, though he wasn’t sure Monty would accept it as such. “I guess it’s good Monty’s got your support.” He kept his eyes on the cowboy as he said it, waiting for a reaction. Was Monty happy with the ‘support?’ He avoided Emilio’s gaze in a way that made it difficult to tell. The detective studied him for a heartbeat more before turning back to his shopping list, nodding his head. He followed Hector as he led the way to the next booth, still looking at Monty out of the corner of his eye. “My partner can be picky on ingredients. We’ll have to make sure we get the best ones.” And maximize the amount of time he could spend trying to figure Hector out. (Not that he gave a shit or anything; he was just curious. That was all.)

—

A brief, melancholic glance was spared in Emilio’s direction when he expressed his condolences — it was funny, really. He’d come to the farm the first time to kill someone who worked there. Had threatened to do it again if he found out that Monty was protecting anyone he wanted dead. How could he be sorry? How could a slayer be sorry that a community of undead had been almost completely wiped from existence?

Yet his tone wasn’t the snarky, sarcastic one he usually used around Monty. It didn’t seem to be digging for any kind of specific response, or trying to egg him on in a way that would end up with Monty upset and Emilio either amused or threatening to do something he wouldn’t like. It was just that — sympathy. Or pity, maybe. That felt more likely. 

His gaze darted back to the ground when Emilio said he must be glad for the support. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure yet. Some things about it seemed good. There was comfort in that familiarity, in having someone around who shared his complicated, bloody past. But Monty wasn’t sure that Hector had moved beyond that past, especially not with comments like the one he’d made about Monty being… the way that he was. It wasn’t untrue what he said, but it didn’t feel quite right. Still familiar, but something that Monty had grown unaccustomed to. Still, if he stayed too quiet, then Emilio might read into it too much. And Monty didn’t want to accidentally reveal anything about himself that he wasn’t prepared for someone like Emilio to know, so he just laughed a hollow laugh and nodded. “Yes! Very grateful for Hector’s…” Help wasn’t the word. “... presence. It had been a while. Always good to have your friends around.” 

Hector smiled at him in a way that almost felt approving, and that confused, annoying anxiety was swirling in his gut again in seconds. “Of course, of course, only the best,” Hector agreed, attention having returned to Emilio and his list. 

For the most part, Monty hung back while the other two men went around and completed both shopping lists. He was handed bags to carry, Hector of course far too busy helping Emilio pick out the best of the best to be bothered with lugging produce around. He didn’t really speak unless spoken to, and by the time both lists had been completed, he’d lapsed into a state of distracted staring off into space and only half-listening to their conversations. Hector chided him for it once, but Monty tried to brush it off by saying he was thinking of work that still needed to be done at the cabin. Which wasn’t untrue, there was a lot that could be done to the makeshift pen and stable that they’d erected on the property and he was often thinking of ways to improve it, but… well. He just didn’t care for this situation, nor the way Hector seemed intent on getting Emilio to like him. He was agreeable, warm, and helpful — all the things he’d been back in the 1800s, when a teenage, captive Monty had been untied from that tree and brought to meet him. It was how he drew people in. Always had been. Then he’d start asking things of them, but Monty wasn’t sure that was the case here. More likely, he was just looking for something to lord over Monty in moments of impatience or anger. 

—

Reading people was the kind of thing you needed to be decent at if you got into as many scrapes as Emilio did. Understanding a person’s body language allowed you to decipher whether they were going to start throwing punches or buy you a drink when you pushed their buttons, let you decide whether someone was a threat or a nuisance. (Monty had always been the latter.) Emilio had gotten good at it over the years, had started figuring it out as a kid who had to try a little too hard to please his mother and carried it with him until he was an adult at a farmer’s market standing between two undead men. 

He stared at Monty a moment, dissected his hesitation and his carefully chosen words. The pause before he described Hector’s assistance as little more than his presence, the intentional choice in terminology. Coupled with the way Hector had spoken about Monty, and Emilio wondered if the two were friends at all or if there was something else going on. They seemed familiar with each other, but familiarity didn’t always equate to fondness. He thought of Lucio, turning up again out of the blue and turning his life upside down. He thought of Rhett, who had been both a welcome and unwelcome presence from his past. Maybe this was something closer to that, some uncomfortable uncertainty shrouded with a past obligation. Monty described Hector as a friend, but was that just because there was no word that really fit? 

Emilio studied Monty a moment longer before turning back to Hector, not wanting to alert either man to his own uncertainty. Monty would only grow defensive, and Hector was an unknown entity whose reaction couldn’t be predicted without further exposure. (Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted further exposure.) 

The shopping continued, and Emilio continued trying to solve the puzzle presented to him throughout without cluing either man in on his suspicions. He was civil with Hector, even friendly; as long as the other man thought Emilio liked him, Emilio could continue gathering more information. And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t still want to irritate Monty, even if it was far less fun when the cowboy was as withdrawn as he’d become throughout the shopping trip. Emilio tended to poke at people in hopes of gaining the satisfaction of a reaction, and Monty wasn’t giving him that anymore. And the more Hector spoke, the less Emilio liked him. It was clear that he was trying to get Emilio to like him, and the paranoid corner of his mind that had grown larger and larger of late insisted that there was some unknown ulterior motive behind this. Whatever Hector wanted from him, Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted to provide it. Mostly, he just wanted to get his groceries. 

In the end, he was successful in that much, at least. Hector made short work of his list, and Emilio’s arms were full of bags full of shit he figured Teddy would be happy with. He nodded at the two undead men as they neared the entrance of the market. “Appreciate the help,” he said, glancing to Monty but keeping the majority of his attention focused on Hector. “Probably would have taken me all day to make it through that shit on my own. Maybe you can come by for dinner sometime.” He couldn’t be sure how much of his suspicion was valid and how much was his paranoia rearing its ugly head. Having the pair in his house, in a situation where he was in control, and with Teddy as an additional witness… that would help him figure this out. He was sure of it. 

—

Monty remained quiet, his gaze distantly focused on the ground beneath their feet until they came to a slow stop, preparing to go their separate ways. As he lifted his chin again, he realized Emilio was inviting them over for dinner. A sense of dread started to climb up his spine and he flicked his gaze over to Hector to see what he’d say. There wouldn’t be any arguing it, at least not while Emilio was standing right in front of them. The reason he was inviting them over escaped Monty entirely: he knew that his dislike was mutually shared, so it certainly wasn’t a sudden change of heart. Hector might be charming, but he wasn’t that charming. Not enough to inspire something like that, especially not from someone so paranoid and angry as Cortez. 

“Ah, so kind of you,” Hector answered for them both, that disarming smile never leaving his face. “We’d love to.” There was no attempt to ask for Monty’s confirmation this time — there wasn’t even so much as a glance in his direction, Hector’s focus solely on the man standing in front of him, zeroed in with a predatory focus. “I’ll have one of the boys get you my contact information.” The statement was marked with a playful wink, goodbyes were exchanged, and Monty didn’t speak a word until Emilio had disappeared from view. Hector was still staring at the spot they’d last seen him, and Monty could swear he saw the gears turning in the man’s head. 

“He’s a hunter,” Monty explained bluntly, voice low and soft. “A slayer.” Hector smirked.

“Of course he is. And you haven’t killed him?” Monty looked back down at his feet, swallowing hard. 

“It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Hector, please… can we just go home?” The man narrowed his eyes in the direction Emilio had gone, the smile falling from his face. 

“Fine.” The question of whether or not it was Emilio’s intention to lure them somewhere where he could kill them went unspoken, which Monty was grateful for. He didn’t know how to answer, because he was pretty sure that Emilio wouldn’t try anything like that on him, at least, since… well, because of Kaden. And if he had to tell Hector that, then Hector was going to want to know what Kaden and Emilio had that bound them, and Monty just wasn’t prepared to lie about that. It was easier to say nothing at all. 

He only hoped that these dinner plans would never come to pass, because he truly didn’t know what Emilio intended to gain from them. And he didn’t want to find out.