#Yours Mine and Ours | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ariadnewhitlock · 2 years ago

Text

Yours, Mine, and Ours || Emilio & Ariadne

TIMING: Some time before the mines became Like That LOCATION: The forest, the mines PARTIES: Emilio @mortemoppetere and Ariadne @ariadnewhitlock SUMMARY: Ariadne, having heard from Alan that Emilio is a PI, tries to trail him to see if he'll be good to help her find out what happened to the mare she made. Things go a bit sideways. Congrats, Emilio, you have another child! CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of explosions

Something was following him. He could feel it, the way it made all the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight. It was something undead, for certain, but… The motivations were a little unclear. Emilio had experimented, a little. Stopped in places he wouldn’t have stopped otherwise, made a show of looking down at his phone like he was ten kinds of distracted, given it every chance to hop out and try to kill him, and it hadn’t taken a single one. It was just… watching. Following.

To say that he was unsettled would be one hell of an understatement, but he couldn’t back out of what he was up to. There was a lot of shit going on in the mines right now, the kind of shit that tied several of his cases together in a way he didn’t really like, so against his own better judgment, he was circling the woods near one of the entrances looking for clues and trying to ignore the feeling of eyes on the back of his head. He wasn’t sure how great a job he was doing, all things considered.

Alan had said that he wasn’t sure if the local PI was someone she should contact, but for once, Ariadne’s curiosity had gotten the better of her (which was a weird sense of relief in and of itself, given her overall lack of curiosity in recent months. So she’d decided that maybe she should try following him, just to see what sort of work he did. It couldn’t hurt, right?

She wasn’t an especially big fan of the whole going into the forest thing that was happening right now, but Ariadne also wasn’t willing to give up. Even though for whatever reason, the man kept stopping and kept looking down at his phone. She figured that maybe he was getting important investigator-y messages or something. Ariadne certainly didn’t know anything about this sort of job. He’d headed toward the mines, which was not top of Ariadne’s list of things to do, but she was curious, and she didn’t want to squash the feeling - especially given that she didn’t know when she’d feel it again. Another few steps forward and her shoe snapped a tiny branch in half. For a moment, she paused, waiting to see what the man in front of her would do.

A twig snapped. He’d known he was being followed, but the way there was a distinct pause after the sudden noise told him that whatever was following him was aware enough to know it had been caught. Not a spawn, then, or some animalistic kind of undead thing. Something with enough sentience to be wary, but not something that took advantage of his feigned distractedness to move in for a kill.

Emilio weighed his options. He could keep up the ploy, pretend he didn’t know he was being followed until he could lead them someplace he’d have full control of the situation. That was probably the smartest move, but it required a level of patience that the hunter just didn’t have. So, he turned. “All right,” he called out. “Either fuck off or come out. I’m not doing this shit anymore, and you’re a lousy tail.” The sooner he got whatever they wanted out of the way, the sooner he could get back to taking care of the issue in the mines.

She froze up when he called out to her. “I -” she bit her lip, debating just staying away from his view. Except clearly she’d done something to mess things up and he’d become aware of her presence. Ariadne tapped her fingers against her thigh for a moment before stepping out from behind a tree. “I - I just wanted to see what being a PI involved.” She looked over to him, eyes widened, “I’m sorry for stepping on the tree branch, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

Fidgeting with her hands, she blew a strand of hair out of her face. “I - you are a PI, right? I’m sorry if I’ve scared you and I’m following the wrong person.” Though Ariadne was fairly sure she was correct, but she supposed that one could never be too certain.

Oh, Christ. It was a fucking kid, because of course it was. This town was crawling with twenty-somethings who looked half-terrified wandering the woods, and while Emilio had come across plenty of them, this was the first one who’d triggered his ‘undead’ senses. There was a strange sinking feeling in his stomach, a quiet nausea that had him feeling unsteady. “You didn’t surprise me,” he said, voice not quite as gruff as it was before but still far from gentle. “I’ve known you were back there for a while. Like I said, you’re a lousy tail.”

So it was targeted, her following him. Not because of his ‘night’ job, which was something of a surprise. When something undead was tracking you specifically, it tended to have something to do with the number of undead things you’d killed. Hesitantly, Emilio nodded. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “I’m a PI. Most people just come to my office to ask about that shit, you know. Following a guy through the woods isn’t the best way to introduce yourself.”

“You didn’t point it out before.” Ariadne made a face. “Sorry, sorry, that was rude.” She wasn’t sure why she was so on edge, all of a sudden. “I was never too good at guessing the end to mysteries as a kid, so I guess that tracks.”

She glanced down at her feet. “I’m sorry. Again. I guess I just wanted to see you in action - I - I’ve always been a bit more of a visual learner?” Ariadne looked down at the ground again before looking back up. “I’m Ariadne. Are you really super good at tracking people down? How do you do that?”

He snorted, still eyeing the kid suspiciously. He wished, sometimes, that the slayer senses came with a little more… detail. It was impossible to tell if this girl was a vampire or some other kind of undead just by looking at her. It was also impossible to tell if she was actually a kid. The mannerisms seemed right, but plenty of immortals learned how to fake that. They had to, if they wanted to keep from being found out. “Guess so,” he agreed with a curt nod.

She didn’t seem outwardly dangerous. That was a problem, too. Emilio couldn’t be sure how much of this was genuine and how much of it was an act. She could be exactly what she seemed, or she could be plotting to kill him. He’d hate to find out which one was true when it was already too late. “Could’ve asked to follow me, then,” he pointed out, but there was less bite to the words than there might have been if she were older — or if she looked older. He’d always had a weakness for kids. It was the kind of thing that was going to get him killed, one of these days. “Yeah, I guess I am. It’s not as exciting as it sounds. A lot of detective work is just waiting, kid.”

“My cousin would’ve probably been better at that.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, because thinking about Chance right now wasn’t going to do her any good. A sigh, followed by an apologetic look toward him. “I am really sorry. I’m used to being quiet, but I don’t want to startle people or be rude.” Ariadne was acutely aware that there was a high likelihood she was overdoing it, but since she couldn’t go out and apologize to people the way she wanted to (saying ‘hey, sorry I’m a horrible monster’ likely wouldn’t go over well whatsoever), this had to suffice.

“But I -” she fiddled with something - something invisible, clearly, as her fingers knit together, trying to focus on something, center herself on anything. “I didn’t want to bother you, or make you feel like you had to say yes, or - well, I don’t really have a good excuse other than the fact that I don’t like - uh - confrontation.” Ariadne made a face. “Not that - not that I thought you’d be mean or like, rude or whatever - I just…” her voice trailed off. “Then you must be real patient? That’s amazing.” She attempted a smile, knowing that it likely came off far more awkward than she intended for it to.

“I know the feeling,” Emilio mumbled, feeling a sense of connection without really meaning to. He’d always been a little worse at everything than his siblings, too. Part of why his mother preferred them so blatantly to Emilio himself, part of why it was such a goddamn tragedy that he’d been the only one to survive. Things like this only ever seemed to prove it. He couldn’t imagine Rosa feeling a sense of connection to someone undead, even if they were a kid. “It’s fine. You didn’t startle me.” That much was true, at least; for all his faults, Emilio was still a fairly hard man to startle. A benefit of being hyperaware of every movement around him, he figured.

She seemed nervous, but not the kind of nervous that usually came with someone undead speaking to someone genetically designed to take them out. That probably meant she had no idea the private investigator she’d decided to follow was a slayer, which was good for Emilio, even if it did fill him with an unwanted sense of concern for her. Did she have any idea how fucking risky it was, following him like this? Any other slayer would have killed her by now. “I can be,” he replied. “Sometimes. When I need to be.” Glancing behind him briefly, he sighed. “Look, kid, you followed me because you need a detective. Right? Tell me the case, and I’ll tell you what I can do. But I’m working right now, so I can’t stand around making small talk.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She didn’t like the idea that someone else could relate to the newfound feeling she held toward Chance. Especially because it used to be so different. If Ariadne wasn’t following this man for a very specific reason, she might have even asked Chance to come along. Because telling your cousin who saw you as a goody two shoes that you’d murdered someone wasn’t so easy. She was fairly certain that wasn’t a cool thing in his book.

“Okay - that’s good. I wouldn’t want to startle someone.” Ariadne nodded. “Oh - I - that’s good. Thanks for that.” Right. The case. She’d rehearsed some of what she was going to say - except she wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the part of ‘they might still be walking around’. “I’ll get started, sorry. I - a friend of mine was killed, and I - I don’t - know what happened after. There’s no, uh, burial site - grave? For them.” This was a spectacular failure. “And I don’t know how to find out what happened to them, and I really want to.”

“It’s fine,” he replied, waving her off. Thinking of his siblings, in that context, always made Emilio feel an unpleasant stab of guilt. Being jealous of the dead because they’d been more successful than you in life, because they were so much easier than you were to love, wasn’t a good look on anyone. Much less someone who, by all rights, should have died in their place. It was nothing he wanted to let his mind wander to now.

He’d much rather focus on the kid following him.

She was after something, that much was clear. It was the what that was the problem. As she spoke, his eyes narrowed. At first, he thought she might be talking about herself. The old ‘I have this friend’ modifier that people added to the beginning of a sentence that was about themselves was never quite as sly as they likely meant for it to be. But the rest of the story made less sense if she was talking about herself. Emilio narrowed his eyes, a little suspicious. “How’d they die? Your friend.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.” She practically winced at her own words. “They were killed. In their sleep.” Ariadne felt sick. “The - I don’t know the cause - but it was after a few weeks’ worth of painful sleep. Or that’s what they said.” And because she’d known them and they had said that to her, Ariadne looked down at the ground, then. “It wasn’t, like, bloody or anything.” She paused, “far as I know.”

Wrapping her arms around herself she gave a shrug. “I - that’s all I really know. Is that enough, or do you need more information?” This was likely all a mistake. Especially because it could very well land her in jail - except that part of her had to know. Ariadne took a few steps forward. “I - uh, can I come along with you? I promise I’ll be quiet.”

“Wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t.” A lie, but not one she knew him well enough to call him on. That was the thing about lying — if no one knew you, it got easier. At least… sometimes it did. Some people were still bad at it. He couldn’t decide if she was one of them or not. The story sounded true enough, and Emilio had a pretty good idea of what could cause it, but he’d yet to decide if she was actually talking about a ‘friend’ or if she was trying to make sense of her own death. She was undead, after all; his senses made that pretty damn clear. Mare would make sense.

But if she was talking about herself, what was she after? What did she expect to find with a private investigator’s help? “What’s your friend’s name?” That was a start, at least. Something to go off of, something to add another piece to the puzzle. Raising his brows at her offer, he glanced back towards the mines. “Kid, I don’t think you want that. This isn’t exactly a ‘tagalong’ kind of case.”

“Some people might, though,” and she was jumpy enough to assume that she’d done something wrong, or that she’d be a bother to people. After all, Ariadne’s whole new existence sort of was a bother to just about everyone.

“Isobel Perkins.” Her breath came out shaky. “I - please, can I?” She shifted back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I won’t say anything, I promise. Or do anything stupid like stepping on another branch.” Ariadne knew she wasn’t too good at standing her ground, but she also knew that actually feeling curious about something wasn’t a feeling that came along too often, and it wasn’t something she wanted to entirely push away.

“I’m not some people.” She was a nervous one, wasn’t she? It was almost familiar, in a way. Like a funhouse mirror — similar enough to his own reflection to spark something, but not a true representation of what he was. Emilio’s nervousness, after all, came less from the idea that he might offend or upset someone and more from the fear that they were out to get him. It was a nervousness that, for this interaction at least, was fading into the background. He didn’t think this kid wanted to hurt him. He wasn’t sure anyone was a good enough actor to pull off what she was doing now unless it was genuine. There was some relief in that.

Isobel Perkins. He made a note of the name, wholly unfamiliar but easy enough to look into. As for what he’d find… that was hard to say. If Isobel Perkins was a mare now, there was every chance that she’d changed her name to avoid the complications that came from rising from the dead. If she were smart, she’d have gotten out of town, too. But Emilio would look into it anyway. For the nervous, unsettled, undead kid who’d decided following a strange man into a mine was her best bet at answers. Sighing, he pushed his hair back, shrugging a shoulder. “Fine,” he relented. “You can tag along. Just — If you hear anything coming, make a damn run for it. Okay? These mines are no joke.”

“That’s fair.” She wanted to stop being so jumpy. Practically cursed herself for it, because what kind of a first impression was this to make on somebody? Though, Ariadne supposed, that was better than being terrifying upon first glance. She also wasn’t sure if she should be somewhat offended that even now, coming upon a year of being a nightmare, she didn’t even instill any sort of fear in those around her, and in fact, was often the most fearful person in the room.

“Okay. I will run.” She was doing exactly what Professor Langston had told her not to do. Maybe she was going to have to report on herself, to him. Ariadne shook the thought out of her head, best as she could. “Do you come here often? Can I ask that?” She tapped her fingers against her thighs as they continued to move along. “Or is this just because of your assignment.” She wasn’t sure that she wanted to see the mines. (In fact, she very much didn’t, but maybe she could tell Chance that she had done something wild - leaving out the very obvious parts of the story, such as the reasons why she was doing this). “I’ve lived here my whole life and I don’t think I’ve ever visited them, even back in middle school, or high school.”

He nodded as the kid agreed to run if things got rough, choosing to take the promise at face value. She could very well change her mind when it came down to it, of course. People were fickle things, even when they were undead. But if Emilio spent all his time worrying about her, he wouldn’t be any good to either of them. She said she’d run, and he had to believe her. He didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“To the mines?” There was a hint of something that was almost amusement in his tone. Did anyone come here often, aside from miners? Did anyone else want to? Even before the mining accident that left the area unstable, Emilio couldn’t imagine that anyone would frequent the area given how much shit went on here. “I’m here because I have to be, kid. Still not sure why you feel like tagging along.” The fact that she’d never been here wasn’t surprising, though maybe it offered some insight into why she was following him now. Curiosity was a hard thing to shake. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a faint glow. Any other night, he might investigate, but… with the kid in tow, it was probably better to ignore it. Find what he needed and get out. That was the goal now.

“Yeah - to the mines.” She scrunched up her whole face, before shaking her head. Because people did go to the mines, not just miners. Granted, other than miners, people probably weren’t qualified to go there and were just - well, Ariadne wasn’t going to focus on that. “Because I needed to figure something out, and I told a professor I’d -” she pressed her lips together. “Never mind. I just want to see what a Private Investigator does.”

There was a glowing something coming from somewhere else, and she couldn’t help but look over, head turning curiously. “What are -” she bit down on her lip, shaking her head. She wasn’t supposed to bother him. That was not nice, that was going to get her kicked out of whatever investigation was going on. Ariadne tapped her fingers against her thighs, eyes still not moving from the glowing.

She told a professor she’d what? Were professors telling kids to go into the mines now? That didn’t seem like the sort of thing professors ought to do, though Emilio’s concept of organized schooling was… distorted, to say the least. In any case, it would be far easier to keep an eye on the kid if she was going to the mines with him than it would be if she snuck back around to go by herself later. “You’re going to be disappointed,” he warned her. “It’s not as fun as it looks on TV.” Not that he’d seen much TV.

Since the kid was undead, Emilio didn’t necessarily need to look at her to know where she was. He could feel her following him, the pit in his stomach digging in deeper the closer she got. Luckily, she seemed to be content to follow silently. Emilio headed towards the mines, paying no attention to the glowing form that had captured her eye. His singular focus on his job could be a blessing or a curse. Which it would be tonight was yet to be determined.

When she was little, her parents had bought her a whole packet of glowsticks one summer. For her to break open whenever she wanted to have a spark of light in her room in the middle of the night. This was, of course, in addition to the glow-in-the-dark stars that had decorated her ceiling and walls. Which, she figured, looking back, was perhaps her parents’ way to encourage her to not climb out of her window in the middle of the night to see what the sky happened to look like. It had worked, mostly. It had worked even better when Chance stayed over and would complain about the dangers of roof-top hangouts in the middle of the night. So was Ariadne really at fault for wanting to follow the glowing figures relatively near to here and Emilio? She couldn’t have been, right?

She stopped following him for a moment, giving it a few beats before she turned toward the direction of the glowing. Maybe she’d be able to help him with whatever he was working on today. Maybe prove that she was worthy or something - that she wasn’t just some dumb kid who was a nuisance to this whole ordeal. Ariadne did her best to stay as quiet as she could, glancing back to see if Emilio’d noticed that she was gone, yet.

He was silent as he walked, making no attempt at conversation. He didn’t even want the kid here, so why would he waste his time talking to her? He just needed to get this thing over and done with as soon as possible. Then he’d focus on her case so he could properly usher her out the door. Emilio trudged towards the entrance to the mines, shoulders tense as he got closer. The feeling of undead, of wrongness was growing stronger, which wasn’t as surprising as it should have been. There were bound to be all kinds of things in that mine.

Because of that feeling, though, it took him a moment to realize that the kid was getting further away. By the time Emilio looked up, she’d already disappeared somewhere. He cursed quietly under his breath. As much as he’d wanted to get rid of her, this was no place to lose track of a kid. There were plenty of things out here that could kill her no matter how undead she might be. “Kid,” he called out experimentally. “Look, if you wanna go home, that’s fine. Just let me know, so I can…” A branch broke nearby, too heavy to be the kid. Moreso, it was coming from inside the mine. Great. Always a fucking ordeal.

Chance would have been proud of her, she figured. Ariadne wasn’t sure if that was the best route of thinking to take, but it did something to comfort her, which was altogether confusing and welcome, all in one. She liked to try to think of it as comforting, just as his presence had used to be, but she couldn’t help but have her thoughts go to a nicer time. She didn’t know the reasons for that, but she did know that there was probably some expert who could tell her. Which she didn’t want to focus on right now.

She whipped her head around at the sound of a branch breaking. Except she didn’t see the man - Emilio - “um?” Ariadne turned around, taking in a deep breath. “I - what was that?” She wasn’t sure if he could even hear her. “There’s - uh, there’s something glowing.”

If he weren’t a hunter, with ears designed for hearing everything that wanted to kill him in the woods, Emilio probably wouldn’t have picked up on the sound of the kid’s voice. She was quiet, even as she called out to him. He groaned when she said what she saw — something glowing. Something glowing that had pulled her away, distracted her enough to make her break off after he told her not to. Yeah. He could guess what that was.

But whatever was breaking branches as it approached was a little harder to pin down. Undead? Big? He couldn’t both fight whatever was coming and keep an eye out for the kid, but he wasn’t exactly fast enough to outrun it, either. There was another option… he just didn’t particularly like it. Groaning, he rubbed a hand across his face and hoped the kid had decent hearing. “Kid, if you can hear me, get the hell away from whatever you’re following and run into the mines. That’s where I’m headed, and I’ll meet you there.”

“I can hear you.” It might have been slightly muffled, but she could hear him. Ariadne was, admittedly, starting to question her logic in deciding to essentially stalk a PI - especially because the reason she was following him could very well lead to her getting in trouble and being arrested or whatever it was that would be the solution to all the trouble she’d created, but it wasn’t as though she could back out now without seeming more suspicious.

“Fine, fine,” except that for whatever reason, she could still hear Professor Langston’s warnings about Not Going Into The Mines or whatever. Which meant that she had to report herself to him, didn’t she? Ariadne figured that right now was perhaps not the most optimal time to focus on that, and so instead she took off, running further into the mines. “Is this good?” She looked around, trying to zero-in on Emilio.

At least the kid seemed willing to listen. That wasn’t always the case, with kids in this town. He thought of Alex and Nora and Ren and all the stupid, stubborn kids who were definitely going to get themselves killed and his own desperation to keep that from happening. It was just his luck, wasn’t it, that the one kid who did listen to him was already dead. Undead were typically a lot harder to kill than hunters or bugbears or fae, no matter what kind of undead they were. Still, Emilio figured he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The kid was willing to listen to him. That was a good thing.

Or… it might have been, if his plan hadn’t involved leading her into the damn mines. He cursed under his breath as the creature outside the mines followed her, shaking his head in the darkness. “Think we’re gonna need to go deeper,” he called back, half a yell and half a whisper. “And you need to follow my voice and get to me. I need to be able to talk to you where you’re the only one who’ll hear me, otherwise we’re just going to keep leading this thing right to us.”

“I - okay.” Ariadne did her best to hide the confusion in her voice. She wasn’t too sure at all how she was supposed to manage to hear Emilio and keep whatever else was out there from hearing him - them - too. But she figured that she had to trust him (and she did, even despite all her confusion). “I’ll follow you - oh.” She finally understood the idea of how only she’d hear him. If she were closer, then he wouldn’t have to yell to her, because she was practically positive that she had no upper hand when it came to hearing. Except that she’d figured that pointing that out to him would’ve been rude, so she was grateful that she’d been mistaken, that it had been her fault, but that at least this time it was something she could fix. Maybe. Or at least she could try with a greater likelihood of success.

She walked as quickly as she could manage, until she finally spotted Emilio again. “Here.” She said, voice nearly as quiet as she could make it. “Me - I - I’m here.” Ariadne bit down on her tongue. “I’ll shut up now, I promise.”

She was clearly stressed out, and part of him — the part that had had a little girl of his own once, the part that would have done anything and everything to make her feel comfortable and secure — felt guilty for making her that way. But this kid wasn’t Flora. This kid was undead, and no matter how much Emilio tried to remind himself that not everything undead was a monster, thirty odd years of conditioning were so, so hard to break. Part of him thought he might just walk away, leave her here to fend for herself against whatever might be coming. But another, larger part of him knew he wouldn’t. Emilio was still a father, even if there was no one around who remembered. Even if it was only in the confines of his own mind.

She made her way over to him and he relaxed without meaning to, nodding as she got close. She was talking to him because she didn’t think he could see her, because anyone without slayer night vision wouldn’t have. Emilio wondered if she knew what a slayer was, if she knew she was supposed to be afraid of them. “You don’t have to shut up. Just talk quiet. We need to go farther into the mine, okay? But I’ve got your back. Just stick close, don’t wander off again.”

“Okay, okay - I promise I won’t wander off again.” And I’ll stop being so jumpy, except Ariadne couldn’t say that, because she didn’t want to lie, and saying that felt like it would be a complete lie. Not even a small one. She was a nightmare, she wasn’t supposed to be jumpy and anxious. At least, that was what she figured. “Are - what are you going to do, when you find them?”

Her fingers found the ends of her hair and she fiddled with those, grateful that even if her chest felt tight, that she couldn’t have her heart racing too much. Dead hearts didn’t race, after all. Ariadne pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth to prevent herself from sighing, or saying anything else too much right now. “I - thanks for letting me follow - stay with you.”

A promise. It meant less coming from someone undead than it might have from a fae, who couldn’t break it, but Emilio let himself believe it anyway. She seemed like an honest enough kid. If he had to guess, he’d say she hadn’t been doing this long. There was something sad about it; were the dead still mourned when they got up afterwards and kept walking around? It was hard to say.

At her question, he hesitated. “Depends on what it is,” he decided, speaking carefully, “and what they’re doing. If it’s just someone not trying to hurt anyone, maybe they’re lost. Could show them the way back to town.” Though he doubted that was the case. But he didn’t want to scare the kid, didn’t want her running off because she didn’t trust him. He had no intention of hurting her, but sometimes it was hard to get that message across. He hesitated as she thanked him, grunting in response. “Let’s go,” he said.

He moved deeper into the mines against his better judgment, the kid behind him. They weren’t safe in here and he knew it, but they weren’t safe out there, either. This was a risk, but he wasn’t sure it was one they could afford not to take. Finally, when they were deep in the mines, he could no longer hear whatever had been following them. Sighing, He leaned against the wall. With his built-in night vision, he could see clearly; he wasn’t sure if she was the same. It depended what flavor of undead she was, he figured. “I think we should hang out for a little while,” he said lowly. “Make sure it’s really gone. Then we can circle back up to the surface. Okay?”

“That makes sense, yeah. I’ve heard of people getting lost down here.” Ariadne did her best to calm her nerves, even if it only worked so much. Which was to say, not entirely at all, but she’d fake it if she had to, because the last thing she wanted was to give him more reason to worry, when she hadn’t even planned on him noticing that she was there in the first place.

“Sorry - I shouldn’t - never mind.” She pressed her lips together, because being quiet was part of the deal of her getting to still follow him around, and even if she was so anxious she felt like she could melt into the ground, Ariadne liked the fact that she actually felt curious, actually curious and wanting to do more than feel bad about herself and what she’d become.

“Let’s go,” she echoed him, balling her hands into fists, taking in a breath that she supposed she didn’t technically need (but that made her feel better), and began to follow him. Soon enough, they were deep into the mines - and she could see perfectly - and it didn’t seem like anybody was there. “I - yeah. Okay.” She whispered. “We can hang out, make sure things are okay.” Somehow, the way that he said it made it seem more possible than just her thoughts alone. Ariadne wasn’t going to question that, and held onto the thanks that threatened to cross her lips firmly. She could thank him once they were out, right?

It was funny, how quickly her presence had gone from irritating to terrifying. When he’d first realized it was an undead kid following him, all he’d wanted was for her to leave. But now? If she broke off from him, she’d be a sitting goddamn duck, mare or no. And that had his heart pounding in his fucking chest. Emilio wasn’t stupid. He knew he had a soft spot that was shaped like a kid, knew he stopped thinking logically the moment someone young enough looked lost enough. Her being here was dangerous, and not just for her. It could spell out an end for him, too.

He clenched his jaw as she apologized for what must have been the ten thousandth time. She was definitely different than other kids he’d met in Wicked’s Rest, different than Nora or Ren or the kid in the woods with the goddamn cheese sludge. Quieter, less certain. He wondered if it was because of her death. People — the nonhunter kind of people — said sometimes that kids thought they were invincible, but undead kids must know they weren’t. They’d already had it proven to them once, after all.

Without responding, he led her deeper into the mines, and he thought it was worrying that she followed. He was doing it for her safety, of course, but why did she trust that? Why did she believe him? It was taking everything he had not to launch into a very dad-shaped lecture about following strangers into mines, but he figured he could save that for after they got out of here. As much as he hated how trusting the kid was, it was working to his advantage for the time being. If she got spooked and ran off, it’d be bad. “Don’t think we need to wait long,” he said. “Just long enough for…” He stopped. That feeling of undead nearby had, of course, been creeping up the back of his neck since he’d first registered her presence. But it felt a little different now. More intense. Like… “Something else is here.” It was all he had time to say before it burst out of the tunnel he was standing next to.

She would have understood if he’d asked her to leave - either calmly, or with any great deal of frustration – and all of that would have been exceptionally warranted, given everything. Given the fact that Ariadne knew that she was likely far more trouble than she was benefit, but if she focused on that she’d just mess something else up and get Emilio hurt, and then she’d have to live with that, and selfish as it was to think of things that way, she couldn’t help it.

“Something else?” She gulped, the reality of the entire situation sinking in more - as much as it had been real this whole time, Ariadne couldn’t help but feel a rising sense of panic - something that she was sure that she was supposed to take advantage of, if she was a halfway decent mare. Except that she wasn’t even a quarter decent, and at least this time around it kept her from longing to scare someone who’d done nothing but help her.

All of a sudden there was a loud bang - an explosion almost, before something appeared out of the wall and Ariadne felt herself tense up, shrink into herself. “They - I -” she stammered, only for a moment. “Those - we should run, right? Or - are - yeah?”

He recognized it, albeit only by reputation. Emilio had never seen them in person before — he’d never imagined he would. Maybe that was stupid of him, all things considered. Wicked’s Rest was a town full of undead things — of course its famous mines would be home to celestial roes. He cursed quietly as the thing approached them, slow and menacing.

“No,” he bit out, gritting his teeth. Running only meant leaving the problem for someone else to deal with, and Emilio hated that. He had to look out for the kid… but he had to look out for every other idiot in this town, too. If they didn’t do something about the roe today, someone else would find it in the future. They needed to trap it somewhere. They needed… “This is a mine. Yes? We need dynamite. Explosives. Something to blow a wall down. Then we lead it down to a corridor, and we trap it.”

He paused, considering how to proceed. He had an idea… but he didn’t like it. He couldn’t imagine she would, either. “Cut to the chase,” he said, turning to look at her. The roe was slow moving, so they had some time to talk. Just… not a lot. “You’re a mare. Aren’t you?”

“I’ve never blown up dynamite.” Which was an extraordinarily stupid sort of thing to say, but Ariadne couldn’t help it. “But okay. Okay, that sounds good.” Good was hardly the right word for it, but she didn’t really know what was the right word. What sort of word made sense to approve of exploding something and trapping something, even if it was, like, Bad, or something. But Emilio seemed to know what he was doing, and putting her faith in him was easier than stewing in her own worries, so she let him talk.

“I.” She paused. How did so many people figure it out that fast. “I am. But I don’t hurt people. Or I don’t try to. I - yeah. I’m a mare. As of last year.” The words came out in a rush, though Ariadne was proud of herself for not crying. “I - I’m not - what’s your plan?”

“Me either,” Emilio admitted. Slayers didn’t typically play with explosives. It struck him as something Rhett might enjoy, but he quickly pushed the thought from his mind. Thinking of his brother, even in passing, while he was trying to save an undead kid… It only served to remind him of what a disappointment Rhett would see him as once he found out. And he couldn’t focus on that now. He needed to focus on this moment, on this kid, on this fucking roe. The existential shit could wait.

He shook his head as she began overexplaining. “That doesn’t matter right now.” Though he found he did believe the claim that she didn’t try to hurt people. He thought of his own experience with a mare, the way the nightmare stayed with him for weeks after. It had never come back, after the fact. Maybe that was a mare’s version of ‘not hurting.’ Maybe it was the only option they had.

“We need to get it in a closed off area, and I need to blow the wall so it’ll have to stay there. But I need someone to stay with it and make sure it doesn’t slip out before the dynamite goes off. You can… move, right? In the —” He grunted, frustrated with the fact that he didn’t know how to convey this in English. “The proyección astral thing that mares do, that lets them get away. You know how to do that, yes? I want you to stay with it and keep it from getting away until I blow the wall. Then you come out with that.”

“That’s good!” Ariadne forced herself to be more chipper than perhaps was appropriate. She made a small face. “I – sorry. Yes, that’s helpful. I’m glad about that. Though I mean, if you did, that’d be fine. It’s all okay.” She just wanted to be out of here. This was why she didn’t go out of her way to have too many adventures. Because that just ended her up in situations like this one, and normally she didn’t have adults like Emilio who could help get her out of said situations.

“Okay. Okay, sorry. Doesn’t matter. I’ll – you asked me to be quiet and I’m failing at that.” She bit down on her tongue about has hard as she could tolerate. Just over enough to make sure that she actually stopped and listened to what Emilio had to say. At least he wasn’t asking her many more questions about what she’d said. About what she was.

“I – yes.” Ariadne gulped a breath of air that she didn’t really need. “I – I’m alright at it.” She was actually more than alright, but any sort of bragging about being monstrous or even monster-adjacent was not something that she was going to even sort of attempt right now. “I can do that. I’ll help you. Yes.”

She was eager to please, wasn’t she? Agreeing with everything he said, insisting that it was good even when nothing about this situation was particularly positive. Optimism was an unfamiliar beast, for Emilio. It wasn’t a thing hunters tended to carry well, wasn’t a weapon any of them learned to wield. As a hunter, you could be a pessimist or you could be a realist. Emilio wasn’t entirely sure there was any kind of a difference between the two.

“No, it —” He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine now. It knows we’re here, too late for quiet.” Sneaking was only feasible if you were trying to get away without the monster knowing you were near. They were past that now.

He nodded, relieved that they at least had all the parts in place for the plan to work. “Okay,” he agreed. “Okay, yeah. I’m going to grab the dynamite. You lead it off. All right? Into some place enclosed, but with enough space that you can be far away from the blast. So you don’t get hurt. I’ll blow the wall down, you get out, then we walk back up to the surface together. Sound good?”

“Still, I don’t want to make things worse.” Though Ariadne wondered, perhaps, if she was making things worse by default through her near-constant commentary on not wanting that. Still, not something to focus on now. Whenever she lay in bed later, she could stare up at the ceiling and ponder what many things she’d done to mess up.

Right now, though, she could help, and she’d do it, no matter what happened. “Yep, I’ll do it, and I’ll make sure I don’t get hurt, though I dunno if I can, really, uh, because of the whole mare thing. Still. Safe. I’ll be that. I like being that.” Just opposite of her cousin, but Emilio didn’t need to hear about that, and Ariadne didn’t need to focus on that. “I’m - I’ll go, now.” And so she took off, darting into an enclosed crater-like formation in the wall. She could only hope the creature would follow her there.

“Doesn’t get much worse, kid.” They were trapped in a mine with an undead creature Emilio had only heard about, the kind that was impossible to kill without consequence. There were very few scenarios worse than this one, whether she talked or not. But her being quiet wasn’t exactly a bad thing, either; at least it would make it a little easier for Emilio to think.

Looking at her carefully, he narrowed his eyes. “You can still get hurt,” he told her flatly. “Yes, you can still get hurt. You need to know that.” He didn’t want the kid running around assuming she was invincible; that was going to end poorly. She took off, and he nodded, sighing to himself. Whatever. They could handle the Q&A above ground.

Wandering down a chamber, Emilio searched until he found an area with some equipment. It was dusty and old; he doubted it had been used in quite a while. But there was a stick of dynamite that wasn’t too damp to light, and he grabbed it and headed back towards the mare and the monster as quickly as he was able. “Kid,” he called through the mine, “I’m headed back to you. Are you ready?”

“That’s fair.” Even if Ariadne wanted to refute his statement, because stuff could get worse, but there was also a part of her who wanted to say that life was normally golden and good - which it was, but not in the way that most people would have expected, and her jokes were usually tinged with the slightest bit of sadness, anyhow. Even when she wasn’t intentionally being that way.

“I - I know.” She looked down at the ground. “I know I can, I can get badly hurt, but I’m still better suited than humans.” Ariadne’s eyes widened at that statement. “I didn’t mean like - I’m not better than anybody, in fact, I’m worse than most, but yeah - I just mean, better me getting stuck with it than a human.”

After what felt like far too long and far too short, she heard his voice again. “Yeah, yeah I am. Just - do it when you’re ready.”

She was clearly new to this, and she clearly wouldn’t have chosen it if she’d been given a choice. That was the kind of thing that Emilio felt made it easier to reform as a slayer than as a ranger or a warden — none of the people Emilio had ever hunted had been born as they were. A good number of them chose to become it, asked someone to turn them for one reason or another. It made it a little easier to shift, to recognize that the ones that hadn’t chose it were set apart.

It also meant there were less kids. The undead didn’t typically turn children, for a lot of reasons. Even twenty-somethings like this kid were rarer than older ones. He thought if he’d been born a ranger or a warden, if he’d been dealing with kids like this all his life, he might have turned heel sooner. He liked to think that. He wasn’t sure if it was true.

He left without saying anything else, didn’t speak again until he was asking her if she was ready and she was saying she was. “All right,” he agreed, following the sound of her voice to a narrow opening. Sharp eyes peered through the darkness, seeing that she’d led the monster inside and that the only escape was the one he was standing in front of. Perfect. “Count of three. Okay? Uno, dos…”

The explosion rocked the mines. Rocks fell from the ceiling, and Emilio just barely dodged a sizable one landing on his head. When the dust settled, the opening he’d been standing in front of was gone, replaced by stone and earth. “Okay, kid. Hope you can still hear me. Come on out, through the astral.”

She figured that if she was helping with this sort of thing, maybe – just maybe that meant she was still good - or, not good, but that there was maybe some bit of good still left in her. That she hadn’t totally destroyed who she was. Ariadne sniffled for a moment.

Ariadne let herself take in deep breaths that she really didn’t need as he counted. The explosion was still louder than she would have thought it’d be. So much so, that his voice made her jump, shake her head, re-remind herself that she was supposed to come out of this, and so she took another deep breath and focused on her memory of the space outside of the cave, and before she knew it, she was there, and shook her head, wiping a bit of mine-dust off her nose.

“Here. I’m - did we do it? Did you do it, I mean?”

There was a moment of quiet, a moment where the empty caverns of the mine stood still and, for a second, Emilio worried that he’d fucked up. That something had landed on her and crushed her, that he’d killed the kid in trapping the monster. He shouldn’t feel a panic at that, not with an undead kid, not when he was supposed to be a slayer, but he felt it anyway. That quiet fear, that cold dread.

And then, she was out in the open with him, and he let out a heavy breath of relief. Unharmed, in one piece. He could hear movement from the cavern she’d vacated, the angry sounds of a trapped beast. He didn’t know if it would hold it forever, but it didn’t need to. If he remembered right, these things had no idea how to get out of their respective ‘homes’ unless there was someone to follow. And after Emilio and the kid left, there’d be nothing left to follow.

“Yeah, kid,” he sighed, nodding his head. “We did it. Couldn’t have done it without you.” At least, not nearly as easily. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She’d helped. In some small way, but she’d still helped. Not made things worse, for once. “Let’s go, please. And I promise not to follow you into the woods anymore, without asking.” Ariadne sighed. “But yes. I think I need a shower, or - well, not a nap, but just to lie down. Thanks for not leaving me down there.” She offered him a small smile. “And thanks for saying I helped, too.”

#c emilio #chatzy #writing #yours mine and ours #wickedswriting #// sorry for no cool banner #i love bex and i love emilio #and <3333

10 notes · View notes