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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 1 year ago

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If you don’t mind writing angst or sad right now, how about a snippet from when Holly loses the rest of her Rotwell team. :))

Holly Louise Munro is sixteen years old and doesn't think she's going to make it to seventeen. Plenty of psychic agents don't, after all. And this window isn't a very good reassurance.

The night started ordinarily enough. The case was somewhat routine, disturbances and disruptions that her team was sent to investigate and mitigate. Most poltergeists don't make a habit of violently hurling knives the instant the sun goes down, though. Most wait, most build up to full attacks, most don't do this-

Holly has to remind herself to breathe, but not too loudly. It's only barely one in the morning, still comparatively early in a usual worknight. If she breathes too loudly, or moves too much, or panics, the Visitor will hear her, or sense her, or notice her, and she can't have that. She has to file a report, it's only proper procedure, she has to- She has to tell their families.

Arthur was the first to be killed. Holly was in the kitchen prepping tea, quickly and clipped and just the way she always does, while the other three made their rounds, set up chains, laid iron filings. Arthur, a supervisor around her height with a face full of freckles, stopped into the kitchen to check in with her. Holly's head was ducked, not looking his direction even though she heard him coming with his cheerful, "Oy, Munro-". The instant he poked his head of tousled ginger hair around the entrance to the kitchen, a knife flew through the air and stabbed into his neck, all but pinning him to the wall of the hallway behind him.

Holly's head had whipped up at the grisly thunk, in just enough time to see the light go out of his eyes. Her mind was utterly blank for far too long, and it was the first time she had to remind herself to breathe that night. The blank look in Arthur's eyes, the knife protruding from his windpipe and the thin trickles of blood falling down around it, are seared into her memory. She'll never forget that.

Selfishly, she'll hate herself for it later and has already kind of started, her first thought is it's in here with me. It's fuzzy and slow, the realization, but it sticks in her head anyway. She puts a hand on her rapier, tries to remember where she'd seen the knife block sitting on the counter before the sun set, and thanks God above for the gift of shock.

Poltergeists are drawn to strong emotion. If she were feeling anything in particular at the moment, she would easily become the next victim. She'd never seen a Visitor become so violent so quickly before coming to Cotton Street. There isn't an iron circle in the kitchen. They hadn't thought there was enough space or need.

"Brenton," Holly calls as loudly as she dares, "Christa," and the other two members of her team hadn't responded. Brenton refused to go by his first name, and Christa was barely fourteen years old. Arthur had loved caramelized biscuits. He'd probably been coming to beg some from her when he was killed.

For the longest time, Holly stood stock still in the cramped kitchen of a home on Cotton Street with the body of one her supervisor, who loved caramelized biscuits and earl grey tea and had too-long ginger hair that stuck up every which way and freckles almost as dark as Holly's own skin, and all she could think of was lists of details of these children she works with. Children who likely won't see another birthday. Children sent to die in a home on Cotton Street.

All she could think was that Christa's favorite color is green and she'd had strawberry cake from a storebought boxed mix that she'd made herself for her birthday last week even though Holly had offered to bake something, and that she'd worn non-regulation platform boots to make herself look taller, and her wispy blonde hair fell in front of her eyes like mare's-tail clouds. All Holly could think is that it took her six months to find out Brenton's first name, Augustin, and that he'd been named for a Saint who preached unity even though the boy himself picked more fights on sillier grounds than anyone Holly had ever met, even all her aunts and uncles at family reunions when she was very little, and that she brought chamomile tea along even though it wasn't a standard because she knew he had anxiety and it helped to calm his nerves. And that these were the children Holly now had responsibility for, as the oldest of them, and who she can't save from this.

"Christa," she tries again. "Brenton!" Her voice is getting more shrill, she knows it, can feel it trembling in her jawbone. All of a sudden she wants to cry. She's only sixteen. She's more of an adult than any of them, but she's not, not really. She just has to be. She has to be the adult, because that's what would keep them alive. They needed her. "I need you!"

"Alright, Holly?" Came one high, airy little voice, and if Holly hadn't choked out the tiniest little sob as she dares to step out into the hallway, closer to Arthur's body but father from the knife block which she remembers now is sitting under the tiny square window with curtains she had thought earlier were pretty, with embroidered daisies and dandelions, she's a liar.

"Christa, come here right now," Holly says. "Rapier out." A rapier won't do much good against a Visitor with no corporeal form, but she isn't going to tell the other girl that. The key right then was to stay calm, to hold themselves together to hopefully keep them alive. "Was Brenton with you?" She asks, stepping out to meet Christa and keep her from seeing Arthur with a knife in his neck. They see so much in this job, but she can try to protect the littler girl from this much.

Christa shakes her head. "He was in the bedroom."

Holly nods, shouts Brenton's name again, and stiffens when she hears rattling from behind them. She doesn't dare turn around to look back toward the kitchen, but she would have and did bet her life that the knives were moving, slipping from their slots and drawers and Arthur's throat. She takes Christa by the shoulders, bends to look her in the eye because even platform boots can't make a little girl big all at once.

"Go find him and get into your chain circle. That's what he was doing, right?" When Christa nods, Holly continues. "Go tell him I said to get in the chains, right now. stay there until I say so." For the first time, fear shows in Christa's eyes. For the first time, she looks back over Holly's shoulder. She gasps and goes even paler than usual and starts to tremble in Holly's hands. "Don't look," Holly says. "Go. I'll be right behind you."

"Do you promise?" Christa asks. And Holly, trying to be the adult, trying to remind herself to breathe, nods once and firmly.

"I promise." She pushes Christa toward the bedroom, toward hopefully safety. The girl doesn't look back. She was always whip-smart, Holly can tell her parents that, always did the inventory twice as well as anyone and enjoyed the mathematics and memorized the regulations, knew what to do if she had to go off-book, too.

She was so, so bright and had mare's-tail hair and she had trusted Holly so completely that when she picked up her pace and started running on her size four platform combat boots, Holly truly thought she'd be safe in the chain circle with Brenton in only a few seconds. She hoped it, believed it so much that she turned away to return, steeling herself metaphorically and literally, to the kitchen where her bag was.

She had flares, salt bombs, precious senses of safety in there. Quickly, clipped, she collected her things, strapped extras onto her body, stared at the knives hovering just above their places in the knife block. It wasn't attacking her right now. It couldn't, of course, because it's focus was on the tiny girl down the hall. The thud sent chills through Holly, the sudden ice cold that comes with being pierced through with abject terror.

Dropping her bag, she'd run toward the sound, and come to a desperate halt when she saw the knife, the same one that had sliced through Arthur's windpipe, embedded between Christa's shoulderblades. It must have severed her spine in just the right place, because she's dead by the time Holly tries to find her pulse. She thinks, and will continue to think, that it's a mercy. Still, tears come to her eyes and she's forced to blink them away, keep breathing, keep breathing, when Brenton appears, sweaty and shocked.

"Munro?" He says weakly. She shakes her head.

"Go," she hisses, and hears metal rattling ominously. "Get in the circle," she cries, standing to her feet and running to push him ahead of her. "It's a Poltergeist," she explains hastily, shoving him roughly into the bedroom where a wide circle of chain sits in the clear space between the bed beside the door and the window at the far wall of the room. "Get in-"

She flinches, drops her grip on Brenton's arm and covers her head in fear when something shiny flashes in the corner of her eye. She doesn't know what it is, but this Visitor's hallmark is metal things, harmless metals like copper and composites free of iron or silver, cheap faux silverware and bargain jewelry.

It's an ornamental gold pocketknife and a hatpin this time, that do sweet terrified Brenton in. The knife is just large enough that she can see it sticking out of his stomach, the hatpin embedded in between two of his ribs, probably puncturing a lung. She whimpers a small, useless "No!" as Brenton crumples to the floor just outside the chain. She blinks hard and fights back tears once more, struggles to breathe even shallow shaky breaths, and clings to the small sweaty hand he holds out.

"The circle," Brenton wheezes, moving his arm like he's trying to push her into it. Almost robotically, she crawls across the chain, into the protective circle, but never let's go of Brenton as she does.

"It's going to be okay," she whispers uselessly, "You're going to be fine."

Brenton stared at her, hopefully in too much shock to feel the pain as he had bled slowly out against a chest of drawers. His eyes were wide and green and every part of him was trembling. His breaths were strained and labored and Holly knew, the whole time, that she was lying to him. He was dying right in front of her. Her whole team was dead or dying. They were just children.

Brenton fumbled with her hand, his palm slipping. Something thunked into a wall outside in the hall. "I'm scared, Hol, I'm so scared, please, Holly-"

"I've got you," she told him, "It's alright, August, I'm here, I'll-" She couldn't say protect you. She's already failed at that. "It's alright. I've got you." She says it over and over, until internal bleeding or a collapsed lung takes the light from his eyes. She keeps saying it even after he's dead as if that can bring him back or make it true.

She keeps saying it for so long that she doesn't realize at first how loud the rattling throughout the house is. Drawers are shaking, items that aren't shiny or sharp now threatening at every angle. There is a trail of Holly's dead teammates leading to this room, and there's next to no good way to fight a Poltergeist this strong. Holly is completely alone except for a thing that wants to kill her and will probably succeed, and she has to remind herself to keep breathing.

The window is her only chance. It's a second floor, but she can probably survive that. The odds are better than staying here through the night, rapier useless and team dead around her. She thinks she's going to be sick. She thinks there's almost no point. If the fall doesn't kill her she'll still be alone til morning.

She gives up on the chains and finds herself pressed against the wall beneath the window, shaking. A drawer flies open in the bedside table and a desperate sob rips out of her. She can't time it properly, can't see the Visitor's approach as it comes to take her life. She forces herself to breathe once, twice, and then turns, scrabbles at the window latch and throws it open. It screeches with disuse, takes all her shaky strength to pry it open and lift it wide enough to get out, and she almost falls headfirst when she manages it.

The noise in the house builds to a fever pitch as Holly rolls out of the window, finds herself on a tile roof, and keeps sliding. The impact when she hits brick, a chimney, will leave her with bruises and a single broken rib. She can still hear the rattling and pounding inside the Cotton Street flat, can see all three of her teammates lying dead inside. For the first time since the sun went down, she doesn't have to force herself to breathe.

When they find her in the morning, the flat's owner and DEPRAC and a Rotwell department head, still lying against the chimney barely aware of the world around her, she's cried herself out. She's dehydrated and exhausted, but there's no more rattling inside the house. She'd cried for hours, rattling sobs wrenching out of her, in the dark against that chimney. It was loud and ragged and she doesn't know how none of the neighbors heard her. She cried so hard her head hurt and she couldn't even speak to explain what happened to her for nearly a full day.

The scene inside the flat had spoken for itself, though. Holly was the sole survivor, of course. And she got to see her seventeenth birthday, not that it mattered much. She was taken off of active duty, assigned a desk and inventory and peperwork that she did twice as well as anyone else in honor of Christa Wells, who didn't live to see fifteen. She drinks chamomile tea when her hands shake because she remembers how scared Augustin Brenton was when he died, and she keeps a pack of caramelized biscuits in a well-oiled drawer in her desk because she sometimes still expects Arthur O'Connor to come by and ask if she has any.

She is very good at her job, no matter how angry she finds herself at the adults, real adults, who so fail the children in their care and instead leave the children to each other. Even in that, she finds herself numb more often than not and wonders if this is what it's like for Visitors. She doesn't know why she survived and they didn't. She doesn't know why she's alive, or how to be.

Holly has to remind herself to breathe sometimes.

#bestie I am always down for angst. like even if I'm down in the dumps it's cathartic #muahahaha #actually also this gets addressed in the #girls trip fic #which I have a fair bit of done I'm just kinda slogging through midpoint filler atm so yeah #anyway. her middle name is louise now bc I said so :)#also the tense changes are somewhat intentional please don't think I'm a bad writer akdkfnskfnskfnskf #Lu writes #lockwood & co #L&c #holly munro

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