#siobhan / threads.

[lxvenderhxzehv]

Where: In Town Who: Terence and Siobhan (@wanderinglcst)

He could have sworn he was dreaming. There was no way that was her. Why was she here in the states.....in Huntsville. He pushed past people to get to her. Not taking mind in who he was pushing out of the way to get to her "Siobhan..." he said as he approached her. God she was just a frustratingly beautiful now as she was when he met her Ireland. "What in gods earth are you doing here? did you run out of pubs to sulk in or men to....insult?"

[backmaskcd]

closed starter for @wanderinglcst (siobhan) location: just outside town hall

"Woah; what, did you raid a wedding before coming here?" Jace was shocked by her armful of wedding dress, giving her a kind smile. "I didn't think anyone would honeymoon in Huntsville... I'm Jace. I take it you just sort of stumbled in here recently?"

[biherbalwitch]

"He kept everyone out. But when he let you in.. when the sun shone, it was warm. It was warm in the light."

"World of a father."

"He made life happen."

"He made me and my three siblings."

"He got it on a deal."

"He didn't wanna go in the ground."

"A chance to get to know him?"

"I had trouble finishing a scotch with him."

"He made me breathe funny."

The cruel god, killing his creations from the moment they're born, and condemning them to life and death in his fist.

They are the house. Forever haunted.

[faoighiche]

PARTNER : @banisheed TIMING : A few months ago. LOCATION : Somewhere downtown. SUMMARY : A vampire tries to feed on Siobhan, so she passes him to Burrow. To Siobhan's dismay, Burrow enjoys that kind of thing. WARNINGS : Under skin (minor)

Vampires were terrible: abominations of un-life, pests, occasionally strangely obsessed with bats. But lazy vampires? “Honestly, this is insulting,” Siobhan sighed, palm pressed to the cold forehead of a snarling vampire. It was the same principle that deterred curious sharks, a swift hit to the head to send it swimming the other way. Or so she assumed about the sharks; what did she know about sharks? It worked on vampires. “It’s just rather embarrassing for you, isn’t it?” At arm’s length away from her, his jaw clomped uselessly in the air. Through his snarls, the deconstructed plea repeated. Please, he was saying, just a little taste. Back in her day, vampires actually worked for their meals; they didn’t just flail at her fingertips and beg for a sample. Something-something-televisions rotting attention spans and dissolving backbones. “Isn’t there a little bit of shame left in that smooth brain of yours?” The vampire continued to chomp on the air, held back by Siobhan’s outstretched arm, which was getting tired. 

That was the catalyst for all of it: fatigue. Fatigue had probably forced the vampire to flail at her like a child, thwarted by the superior reach of her arm, feet scraping against the asphalt as he tried to push against her. Fatigue had certainly made Siobhan drop her hand and grip the worn collar of his t-shirt. She flinged him down the street like an egregious sack of potatoes. Fatigue pushed her to say: “Just go for that kid over there.” She pointed at the figure coming up on them. “Do us both a favor and feed on someone else.” 

He looked back at Siobhan, as if suddenly taken by the morality of feeding from a child. He blinked, then addressed the girl. “C-Can I suck on your blood, p-please?” 

Burrow heard the commotion: sounds of cloth ruffling and shoes scuffling. Sounds that began and ended in the same moment, to be replaced by a grunt as a human fell into her view. She continued on her walk, though was wise enough to keep an eye on the human. A caution to prevent him from causing harm. Curiously, she did not need to be so alert in order to notice his attack. He begged her to let him do it. To let him bite — to let him feed — to know her in the most intimate way. The thing was not a human at all. She saw those fangs barely covered by trembled lips — those sunken eyes that flashed crimson, the same color as the thing he craved. He was one who walked in death and hungered for life. Hungered for her, for the fae were the essence of all life. A life that could return his own to him, if he was able to take it all from her. How delightful.

Burrow was no fool, she would not seek out those that wished to be her end. Still, there had always been a fascination with the poor dead. They reminded her so much of her parasites. Things scorned by society, cast into the shadows, but forced to the light in order to survive. Forced to take from those that hated them so much. She did not hate them, though she did not love them enough to give without taking. “You may take as much of my blood as I allow, if you promise me a favor of my choosing.” That bind readied to dig into the dead’s neck, the same as his fangs into her own. Desperation had him accepting the deal without hesitation. The bind claimed him, writhing in anticipation for what would become of it. The dead did the same, overcome with eagerness that she would not grant him access yet. 

There was the issue of the other: the one who had thrown the dead on her path. Burrow held him in place, the power of her bind assisting her. She led him to the shadows, away from the watching eyes of the other in the distance. When she had tucked the two of them in a corner, her leash on him slipped with intention. As soon as she nodded her head, his own was lost to the curve of her neck. It was followed by a flash of pain that was so familiar it had her smiling. 

And that was that! Siobhan clapped her hands together, brushing off imaginary dirt. She didn’t care as the vampire and the child went away, vanished into the dark. She certainly didn’t care as a shiver ran down through her spine, telling her that this child was a fae—family, a friend. There wasn’t an ounce of care inside of her as her mother’s chiding voice boomed through her skull: fae take care of eachother, or some variant. Fae are family, fae protect each other. One fae’s pain belongs to another. All fae are connected. No harm shall come to another fae. Fae are family. Siobhan sighed; she did care. 

“Alright, that’s enough.” Siobhan snapped her hands around the shoulders of the vampire. As she pulled back, he didn’t move. As she leaned the weight of her body in the opposite direction, his latch on the child seemed only to grow stronger. In a huff, she released him, fingers throbbing. “Leanbh, push him off! What are you--” Siobhan dug her fingers into the vampire’s cold flesh again, pulling back. “This is enough! Release her!” Or was it the girl that had him? Siobhan looked down, trying to figure out who held the power between them. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to this?

That desperation, that hunger, that need for another’s life. Burrow knew it so well. She could feel it with each gulp of her blood. As if the two were made brothers, as they shared in that same blood. But he was not a brother: he was a strange and unknown thing. As familiar as he was a mystery. How exciting, to feel such beautiful greed without a presence in its existence. It was a wonder to consume and be consumed. Why did the humans fail to appreciate such a joy? 

Or the fae as well, for that matter. The burning alerted Burrow to the intruder’s presence immediately, sucking away her pleasant mood faster than those hungry fangs. Then came the vicious tone and the yelling — all things she had experienced before. What was unique was to see the fae struggle. The intruder was no match for the might of her bind, rendering the dead into a statue. A thing that only moved when Burrow did, as she craned her neck to the side to reveal her face to the fae. Her eyes locked with the other, staring in silence. A stare that lasted until she felt the creep of dizziness. “You are done.” The fangs were out of her neck before she even finished the statement. “We will meet again to discuss my favor. You will not stray far from me.” The dead scampered away without another word.

Burrow finally addressed the fae. “Hello.” She brushed away the trickle of blood still left on her skin. She licked what remained off her fingers. “Do you know of an Aos Sí?”

Siobhan blinked; she imagined it happened with the tink-tink of a cartoon. Incredulity swept over her in a cold wave and her jaw, hanging open, didn’t close until the blooddrunk vampire stumbled completely out of sight. “Hello,” she said in repetition more than greeting. Her head turned to watch the darkness swirl around the place the vampire had walked away into, and then back at the young fae. “You let him do that to you?” It was beyond degrading: it was confusing. The constant analysis of her mind—the churning logical machine in her head—could make nothing of it. It spun like old gears, grinding, and produced a cloud of black smoke. She blinked some more. 

“I do know of an Aos Sí, I grew up in one. As most fae do.” The confusion turned Siobhan honest. It didn’t occur to her to stomach the pains of lying, or to question what she was being asked. “But as for any here… I am not so… I do not…” What was the nicer way of saying that as a disgraced fae, she had no desires to ingratiate herself within local fae communities? “I do not know of any in this town. Though, there must be a few—the fae community here is larger than most. I do not…” What was the nicer way of saying it was strange that a fae who was interested wouldn’t know this? Was there a nice way to say ‘you are stupid, go walk into a fae bar and ask anyone’? Probably not. Why did she care about being nice? Siobhan’s head, as if answering her internal query, turned to the empty space the vampire once occupied, and then back again to the fae. 

“Why did you let him do that?” She jutted her thumb out into the empty space. “Leanbh, you do not deserve a… it’s degrading to…” Siobhan sighed; she should’ve walked away when she first thought about it. “Why are you looking for an Aos Sí?” 

The stare from before had been a mere prelude. Burrow’s eyes did as her namesake: burrowed into the fae after her admittance of awareness. Digging into the soul that lay behind that false skin, as if she could pluck out her secrets. The secrets of her home, so that Burrow would make it her own. But distance would be her enemy today. Though not a stray, this fae was as useful as the rest. Her sigh was quick and sharp. Burrow’s awaiting home dangled further away, by the hands of the strays and the imbeciles and the far from home. 

“I also assume there are a few of na Aos Sí in this nest. Well, somewhere, in this nest. Many of the fae of this nest do not know the location of an Aos Sí or what an Aos Sí means. It is sad… for them. I only feel irritated about their ignorance of na Aos Sí.” An irritation Burrow let slither out of her with the flicking of her wrists. Nature slept in the depths of winter’s belly. To avoid its hungry maw, those that were homed stayed nestled safely behind the féth fíada. She knew this. She will find success when the warmth of the sun drew them back to the light. She will wait, and watch, and practice, until their return. 

At least a piece of them did, in the presence of the intruder. Unlike the others of the town, she reminded Burrow a bit of her family. That disgust on the fae’s face was so familiar. “Chan urrainn dhuibh a thuigsinn.” You can not understand. None of them ever could. “It is not degrading to be consumed. It is wonderful. It is affection.” The dead offered a meager imitation, but one she appreciated nonetheless. Appreciated more than the poor excuse of love the fae showed her. “I look for an Aos Sí because I am in need of sanctuary.”

Something was wrong—wrong beyond the things that were usually wrong. Yes, she lacked her wings. Yes, she was a disgrace. Yes, this fae was staring at her like she wanted to dig into her skin like a worm in dirt. But something picked at her guts, rearranging the ribbons of flesh. Something was wrong, Siobhan thought. Something about all of this was wrong. Unguarded, unsure of where her guards should be, Siobhan’s voice wavered. 

“Many fae do not leave their Aos Sí; why would they? So, either you find someone out on some manner of errand or someone who…” The words caught in her throat. She shifted her weight between her feet, dislodging her unease into the bowl of her dry mouth; the words spilled like sand. “Someone who’s been thrown out.” Quickly, she added: “or someone who abandoned their home.” But the possibility that there could be a fae who would willingly leave home seemed so unlikely to Siobhan that, even though she could think of a certain annoying baby-banshee it applied to, she considered it impossible. “If you ask enough fae, maybe, eventually…” She trailed off, no longer able to stomach being helpful. 

Siobhan’s face betrayed all of her confusion and discomfort. “Affection exists in servitude—worship—not consumption. You allow a lesser creature to feed on you and what do you become?” The echo of her mother was summoned, swirling inside her head in streams of words. She could tug at any number of them to make her point: you would be weak, you would be pathetic, you would degrade yourself into the ranks of prey. But the fae’s admittance cleaved her mind instead, parting her mother’s thoughts. ‘Sanctuary’, the fae said and the strangeness of it burned; not a home, not just a shelter. Sanctuary. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?” 

The way the other spoke became strange. As if stones replaced the fae’s uvula, striking on the membranes of her throat with each syllable. Burrow was not sure of the cause. Was she succumbing to the effects of the weather, or perhaps the effects of the heart? Perhaps it was the topic, for she herself knew the… complications of home. Still, the answer to the mystery mattered little. She was more interested in the actual words themselves. They were all things she had thought before, but they did offer something new: this fae was inclined to help. “Yes, I am aware. I remember the visits to the human nests during the springs.” Visits she was never allowed to join, but she did recall their existence. She had watched as those groups returned, bringing trinkets and tales. In her first year of exile, she had hoped to find such a group and join them in their return to home. This plan, obviously, had not worked. “I am also very aware of… the exiles and the strays.”

The helpfulness did not extend to those that reminded Burrow so much of her kin. What did this fae have to say of her precious ones? Perhaps more of the same. Her own face betrayed those soured thoughts: creases formed against her lips and brows. “I become happy. The dead desire me. You saw how much the dead wanted me. The dead wanted me so much, he would have killed me if I had not stopped him. It is lesser than…” Than her own precious ones, who were better at taking their spoils. “It is lesser, but the feeding is still love.” She did not expect the fae to understand, for she had long given up on that prospect. Still, she would not let the misunderstanding stand without a rebuttal. 

“Yes, I am in trouble.” Trouble always found Burrow, in a world that wanted her dead or locked away. Peace was never an option for her kin, only fleeting moments of comfort. “Yes, I do need help.” Her lips pulled down, resembling a frown. The expression seemed effective on Teagan and Cass. She wondered if its power could sway others. “Will you help me?” 

The exiles and the strays. Siobhan’s skin prickled; the twin scars on her back burned, as they always did when something approached the memory. The air is thick suddenly, or maybe it’s her throat all seized up. The dull, wet grass molded to her shifting weight. “The undead desire you,” Siobhan said. To her, the distinction was important; Death wasn’t something that had desires. Siobhan huffed. “At least your notion of love is more understandable than…” Her mind drifted to other people; to the stupid books she’d read under moonlight. This time, the words of Dickinson, who wrote in the style of hymns, contorting rhyme and religion—“the wind does not require the grass”. Whatever love meant, that inescapable curse to her surroundings, it was at least tolerable as the younger fae said it. It didn’t align with her understanding, and it seemed far more degrading than poetic, but she could abide that to this girl, consumption was love. “Aye,” she sighed, “that’s your love then: fed and feeding.” 

The mystery of love would wait another day for her, preferably, she’d never have to answer the damn question of it. “Eh?” Siobhan shook her head. “What are you doing with your face?” Was it supposed to be a frown? To someone else, she imagined the look must have been effective: people did hate when others were sad. However for Siobhan, displays of emotion only served to make her uncomfortable. “Yes, I’ll help you—no, I’m not promising it. You’re fae. Fae help fae. We’re family.” Siobhan frowned. “But never display emotion at me again; it’s unbecoming.” It was unbecoming of both of them. It didn’t occur to her to ask what exactly this child needed help with.

The distinction was less important to Burrow. Undead, dead, marbh beò, zombie, vampire — all words to describe the same entity. A cursed thing that walked and continued despite death’s claim on them. A thing that disregarded the cycle of nature: to take and to give. The dead only took. Only fed, as the other put it. She was surprised that there was understanding admitted from the fae, from whom she mostly knew rejection and disgust. Perhaps this one was not as terrible as the rest. A hope to be justified or denied in time. How funny that she even dared to still hope. Teagan and Cass had certainly wormed their way into her better judgment, infecting it the same as her own kin. “Yes, the feeding is… one part of my love.” Much more than food can be admired and wanted and taken. There was so much splendor and spoils to be claimed in the world, and she wanted them all. 

A want that was as attainable as the garner for sympathy. “I am doing a frown.” It was clear the frown was not as sufficient as Burrow had hoped. It had felt correct. The tension on her cheeks were similar to when she had stood in front of her mirror — her face had been quite pitiful and pathetic then. She would practice once more. At least she had no need for what next overcame her face. Lips twitched and curled and peeled back to reveal a small sliver of teeth. Fae help fae. Hinder, harm, and hate: that is what the fae did. But, she had learned that, yes, the fae could and would help, whether they wanted to or not. The lack of promise hinted that this fae was of the latter sort. She would take all the offered generosity, and then some, when the moment was right. “Ok. You will help me, cousin.” 

Burrow’s moment of amusement was gone, fizzling out of existence for it was no longer needed. She returned to her usual quiet, both of mouth and soul. Not because the fae asked it from her, but it was convenient that the other did. At least it was one less thing expected from her to get what she wanted. 

[ironcladrhett]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: An abandoned soap factory PARTIES: Rhett (@ironcladrhett) & Ingeborg (@nightmaretist) & Siobhan (@banisheed) SUMMARY: Siobhan and Inge hatch a plan to get revenge on the warden that kidnapped Ariadne with a little kidnapping of their own. CONTENT WARNINGS: Torture, body horror. Like, fr. It’s gross. You've been warned.

—

Hunters were a cruel sort who based their existence on exactly what she was doing now: stalking, keeping an eye out, intending to drive their prey into a corner and then – after a strenuous and long process – undo them. She’d heard some of their convictions before, that moral obligation they felt to clear the world of predatory species such as herself — as if they weren’t a pest all the same. Inge didn’t often play their games, but she could this time. Because the opportunity was right. Because she didn’t want to run from this town, even if that was wisest.

So she had kept an eye on Rhett ever since Ariadne had hand-delivered the news that the warden was injured. It was glorious timing, was it not? Siobhan Dolan expressed her desire for blood and soon after the man they both wanted to make bleed was down on his luck. Inge reveled in the sight of it, anticipating seeing more as she reigned in her fury and instead stuck to the plan thus far.

Tonight was the night it was to go down, if the stars aligned right. Siobhan was sitting idle nearby and Inge was in the astral, looking at Rhett stalking the town of Wicked’s Rest and waiting for opportunity. It wasn’t often that she took the path of offense, after all, and now that she did, she refused herself recklessness. In stead, she waited until he was alone and then severed her connection to the astral, her earthly body appearing not behind or in front of the wanter, but above. A move she and Sanne had practiced, once. She fell on him with her legs around his neck, a little clumsy but with enough momentum to pull him to the ground with her. “Surprise,” she said, her weight on his body, her hands flying to his neck. More easy to reach without the beard in the way. Red eyes glowed as she stared into his eyes, all her energy pushed towards her hands to put him to sleep.

—

As it turned out, used hearses were readily available online. Vintage—as purported by the listing—and teeming with residual Deathly energy, the vehicle was not inconspicuous. But nothing about Siobhan had ever been inconspicuous. Siobhan’s phone buzzed and with one quick glance spared to the text, she raced down the street and screeched to a stop beside Rhett’s sleeping body. He looked cute in that way all sleeping humans did; she could drop an anvil on his face and watch his confused brain (if it remained intact) sputter to make sense of what had occurred. She loved, more than anything, the human disorientation of waking up, as if the body didn’t understand the concept of slumber. It was hard to believe such a vulnerable looking man was capable of doing anything to Ariadne. 

Siobhan stepped out of her new-old hearse, one long leg after the other, heels clicking on concrete. “That was a little anticlimactic,” she said. She didn’t explain that she’d been hoping for a bit of a struggle, Ingeborg, for all that she insulted the other woman, possessed a quality Siobhan had lost a long time ago: sensibility. She considered waking him up and undoing Ingeborg’s work, just to piss her off, just to imbue their work with excitement. Whatever part of her—whatever foolishly sentimental part—that had truly wanted to see justice for the sweet Ariadne, was also lost. Or, rather, smothered. 

She reached down and grabbed him by the ankles, pulling him across the ground; his arms scraped along the concrete and his head bobbed with each uneven movement. Finally, she looked up. “Well?” Siobhan huffed. “Are you going to help me or…” Siobhan didn’t possess any delusions; between the two of them, she was probably considered the ‘muscle’. She opened the back of her hearse and threw him inside, grunting and huffing; he was heavier than he looked. Climbing in after him, she took care to tie his hands together behind his back and bind his feet, just in case he woke up. She slipped her gloves on and carefully searched his body, it was likely all of his knives were cold iron and she could do with not hurting herself before the main event. 

In the end, moving across his body in a clinical fashion, she removed five knives and one wrinkled advertisement—torn from one side as if ripped from a book—for a lavender goat milk soap flecked with crystalized honey and imbued with essential oils. If ordered now, a free soap bar would be thrown in at no cost. Siobhan pocketed the advertisement and packed the knives away in a plastic bag. 

“Okay.” She jumped out, closing the door behind her. “Are you going to come with me or do the whole…” What she’d meant was ‘teleportation’ but what she signaled, squeezing her hand in the air, was more like a groping motion, boobily directed. “It…” Siobhan swallowed a compliment for Ingeborg’s work. “You’re alright.”

—

It was a quaint sight, the hunter incapacitated in innocent sleep. Of course, Inge knew there was no such thing as an innocent sleeper — people dreamed of horrible things even without mare intervention, their subconsciousness spinning tales that were better forgotten and unsaid. What did he dream of, now? She had half a mind to slip into his mind and take a peek, to be nothing but a bystander to this man’s psyche. To intrude into his privacy the way he had intruded on her feeling of safety.

But Inge was sensible, or at least, she could convince herself to be. She sent a text to Siobhan, her unlikely ally in all this after getting off the brute’s body, the toe of her boot pressing against his head to make it so that he’d look at the stars if he was awake. When the banshee pulled up in her hearse – an admirable show of commitment to the aesthetic – Inge did expect some kind of praise. Instead she got a dry comment, and her face twisted a little. She’d like to see Siobhan try to do what she just did. Not that Siobhan had seen it, anyway, the way she’d fallen from the sky and used her limbs against the other! “You just missed the best part,” she grumbled.

And so she was fine letting Siobhan do some of the heavy lifting. This was not because the other was presumably far more experienced with these things, certainly not. It was just because Siobhan had made a snide comment and Inge had not yet forgotten how lowly she’d spoken of her kind. “Oh, sorry,” she said as the request to help came her way, and she lifted the hunter by his neck without putting in a whole lot of effort.

She watched with curious, hungry eyes how Siobhan got to work, tying up Rhett with an expertise that Inge lacked. She did think of her own legs strapped to chair legs and her hands bound together by his own hands as she’d been knocked out. How the tables had turned now. How victorious she felt, for once, in the face of a hunter. Even as she stood by, watching Siobhan produce knife after knife. For good measure she wrapped her hand around the man’s ankle, keeping him asleep before stepping aside. 

An amused and puzzled look was thrown Siobhan’s way at the motion she gave her. Inge was glad, most of all, for the not-quite-compliment that followed. It was an acknowledgement, at least, which probably meant she should voice that the other seemed to know what she was doing. That she looked skilled and good doing it. “I’ll come with you,” she said, before begrudgingly adding, “So are you. Now let’s go. I want to see his face when he wakes up.” With that, Inge popped into the astral, only to reappear in the passenger’s seat. She’d at least give Siobhan the honors of driving her funeral car.

—

The old hearse wheezed to life, coughing black smoke from its rusted tailpipes. After a few sputters and stalls, Siobhan coaxed it into a steady pace down Wicked’s Rest’s pot-hole afflicted roads. Each crack threatened to send the hearse closer towards car heaven but each curse and forceful thump on the accelerator seemed to drag it back to life. It wasn’t going to die today, but the same couldn’t be said for the slumbering man jostling behind them. She reached towards the console between them and flicked on the CD player, letting Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” fill the air—a reference to their online conversation that Rhett wouldn’t get because he was sleeping and a joke that Ingeborg wouldn’t understand because she was stupid and undead (a redundancy). 

“What do you reckon the man’s thinking of?” Siobhan jutted a finger back, gesturing to Rhett. How many dreams had Ingeborg seen? How many nightmares did she cause? Was there a commonality between them? Siobhan bit her lip, keeping her rather friendly curiosities to herself. “Think it’s tits? Might be dreaming about tits,” she laughed. “The man’s about to die, would be a shame if his last dream is wasted on those…oh…” Siobhan waved her hand in the air. “In the classroom naked? A test that wasn’t studied for? You know the sort; human minds are so dull.” Not that she’d ever actually seen one for herself. She glanced at Ingeborg. How many, she wanted to ask. Did you like them? Do you remember them? Hold them? Do you regret them, Ingeborg? Will you regret this?

She turned her gaze back to the road. “What do you think?” she asked again. “What do you think a man like that dreams about?” 

—

It wasn’t tits, as it happened. What he was dreaming about, that is, not the situation at hand. The situation was very tits, as in it had gone tits up, as in it was bad, bad news. Not that he really knew that, not yet. Hell, he’d not had a lot of time to process his predicament before being sent off to slumberland. And wouldn’t you fucking know it, he hadn’t even deserved it this time. Not as a reaction to anything he was doing immediately, anyway. There he was, minding his own business and looking for ‘for rent’ signs in windows, when suddenly wham! He was on the ground. 

It was black, mostly. An empty void with no light, no echo, no sound at all. He felt like he was falling forward, careening over a cliff that he couldn’t see, but the rush of wind was eerily absent. His mouth opened and he screamed, but nothing came out. Panic gripped him, tightening his chest and sending a terrible cold all through his bloodstream. Something grabbed him by the throat then, jerking him out of the freefall and throwing him to the floor of an old, run down shack. He pushed himself up onto his hands, shivering and gasping for air, relieved to hear the sounds of him trying to catch his breath.

“Dad?” he heard a soft voice call to him. Looking up, he saw Ophelia standing there. Younger than she was in reality, an imaginary version of what he thought she might’ve looked like when she was twelve or so. And her mother… her mother sat in a chair beside where Ophelia stood, looking just the same as he’d last seen her. 

“Mari—” He couldn’t get it all out as the nymph stood from her seat and shrieked at him, exploding with light and blinding him all over again. He wailed, falling away from her, throwing an arm across his useless eyes. 

“You killed us!” she screamed, standing over the top of him. “You killed us, you monster!” 

In reality, the warden stirred fitfully in his prescribed slumber, straining against his bonds but not waking. Not yet. 

—

She flicked down the passenger mirror, this time not to check her lipstick but rather to keep an eye on the restrained hunter as Siobhan drove. The music choice was inexplicable and Inge refused to ask for an explanation or to even comment on it — it felt like a test of sorts. Or maybe the banshee just had bad taste in music. It mattered little: there was a much more interesting sight for her, a turning of tables right behind her. She did not often indulge in vengeance, aside from petty little things, as vengeance was an act for the reckless and stupid and she would like to think of herself above such things. But this was a sweet sight, a promise for some kind of righteousness.

She glanced at Siobhan when she asked her question but looked back soon enough. “Every dream features tits sooner or later,” she said, before snorting, “I cannot imagine him having such mundane dreams — but the ones about public nudity are common.” Inge placed her boots on the dashboard and wondered about what made the man stir. “When I entered his dreams a few months back, he was dreaming of a woman on a boat. Pregnant. Some kind of deeply personal thing. An ex, you know? Who doesn’t dream of those?” Not her, but she didn’t dream any more. If she could she probably would dream of Hendrik and Sanne alike, so she was very much glad she didn’t. 

She kept a close eye, wondering if she should indulge the rather rude banshee. She gave her a glance, held up a finger. “One moment.” Inge disappeared, projecting into the astral for a few moments before ending in the space where Rhett had been laid. It was better than climbing over the seats, even if the cramped space still led to a little bit of an awkward position. She tilted the other’s chin up, pressed her fingers on his throat and entered his dream, where a woman was stood screaming over the slayer. The same woman Inge had described moments ago. She didn’t do much to the dream, not quite trusting Siobhan with her fragile and undefended body. It would be a waste not to add a personal touch to this dream, though, so she filled the scene with floodlights and the sound of squawking crows. 

All in all it took a few minutes before she returned to her seat, glancing at the driver. “His presumed ex, again. She didn’t have her tits out, though.”

—

Siobhan didn’t dream of exes, that would require her to have them—romance was often far from her mind and when it wasn’t, the reminder that her life would never fit it was stronger than most wistful thoughts. The rare dreams that didn’t turn into nightmares were often concerned with animal life: the cows and their swaying flaps of fat as the bounded up to greet her; the sheep clumped together in one mess of dirty wool; the strutting chickens in an ancient coop, pecking at hay; the pale horses on the hill; the birds above; the ants in a their single-file line carrying crumbs to their underground home. Siobhan couldn’t admit that to Ingeborg; saying she didn’t dream of exes—because she’d never once indulged in a properly romantic relationship—and instead dreamed of cows, felt like the exact fuel needed for a terrible, scathing insult. She kept her mouth shut. What exactly did it mean that Rhett, someone sworn to duty just like her, would have a relationship to mourn? Was he the weak one, indulging in selfishness? Or was there something wrong with her? Clearly though, it hadn’t worked out for him; people rarely dreamed about things that worked out for them. 

The cows were popped by her screams, the sheep were used as butchering examples and the running chickens were target practice. The birds fell from the sky, dead like leaves on the ground. One day, her mother gleeful explained the process of poisoning ants—the dry loaf they’d been stealing from had been injected several times over with a concoction of her own creation and look, now there were no ants (Siobhan thought this was strangely cruel, but her mother never had a lot of hobbies). Only the horses had survived but their living fate had been the worst of them all: deaf and unnaturally docile, the sensitive creatures were wrung out over generations; they didn’t move unless prodded and they wouldn’t eat unless forced. Siobhan could only tell they lived when the statues of them on the hill would be broken by the reflexive swish of a tail. No, the animals hadn’t worked out for her and no, her dreams never did feature tits. 

Siobhan’s grip tightened on the wheel as the roads turned uneven and weeds burst through the widening cracks. Around them, windows were broken and then boarded and then broken without a care for boarding. The trees grew tall and thick, unencumbered by humanity. It took more power than she expected to resist from telling Ingeborg that her astral movement was astonishing--it inspired awe the way a bloated corpse found around the corner did. “If I was dreaming about an ex, her tits would be out,” she said. “We’ve picked up a boring one.” The concrete of the roads seemed to disintegrate as they moved, turning into rocks and gravel. The hearse wheezed to a stop in front of a large brick factory with rusted smokestacks looming above. The words had fallen off years ago but out of luck or in a curse of its former glory, the important part remained: “SOAP”, it read. 

“I put some more toys in there for us,” Siobhan explained as she grabbed Rhett from the back. “Bone saws, chainsaws, hacksaws, circular saws, jigsaws, pole saws, crosscut saws—Hm, I see now that I focused a little heavily on the saws.” Siobhan continued, musing to herself. “I did see one of those old iron brands in there; it has the soap logo on it. Wouldn’t that be funny? Perhaps we should start there? Well, no, of course we tie him to the chair first—I didn’t think to bring the torture chair, it’s a regular chair. But it is plastic, which I think is torture enough.” 

—

WELCOME TO YOUR KIDNAPPING & TORTURE. The big, block letters shivered in the gentle breeze that slid through a broken window, the banner they were pasted upon swaying alongside the colorful bunches of balloons and streamers that stood in stark contrast to the rest of the forgotten structure. It was all shades of gray and brown until you got to this spot, a nice open area on the factory floor with plenty of doohickeys and thingamajigs for Rhett’s captors to festively decorate and angle him toward. Even the chair he was strapped to was red, the hardy rope used to hold him in place a nice shade of royal blue, really making this feel like the kid’s party to end all other kid parties. There was an unusual amount of saws for a kid’s party, though. 

The warden snorted violently as he snapped awake, the image of his screaming ex and crying daughter fading to make way for the bright, bobbing balloons and fluttering crepe paper. His last remaining eye blinked rapidly as he tried to orient himself in his new surroundings, head turning this way and that to make up for the lack of peripheral vision, yet he still couldn’t really figure it out. A stupid, confused sort of sound slipped out of him as his darkened gaze finally found the two other figures in the room and he went still again, only now feeling the binds around his wrists and ankles. His shoulders were sore from his arms being pulled behind him, his leg ached from the aging werewolf injury, and his eyepatch was somewhat askew on his face. He glowered at the pair, recognizing Inge after a few seconds, but having no clue who the other one was. She was fae, though; that much he could determine. Not helpful. Inge, though…

“You still that upset about the bunker?” he growled, his voice gravely and low. His one-eyed gaze jumped from her to the stranger, and he sneered. “Who’s yer friend?”

—

“Who knew there were that many saws out there …” The fact that she and Siobhan had partaken in a creative effort was an unexpected thing, but when it was put in the context of revenge and viciousness it perhaps made more sense. Regardless, she thought their kidnapping location was far superior from that drab basement she’d been held in, never mind that stinky van. Inge did something uncharacteristic, here: she let Siobhan take the lead. This was no time for pride, was it? She had a goal she wanted achieved, and that was for the hunter to die in this abandoned factory — to let the one with more experienced hands charge seemed only logical if she wanted to see that goal accomplished. Inge would’ve never thought to bring this many saws, after all. Her form of torment had always been purely mental.

Still, she was very much capable of tying down a man twice her size.

For all the ways she claimed not to understand hunters, she was still here, satisfied as she watched Rhett come to. Groaning and struggling, roles reversed and some kind of justice at the tip of her fingers. His comment about the bunker only caused a wave of distaste to roll through her. Was it not her good right to still be upset? She was not one to let go of her grudges, anyway — and that’s all this anger was. A grudge. Not incessant fear, gnawing at her subconscious. 

“You look good like that,” she snipped back in return, “And come, you’re one to talk, considering you were dreaming about her again.” Inge would very much like to meet this woman, she found. “ Maybe you should start tying up your loose ends so they don’t come bite you in the ass later on.”  She looked at Siobhan. “I’ll let her introduce herself.”

—

“Did you get held in a bunker?” Siobhan’s gaze snapped between the tied up warden—some of her best work, really—and her accomplice. “His bunker?” She jutted out a finger at Rhett, who did in fact look good tied up. If the trauma wasn’t too much after this, perhaps he’d consider bringing light bondage to the table with his ex. Maybe she’d come back then. After this. Siobhan hummed. Right, she was supposed to kill him. They were supposed to kill him—he wouldn’t get an after this. “That’s so embarrassing. I had no idea I was working with such an amateur.” She stepped away, approaching a long metal table which housed all of the aforementioned saws, as well as a variety of implements she thought might be fun to use. Her eclectic assortment ranged from a set of sleek, stainless steel automotive picks to a blender. 

She was an artist among her paints and brushes, gleefully planning what could be done with her canvas. Siobhan was no stranger to torture. “It made sense for the little one,” she called out to Ingeborg, slipping her legs into a pair of white disposable coveralls. “But you? Everytime I try to think more highly of you…” She zipped the suit up. “At this rate, my opinion just can’t get any lower.” Securing the hood around her skull, she snapped two rubber gloves on. “I was first tortured at the tender age of six.” She fastened plastic around her boots. “If you could call it that; I think of it more like a demonstration.” She crinkled as she moved; crinkled as she approached Rhett. Siobhan, an artist, could admit that some choices were born out of practicality rather than aesthetics. “I can demonstrate it for you, Rhett.” With a smile, she circled the chair. 

“At six…” Siobhan leaned down, giving her story tenderly to his ear. “My mother told me there were these people known, in English, as wardens. You’re familiar, aren’t you? You must have gotten this conversation in reverse, though, were you younger? Were you born knowing what you were? What you would become?” Siobhan’s hands dropped to his, tied behind the chair so tightly that his skin bulged and verged on purple. “She said they would do terrible things to me and I asked ‘what things, mother?’” Lazily, she trailed a rubber finger from his forearm, to his palm, to his middle finger. “A demonstration of an idea of torture.” Her fingers tightened around it; she felt his joint in her palm, his flesh at her disposal. Testing, she rocked the finger gently back and forth. “She believed in a tangible style of teaching—method. You’re familiar, aren’t you, Rhett? I imagine you were taught similarly; we all are.” Siobhan moved her grip to the top two thirds of his middle finger, which she held firmly. “You learn who your enemies are before you learn how to spell your own name.” She grinned. “Which is Siobhan, actually.” 

And snapped his finger. 

—

Huh. Bickering between his captors wasn't something he'd encountered before, and he quietly wondered if it wasn't something he'd be able to use later—time would tell. His gaze drifted to the spread of… implements, as you like, and he frowned. Ah. This wasn't a simple steal and kill operation, then. This was more like what he had done countless times to countless fae in his hunt for the ex he wasn't even sure he wanted to murder anymore. 

Incredible how this had only managed to catch up to him now, after everything. After all the promises he'd made, here he was, paying for it anyway. It was fair, he supposed. Didn't mean he had to like it. Still… As the fae whose name he had yet to learn strolled his way in her coveralls, talking about torture and demonstrations, he couldn't help but wonder what sort of lessons he was going to be taught in this chair.

His eye jumped again to the table of dangerous looking things, and he swallowed thickly. 

He was quiet as she spoke, of course, absorbing what information about her that he could. And once she was behind him, his attention settled on Inge, who he watched with a surly sort of expression. His jaw was tightly clenched—he knew what was coming. Her hand wrapped around his finger and he sucked in a short, quiet breath, bracing himself for the break. Siobhan. Sharp pain raced through his hand and up his arm, accompanied by a loud crack, and he half-stifled the grunt of pain that hissed between his teeth, the rest caught in his throat. His body reacted to the pain without his consent, beads of sweat appearing on his brow as he tried to take a slow, even breath. 

“Harsh upbringin’,” the man muttered, wracking his brain for what sort of fae that would make her. She wasn't a nymph, that much he was certain about, given the quieter-than-usual screams of protest in his head. He didn't know spriggans to teach their young in that manner, nor muse or faun. That left banshee, which made sense. She seemed like a banshee. 

“What you doin’, associatin’ with and undead thing like that?” he asked the banshee, though he was still focused on Inge. “Don't their kind go against every li'l principle ya hold dear? Wouldn't ya rather it was dead? Real dead?” He leaned his head back to look at Siobhan, wearing a smirk in spite of the pain. “You ‘n I ain't so different.” 

—

Amateur, Siobhan called her, not simply making light of her stint in that bunker but pointing out the obvious failure on her part. Her feeling of victory slipped from her, the combination of Rhett’s gloating and Siobhan’s continued string of words dragging her down feeling like an intruder to her own event. Inge witnessed with brewing anger how Siobhan donned her torture suit, something she did with practiced care as she droned on and on and on. She wondered if she should get clad in a similar suit but refused to mirror the other like some schoolgirl trying to imitate the most popular girl around.

“Only for half a day,” she pointed out, her words defensive, “It wasn’t so hard to escape.” Because she had escaped! And that was what always mattered in the end — there was an inevitable quality to the way hunters seemed to catch up to her, so it was not about prevention but evasion. Why was she even trying to justify it, though? She didn’t owe it to Siobhan nor Rhett. Inge narrowed her eyes, demanding of herself that she got her shit together and crossing her arms, remaining standing near the intriguing assortment of devices. She could appreciate a woman who understood her instruments, who was creative in her craft — but right now there was little appreciation for Siobhan to be found.

No wonder that she was so very comfortable around this, if she’d been exposed to it at six. A revelation that made Inge want to pull the banshee apart at the seams, to hear every story from her past and let her imagination run wild with it. Her eyes bore right back into Rhett’s, refusing to let his gaze do anything else than engage her. And the first good thing to happen in that strenuous moment of her embarrassment on display happened when there was a crack of bone and the grunt of pain. Her lips spread into a satisfied smile, but once again the feeling of victory remained short-lived.

 “Grasping at straws, are we?” Her gaze flicked from the warden to the banshee, trying to gauge the situation. “What, you reckon she’s stupid enough to kill me and team up with you?” Inge turned to the table, letting her hands glide over instruments that didn’t befit her means of torment. “Siobhan, did you not bring a gag? His voice is grating.” As was hers. She longed to kick the other to the side and slip into Rhett’s subconscious, tweak around with his dreams — but she didn’t quite trust Siobhan with her incapacitated body. “And distracting us from what we’re here to do.” 

—

It could not be denied that Rhett possessed the power of deduction. In fact, to Siobhan, he seemed quite skilled at it. Through the pain of a broken finger, he’d categorized her accurately. Of course, Siobhan briefly considered that maybe it wasn’t that impressive; she might as well walk around with a giant, blinking sign that proclaimed her banshee identity. Still, she liked to give credit where it was due and Rhett wasn’t going to have any victories for a while. She was one of those generous torturers. “You’re right, we’re not so different, Rhett.” Siobhan stood. Her gaze trailed from Ingeborg’s feet to the top of her head—not a very long distance, she thought. “I have this fantasy where her head rolls down an endless hallway; her eyes watch the spinning tiles until it feels like a carousel and then she smiles, bobbing down the hall, because she thinks she’s at a carnival.” Siobhan looked at Rhett. “What do you think it means? I’ve always thought it was a metaphor for how much I want her to go join a circus.” 

Siobhan didn’t say that despite Rhett’s accuracy, the answer was simple: she just didn’t want to kill Ingeborg. From the moment they’d met, she’d thought about it. Then those moments turned to days and then weeks and then she realized that the thought of a dead Ingeborg Endeman didn’t excite her. Honestly, it was kind of embarrassing; it was almost as if she’d grown fond of her, fond of hating her. She left Rhett and his bent finger and approached the table again. “I didn’t bring a gag,” she said to Ingeborg. “I like it when they talk, it gets too boring otherwise; you’ll learn.”  When she returned to him, she set out a few new items at his feet: more rope, a knife, one of the picks, a bone saw, a hammer and pliers. As if tending to him, Siobhan sat down at his feet, among her tools, smiling up at him. “Doesn’t falling in love go against every principle you hold dear? Or is that woman you dream of someone you’re indifferent to?” 

She tied his calves to the legs of the chair, tightening the ropes against his tibias. She tapped his left knee and then his right, counting a rhythm on her head. Her fingers flew back and forth as she mouthed the words, stopping with a smile upon his left knee. With equal care, Siobhan undid the bindings at his ankles, taking his left boot into her lap—grip form in case her new calf bindings weren’t good enough to keep him from kicking at her like a horse. “I find myself uncharacteristically happy to know you have such a shite bunker, Rhett. And that, apparently, you’re quite terrible at killing mares.” His dirt painted boot—speckled with holes and adorned with fraying stitches—came off with one quick pull. His toes stared back at her.  “I like torture with a bit of a narrative, what do you say? Artistic, I call it. I’ve already given you my mother, do you want one of your own now?” 

Siobhan grabbed the long, metal pick, slipping the pointed side under his big toenail. “The first warden who captured me had a cabin, not a bunker. And a very peculiar interest.”  With one thump, she wedged the metal between his nail and his skin. With another, the pick thrust under his nail, peeling it from his flesh. And another, and another, driven deep by agonizing increments. And another. And another. Thump, thump, thump—she chiseled under his nail. “I don’t want to hurt Ingeborg,” Siobhan said tenderly. With a twist, she slipped the pick out, marveling at how quickly hot red blood gushed to freedom; more pooled under the half of his nail that remained. “Anyway, that first warden, he liked to go slow. Maybe you would have liked him.” Siobhan patted his bleeding foot. “Shall we let our mare have a go, Rhett?” She turned to her accomplice, taking a pair of pliers into her hand and clicking it in the air. “I don’t want to have all the fun; I am one of those generous torturers, after all.” 

—

Stupid? No, clearly not. And while Ingeborg’s suggestion hadn't been what he was after, he supposed it was as worth a try as anything else. Mostly he just wanted to annoy them. What else was he to do about this? The less pleasurable it was for them, the less satisfying his death would be, which is all he could really ask for. But Siobhan… she persisted, unbothered by his taunts. She was going to be a tough nut to crack, he figured. 

“Circus is the place fer clowns, aint it?” Rhett grumbled. Keeping his eye on the banshee as she placed the implements on the floor in front of him, he felt his pulse quicken. Inge had said he was distracting them from their task. Siobhan asked him about Mariela. He frowned at both, his gaze hardened in spite of the jackrabbit kick of his heart. “No.” A lie, at least in the case of her being fae, which neither of them could know. Before he could ask what this task was, Siobhan was speaking again. Monologuing, more like, as she untied and retied his leg to give herself easier access to his foot. “Don't suppose ya got tickle torture in mind…” He was speaking mostly to himself, interjecting between her story about a warden and a cabin. Sounded familiar. Less familiar was the metal thing she was poking beneath his nail, and a chill ran up his spine. Fuck. He opened his mouth to protest, a reflex not often given in to, but all that managed to escape was a shout of agony. His wrists strained against their binds, vision blinded for a moment as he bucked in the chair. The plastic held for now, but white streaks of stress in the material spread across the legs that his own were tied to. “Motherfucker!” he bellowed, trying to wrench himself away from her with each dig of the pick, panting in spite of himself and keeping his head turned away. 

Obviously he’d broken a lot more fingers than he’d had nails removed. 

Finally, though the act was painful enough on its own, the relief of the pick being removed came and let him scramble to regain some of his cognitive ability, enough to realize what a moron he was. Playing into this, Rhett relaxed back into the flimsy chair, sucking in deep, ragged breaths. It was Inge's turn, apparently. Siobhan had turned to look back at her, and the warden saw his chance. He kicked both feet out as hard as he could, snapping the chair's legs right off and sending him to the floor. The plastic still tied to his legs, Rhett sent another kick in Siobhan’s direction to keep her away, then scrabbled up onto his knees—easier said than done, with his hands still tied behind his back. His bad leg screamed with pain as he put weight on it to start running the fuck out of there, but he'd only made it a few steps before he felt a hand on him. “No!” It was no use—his unconscious body crumpled back to the concrete floor, a trail of blood marking his brief attempt at an escape. 

—

Maybe Siobhan had a point. Maybe it was good if he could talk — maybe then she would get to see what she wanted most of all. For Rhett to plead, to ask for mercy before having the lights go out. Perhaps she was projecting. She hadn’t ever chased this kind of vengeance, which meant there were plenty of hunters out there who she’d like to tie onto a chair as well. But she knew how this went, and knew that getting the other to beg might be an occurrence outside the realm of realistic possibility. She’d sat in that chair after all, albeit not faced with someone quite as vicious and creative as Siobhan, and refused to mutter the word please, bitte, alsjebieft or per favore even in those darkest moments. And though Inge thought herself miles above the hunter, she also figured he had the same bogged resolve when it came to these things. 

But when he broke out into a bellow, when he strained against his ties and he bled that gorgeous red she hadn’t bled in almost fifty years … it was something. It was stirring, to see the mess Siobhan left behind, like something Inge hadn’t seen before. Something she hadn’t recreated in someone’s mind before just yet, because she didn’t have the reference. It was gruesome. It was some kind of rotten thing to do this to another person and yet she could not look away, yet she wanted Siobhan to keep moving from one toe to the other. “You had a point about the gag,” she said eventually, finally agreeing with the banshee. It helped that she expressed a disinterest in hurting her. It helped that Siobhan’s focus on her task was like iron. She took to the task with no question or qualm and one thing was becoming clear: Rhett would leave a horrid corpse. Let that be penance. “He sounds sweet like this.”

Her head was swimming with thoughts, wondering what else Siobhan had up her sleeve and then remembering that she was not just a spectator — she too was a master of torment, even if it was a different kind. Inge didn’t need tools or crinkly suits, she had her imagination and her touch. But before she could answer Siobhan and give her some kind of look, there was a loud crack. The plastic hadn’t held. And how reversed the roles were now, Rhett with his broken chair so similar to how she had crashed against his bunker’s floor — but Rhett couldn’t dematerialize at will. Inge took a moment to take stock of the situation then made chase, quicker than the hunter if only because she had two healthy legs. Her hands were greedy as she gripped the hunter by his tied-back hands, her focus strong as she willed him to sleep. Now the hunter was in her preferred state: asleep, soundly and sweetly, bleeding like a pig but not as noisy as one. 

She crouched down, turning his face sideways so one cheek rested against the concrete. “When I’m back,” she told Siobhan without looking up. “Can you make sure he’s properly restrained again?” Surely the other could manage. Inge waited a beat for a response and then delved onto another plane of existence, where Rhett’s subconscious was waiting for her. 

Where he awoke he was restrained, too, head positioned in a way where he could barely look away from his body — it was more as if he was frozen in time than feeling any kind of rope around his flesh. Under his skin something moved, scratching and flicking as it crawled up his chest, curled gray hair (a creative and hopefully correct assumption) moving. Inge wasn’t interested in building a narrative tonight, in a slow build up. She wasn’t even interested in wasting her birds on Rhett, and so she returned to an old favorite: bugs. More somethings started moving, bodily sensations those of icy pinpricks, like tiny sharp paws padding over his flesh. Up and up and up, towards his neck, towards his chin, two clicking over his cheeks. And then, a gust of wind, a sound of warning and they burrowed out, all of them — moths with thick wings bursting through his skin, flapping sharp wings and covering every inch of him so there was nothing left to see.

—

Siobhan stumbled back, gasping as she hit the ground and Rhett’s body blurred in front of her with movement and shattered plastic. Then she laughed as he hit the ground. “I like a runner,” she said, watching Ingeborg. Then, there was nothing to watch and the buzzing of the night filled the cold factory. 

The world of dreams was inaccessible to Siobhan and so, dutiful, she waited in reality. The poor plastic chair had served its function and so she untied the shards that held to her ropes and redid Rhett’s bindings. This time, careful not to wake him, she tied his upper body together as if it might unravel—across his shoulders, his biceps, his elbows, and his wrists together against his back. She bound the legs at the thighs, but let the rest lay free. There was something about his legs that she liked; they’d carried him for a long time. They’d held him up, helped him sit, gave him the boost he needed to break out of a chair. Such obedient legs they were—each toned muscle marked their faithfulness over the years of Rhett’s life. How many places had he seen on them? How many times had those knees felt the ground as he knelt? How many times had they saved him? Taken him away from places he couldn’t withstand being in? Rhett had lovely legs. 

The metal teeth of the bonesaw screeched against the ground. 

—

It was such a strange thing, trying to scream and feeling like you were underwater. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, he’d experienced it a few times during his nightmares, but that made it no less maddening. He wanted nothing more than to thrash and carry himself away from the moths, even though that made no sense because they were coming from within him, but it was just his instinct to run. But he couldn’t move, and his voice was gone. A whisper, drowned out by the cacophony of wingbeats as the moths ripped through his flesh, rending it from his body as they covered him in a skittering, fluttering blanket. He wailed silently, wishing again and again to just die. Just let me die, he begged no one. His breaths were shallow and fraught with terror, growing deeper to fuel those soundless screams every now and then. 

Just when he thought he couldn’t stand another second of it, something even more terrible pulled him from the nightmare. Something had started to cut into his flesh, a very real threat drawing a very real and tortured scream from him. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t get away, and the pain was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. It took him a few moments to understand what was happening, the slow, rhythmic grind of a saw against his ankle only registering as such after a few push-pulls. He wasn’t even sure what he was screaming anymore, if it was words or just sound, the only clear thing coming through being the stop, stop, stop on repeat in his head. But it wasn’t stopping, and there was nothing he could do about it, and god he felt lightheaded—

The wails devolved into shocked gasps for air, peppered with whimpers and whines as his mind decided to take a vacation and spare him the horror of experiencing this to its full extent. His eye glazed over and stared blankly into the distance, head slumping to the freezing concrete floor. Eventually, the vibrations of metal against bone that rattled through his entire skeleton came to a stop, but this didn’t bring him out of the episode. Normally, these things would manifest as memories replaying over the top of current reality, but not tonight. Tonight he’d fully shut down, a mixture of his dissociative disorder and pure, unadulterated shock. His breathing was heavy and stuttering, but he said nothing. Just let me die. Just let me die.

—

As natural instinct seemed to take ahold of Rhett, Inge was met with that sweet taste of fear. She didn’t go hungry (out of self preservation and because she simply saw no point in abstaining), but Rhett’s fear still satiated some kind of gap within her. Like ichor it spread through her, something that made her determined to keep going. More leathery wings — let them climb down his throat, into his ears and pry his eyes open! But before she could focus on feeding more, the hunter was awoken and with that, Inge’s awareness returned to her earthly body. 

She was met with a spray of blood and a scream that rang through the hollow factory hall. Eyes widened in what might as well be genuine shock, she scrambled back from the sight. At least Siobhan had restrained Rhett properly again, as had been her request — but it seemed unnecessary with the sight her eyes fell on. What had she expected, for Siobhan to not use her saw? For the banshee to give a head’s up about her intended dismemberment? Inge stared at the sight, her back resting against a rusty beam that kept the rusty factory standing up, eyes blinking and yet not looking away. This was nothing like the moths, the birds, the cruel murders, the chases, the shrinking rooms and the rot from her dreams.

This wasn’t something that existed elsewhere, but right here. The warm blood on her jeans, hands and face proved as much, its sticky nature surprising to a woman who hadn’t bled in years. She watched, unable to look away and feeling that rare sensation of being stirred to her core. Ingeborg didn’t get afraid any more (or so she endlessly claimed), but she got affected. And with that, she got inspired. She watched, not bothering to pretend to breathe, and wondered what a foot felt like after it had been cut off.

Eventually, when the deed was done, she looked at Siobhan. “A little warning, next time?” Her voice echoed vaguely, sounding raspier than she’d anticipated. 

—

The saw wasn’t designed to cut flesh. Its purpose was obvious by its name: bonesaw. It was exactly what it was designed to be; an instrument of simple function and dutiful adherence to title. And wasn’t that true for all of them? Rhett: warden. Ingeborg: nightmare. Siobhan: butcher. Bonesaw: not the first step to amputation. Siobhan leaned on the blade, running the teeth along Rhett’s flesh. Blood sputtered from his ankle as she pressed the full force of her weight down, but she was hitting muscle, not bone. She took out her big hunting knife and sliced his ankle, watching the layers peel away: dermis, muscle. Her knife screeched on his tibia. Then, the saw. Back and forth and back and forth along the bone. She held his bloody foot with one hand and worked the saw. Occasionally she would stop to pull, wondering if a good jerk would snap the bone free, but she had no such luck. The saw she’d chosen was antiqued: designed for use in war hospitals. Back and forth, back and forth. The piece of tibia she’d been working on snapped, beside it—back and forth—the more demure fibia. Another snap. Rhett’s foot dangled off his leg like a frayed thread, stuck to him by one flap of meat. 

Siobhan had first learned to butcher on a pig, a sow she called Elizabeth. Elizabeth had been a good teacher, showing her where to cut along her tendons, her muscles, around her joints and through her thick hide. Elizabeth became parts: shoulder, back, loin, ham, spare rib. Everything was just meat. Siobhan sliced her knife down Rhett’s ankle, freeing the foot from the body: on Eizabeth, that’d be called the hock. She held it up as if serving it. Cheap cut of meat, good for stock. The meaty flap remained at Rhett’s ankle—or rather, where his ankle was. Siobhan thought it looked like red liquorice someone had left on the dashboard of a hot car. Elizabeth didn’t teach her this, her mother did: use the flap, sew it up. 

She hadn’t noticed Ingeborg coming back, she hadn’t noticed Rhett going away—screaming, giving up. As a butcher, the meat needn’t be minded and her job ought to be focused on. She stood, coveralls red, dripping Rhett’s blood, smiling. “It needs to be bandaged now,” Siobhan explained calmly. “If he bleeds too much then he dies too quickly.” She looked down at him, pitiful on the ground. “Do you remember war? Have you seen it? This is how the surgeons did it: on a conveyor belt, almost—factory manufactured dismemberment. Cut one, on the next; meat and then meat.” Her attention turned to Ingeborg. She squeezed her gloved hands together and grinned at the squelching blood. “Did you have fun?” She asked. “It’s really not fair that I don’t get to see.”

Siobhan smiled down at Rhett. “Did you have fun?” 

—

The warden’s eyelid fluttered as his body reflexively tried to wet the drying orb, but every muscle in his body was taught, and his half-blind eye stared widely into the middle distance. Where blinking failed, tears took up the mantle, sliding across his cheekbone before dripping to the dirty floor. It was involuntary, just like the way he shivered from the cold and the shock. He wasn’t there, not really—he was in Parker’s bunker with the other warden, watching him work. His methods were calm, careful, and meant to spare the fae from as much pain as possible. Hell, Parker even sedated them, which would have been a fucking blessing tonight. 

Rhett’s own methods had always been less so, and he supposed that’s why this was happening to him now. It was why he’d die at the hands of these two, for all the transgressions against them and their kind, violently and miserably. It was all he deserved, but he still couldn’t face it. Still couldn’t prevent himself from slipping away to some other place. 

Siobhan spoke to him, and he didn’t respond. He just wheezed another rattling breath, in and out and in again. Parker looked up from the table and gave him that look that was almost a smile and began to explain his process, but Rhett couldn’t hear him, either. It was like they were all underwater, or… or maybe that was the blood rushing in his ears. 

His shoulders burned. He couldn’t wiggle his toes. Why… where? Oh. 

His dark eye jerked in his skull as a shadow loomed over him and he recoiled, coming back into himself like his bungee cord had snapped and let him slam into the ground. It was a brief, violent outburst, stalled almost as quickly as it had started when the mare’s hand found his head and silenced his panic. For now. At least until she could spark it again in her own, unique way.

—

She remained at a distance for a moment, taking in the scene in front of her. A nightmare on the earthly plane, the gore real and gruesome. Was that a metallic scent, wafting to her? Inge blinked even if there was no use to it, watched the warden cry and thought perhaps that was the only good thing about this scene. Siobhan was talking, a vision in red, and though Inge had always enjoyed the concept of a woman covered in blood she now had to do a double take. “I was born right after it,” she answered, “My sister died in the famine.” Why was she answering like a schoolgirl would? With no second thought? She didn’t know.

She was looking at the leg again, felt confused by her own weakness. She’d seen and created more gruesome sights like this, and yet — she thought perhaps she would be sick. But she wouldn’t be. She refused. “It was very fun, wasn’t it?” Her gaze locked onto Rhett again, reduced to something so pitiful. There would be even less of him when they were done with him. Inge looked at Siobhan. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime.” She moved in again, wanting away from this plane of existence and to the one where she excelled, where she was the butcher, the monster, the one with the power. 

He seemed more present moments before she pressed her hand against his forehead and it almost seemed like she was a nurse, taking his temperature as she kneeled next to him. Let Siobhan do her thing. She’d do hers. Inge put Rhett to sleep and gave the banshee a look before returning her focus to the plane where dreams roamed.

Here was only darkness, until there wasn’t. A singular light turned on, flickering, and Rhett would find himself in a small room. Four walls that seemed to be made of some strange material. Maybe he’d look at them all in search of a window or a door, but there would be nothing to be found. Just those bumpy walls. 

Wait — did one of them move? Did all of them move? There was something crawling on them, it seemed, but not just one singular thing. Like a wave, like a hivemind, tiny feet scratching the same way they had when they’d been in his body. Maybe Rhett would walk. In this dream he could: Inge hadn’t taken away his foot or toenails, gave him the mercy of having free mobility in a room that offered no freedom otherwise. The walls crawled. The walls moved in, closer and closer. Tighter and tighter. Maybe Rhett would try to place his hands against opposing walls to stop them from inching closer, but there was no stopping it. The walls separated, the moths that were covering flying from one to another, from surface to their prisoner. Latching onto him, his skin, his hair, his nails as the walls inched closer and closer and closer until there was no space left.

The dream ended but the nightmare would not upon waking.

So it would continue to be. Rhett would sleep and be exposed to Inge’s repertoire of nightmares, moving from moths to murder to the snapping jaws of beasts. Rhett would wake and be exposed to Siobhan’s repertoire of bandages, saws and musings. On the second night, he’d wake to the lower half of his leg gone, discarded to the side by the banshee’s hands. A night later, and between every dream another toenail would be gone until none were left.

There would always be an end to the waking or sleeping nightmare, but never any relief — not in consciousness and not in the lack thereof. 

[rowenahaynes]

──── @siobhcn said: ❛  consider it ... a little friendly competition.  ❜

O arquear de sobrancelha se fez presente na expressão de Rowena, mesmo que parcialmente coberto pelos ramos em sua mascara. "Uma competição amigável, uhn?", era um pequeno problema, visto que a Llwelyn tendia a ser bastante competitiva e a levar tudo na sua vida mais a sério do que deveria. Mas bem, aquela era uma noite atípica, onde ela já tinha aberto concessões para muitas outras coisas e pessoas que desconhecia - o que também não era muito seu forte, ser tão flexível com desconhecidos -, que poderia fazer mais um pequeno esforço. Num suspirar vencido, ela assentiu. "Certo, podemos fazer isso de forma amigável. Mas devo avisá-la que não é muito o meu forte, então posso passar do ponto, talvez.", era melhor pecar pelo aviso, do que pela falta dele. "Qual sua proposta, então?", talvez devesse ter perguntado primeiro do que se tratava, antes de aceitar, torceria para que a ordem dos fatores não a fizesse se arrepender.

[thefvrious]

@atrickrtreat sent -> in a moment of pure joy,  owen picks up siobhan and spins her around.

He was so full of excitement that he could hardly wait for the sun to disappear beyond the horizon. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon..." He said, tapping bitten down fingernails with chipped paint on the well worn steering wheel of his car. Finally, at dusk, he exited his vehicle and entered the abandoned park with his bag of goodies — just for Von. When he saw her, he could barely contain himself, and he rushed toward her, hugging her and spinning her around before letting her go, a grin so broad on his face it was beginning to hurt. "I got the tapes!" He held the bag out toward her — all her favorites from when she was alive: Britney and N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys and so on. He'd found them on eBay for what he considered a steal. "Gonzo'll have to play them for you."

[curreres]

who: carmen and siobhan / @wanderinglcst

where: the lake party

"hey, sorry if this is like, super annoying, but would you mind helping me out?" carmen scurries over to the first girl she spots, a hand gathered at the base of her neck to hold together her top, which had come undone.

[exmcrtis]

closed starter for: @wanderinglcst (siobhan)

"hey, are you that chick that rolled up into town wearing a wedding dress?" they were being nosier than they should've been, but hollis heard things around town, and they needed to quell their curiosities. "if you are, then you're a total badass. if you aren't? you're probably still a fucking badass."

[ariadnewhitlock]

[pm] I do want to see the essay, Ariadne. The one about the painting. [del: I'm sorry for]

[pm] You're

I

You

I'm sorry

I'm awful

You

Did you want to ki

I'm

Okay.

[ofginjxints]

@disillusicnd ctd from (x)

Luca felt her pull away, but the hand on her arm was steadfast, the other on her waist. "This has never been a waste of time. You know how much I care about you." His eyes met hers, seeing she didn't want to go as much as he didn't want her to. "It's just difficult, you know that - you know me so much better than anyone else, you gotta understand I can't just suddenly make it all perfect, baby." He pleaded, "How about I rent us a nice apartment just outside the city, huh? Make it our own space, be together just like we always say, right?"

[lxvenderhxzehv]

Where: The Lake

Who: Terence and Siobhan( @wanderinglcst)

He hadn't seen her in a month, he hadn't want too not after what had happened out side of the bar. Not after she made him look like an idiot and broke his heart. So when she came up him he scoffed " go away....I'm not in the mood for your games Siobhan....I'm tired of being the punch line..."

[backmaskcd]

closed event starter for @wanderinglcst (siobhan)

"Well, if it isn't my favorite runaway bride!" Jace teased gently as he spotted her at the lake party. "Have you been settling in okay? I haven't spotted you around town, I was worried that maybe something had happened."

[swtsours-archived]

“   i   want   to   mark   you   up   ,   everyone   should   know   you’re   taken   .   ”

[abusedog]

[ TXT 📲 Shivvy ] is there a possibility you can actually pick up the fucking phone when i try to call you ? [ TXT 📲 Shivvy ] like [ TXT 📲 Shivvy ] not even dad ghosts me like this .

@fireflymuses // txts from rome

[ironcladrhett]

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Still an abandoned soap factory

PARTIES: Inge (@nightmaretist), Siobhan (@banisheed), Emilio (@mortemoppetere), & Rhett (@ironcladrhett)

SUMMARY: On the night that Rhett is to lose his second foot and probably his life, Emilio makes a daring entrance and tries to bargain with his captors for his freedom.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Suicidal ideation (of the life exchange variety)

—

It wasn’t really like Inge was short on nutrition at the moment, with Rhett providing a steady supply of snacks, but there were still those human cravings. Besides, Siobhan presumably did require human sustenance (or did Banshees sustain themselves on screams?) and so a grocery store run seemed fitting. The mundanity of overhead lights and inflation were a stark contrast to the blood that had just coated Siobhan’s fingers, but it came with important rewards. Lollipops. 

As the pair walked to Siobhan’s non-conspicuous car, Inge was sure to continue the point she’d been trying to make. “I think you’ve– we’ve had our fun. The longer go on like this, the riskier it gets.” She pulled open the passenger side door, tossing the groceries in before taking a seat. “Someone’s bound to look for even such a sorry sod at some point.” She pulled the door close, muffling any other words from any sharp ears, looking at Siobhan sharply. “I want him dead before sunrise. Can you settle with that?”

—  

Torturing Rhett had given Siobhan an emotional and creative fulfillment that she’d never felt before. It had also—though she would never admit it—given her a friend. A friend she hated and a friend that was an abomination and a friend that, perhaps, didn’t see her as a friend at all but a friend nonetheless. It would be embarrassing to admit that she had prolonged Rhett’s torture not just because it was fun but because she was having fun with Ingeborg. She thought they were really bonding. Violence was what made true friends; so it had been in her aos sí, so it was in that soap factory. 

“Oh.” Siobhan leaned against the driver’s side door; one arm spread on top of the hearse, which she rested her chin upon. “What risks? He’s hardly a danger. Risks of having too much fun?” Following Ingeborg—could she just call her Inge now? They were friends, after all—lead, Siobhan ducked into the car. “You’re such a bore. I wish someone would come for him. That’d really make it interesting. I could use one of the other saws on them. I was thinking about the circular one; it’s brand-new.” Siobhan turned to her accomplice and noted the lack of amusement. “Fine.” The car sputtered to life, wheezing and coughing up black exhaust. “Dead tonight, meanie. Give me one of the candies.” 

—

Ever since he’d found Rhett’s cane abandoned on the street, Emilio had been a flurry of activity and nervous energy. No time had been taken to pause for stupid things like sleep or meals, and any responses to texts or messages from friends had been brief and curt. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how this was likely to end, knew he was probably looking for a corpse more than he was looking for a man, but even so, he searched tirelessly. If a corpse was all that was left of his brother, he’d still bring it home. He’d still do for Rhett what Rhett had done for Juliana and Flora in Mexico two years ago, even if he was the only one who’d care enough to visit the patch of dirt he planted him in. 

And he’d still make sure whoever was responsible paid for it.

That anticipatory grief in his chest was matched only by the anger, the rage that warmed him like a furnace in the dead of winter. On some level, he knew it was a stupid thing to feel. Rhett had been reckless since coming to town, had gone after too many people and let too many go. The fact that most of them were people who didn’t deserve it ached in a different sort of way, but it wasn’t relevant to the point. This town was probably full of people who’d like to hurt Rhett, and Emilio shouldn’t have been surprised that one of them took a shot. But the grief was there anyway. The rage was there anyway. So he did the only thing he’d ever really been good at — he followed the trail. 

Javier heard from Lara who heard from Beto that a professor at the college hadn’t been in in a few days. The professor was one with a familiar name — if anyone would go after Rhett, Emilio thought, it would be the mare he’d locked in his bunker. But wherever she was hiding, she was hard to find. In a way, that gave him hope; it meant Rhett might still be alive, though it promised he’d be in bad shape. Still, Emilio did his best to douse the feeling. Hope would do nothing but get him killed here.

It was funny; when he finally found her, it wasn’t even intentional. He stopped by the store to pick up a protein bar when his stomach finally began to cramp in protest of its emptiness, and there she was. It was something of a surprise to see her with Siobhan; maybe it shouldn’t have been. He hadn’t heard anything about Rhett going after the banshee, but a fae would have every reason to want a warden dead regardless. Neither of them spotted him. He wasn’t sure either of them would know to look for him. It was easy enough to fall into step behind them, far enough away to avoid detection but close enough to keep from losing them. Inge’s presence helped with that; all he had to do was follow that pull in his gut towards the undead thing ahead of him, ignore the way it mingled with the dread there.

One way or another, he’d get his brother back tonight.

—

Siobhan’s complete apathy to the risks was something that made Inge feel inferior. She was not overreacting, was she, in assuming that this could lead to more trouble? Violence begot violence. That was why they were here now. That was why she tended to run rather than face the people who chased her tail. She dug around for a lollipop of a flavor she liked and unwrapped it with a note of frustration, telling herself she was wary and that was good and that it wasn’t really that Siobhan was better than her, she was just … unhinged. Yes. That was a good term. 

She popped the lollipop in her mouth and got a cola-flavored one for the banshee (this was, in her opinion, the worst flavor), undoing the wrapping for her as well before holding it out. “The best hunter is a dead one,” she said sagely, wondering if Siobhan would simply bite down on the lollipop or if she’d reach for it with her hand. Inge kicked up her legs, licking her own candy merrily. “We can have our fun another way.” 

The drive was quickly over and done with, the hearse pulling up to the abandoned factory with fitting noise. The place had grown familiar, but the sight that was Rhett the Warden hadn’t. Inge’s torments and her horrors existed somewhere else, on a plane not bound by earthly harm. Or so, at least, she had told herself. So Sanne had told her, eons ago. It was different. It was more sophisticated. It was a gift. Her eyes flicked over the sight of him before tossing the bag of groceries on the ground. This was hardly a gift. The only thing left was to kill him in a poetic manner and move on. “Told you we’d be back soon,” she said to Rhett, wondering if he’d want a lollipop. “Do you like artificial sweeteners?”

—

The best hunter is a dead one. Inge’s simple statement rattled in Siobhan’s head; bouncing around with each rumble of her hearse and each jump over cracked concrete. The clever retort that she felt obligated to have didn’t leave her mouth—it hadn’t even been formed. Instead, Siobhan watched the shifting landscape as they approached the factory. There was a time where she believed in the practical minimizing of harm; a time when Fate’s course seemed linear. Life existed in a tangle: webs and threads interwoven, pulled through space-time, woven again, transported into unknowable, unthinkable dimensions. When she’d tried to minimize harm, when she’d tried to be kind, she cost her people seven other lives. The best hunter was a living one, until Fate came. And Fate had not yet called for Rhett. 

Lost in her thoughts, Siobhan hadn’t realized that she’d entered the factory at all. Had she remembered to turn the hearse off? Park it in the overgrown bushes where it couldn’t be seen from the road? She shook her head. She tried to bring back the face of the woman who adored violence, who only knew it, but instead a woman who mourned controlled her features. She saw Rhett as he was: bloody, broken, miserable. She wondered if he’d ever forgive her one day—then she castigated herself for thinking that. And, anyway, he would be dead soon. But she hadn’t screamed for him yet, and until then, she wondered if he would forgive her and if he’d think it was silly that she cared about that at all. 

Siobhan knelt to the bag, crinkling plastic cutting through the air thick with the acrid scent of old blood. Off to the side, the bits of Rhett’s lost leg buzzed with a swarm of happy flies. “What flavour do you want, Rhett?” She smiled for him; dead men deserved kindnesses, sometimes. “We got everything because I said—well, it won’t be funny now if I retell it—but I wanted all of them. And there’s jellybeans…” Siobhan held up the little bag full of them—a plastic bag inside of another plastic bag. Did humans hate the world this much? “I don’t know anyone that likes jelly beans. They’re an abomination.” She pointed to Inge. “Worse than her, actually.” 

—

He couldn’t be absent for everything, unfortunately. While his tendency to slip into altered states of consciousness had done him some favors over the last few days, sending the two creatures off in the wee hours of the morning to resume their activities the next day, he always came back out of it. The first time they’d decided to take a break, they’d left him secured to a pole that ran from floor to ceiling so he didn’t excuse himself without their consent. He’d been stuck there since, sitting with head bowed and long hair framing his face, silent until he heard the sound of them returning. 

Rhett drew a long, shaky breath as their footsteps grew louder. They’d taken his leg, cut it off just above the knee and cauterized it about as well as you’d expect, and he was pretty sure he had an infection on top of the constant, agonizing pain of nerve endings being ripped to shreds by less than surgically precise methods. He stared down at it, down at the bloodstain where his limb should have been, at the frayed edges of pants hurriedly cut away, stained a blackish-brown. His right leg, while still attached to him, wouldn’t be for long. Siobhan had started in on the toenails of that foot last night, which meant that tonight, if she was working in a pattern... It was a miracle he hadn’t died from blood loss already, but maybe that’s what the breaks were really for. And maybe, he thought as his captors questioned him about sucker flavors, that was the only reason they were giving him any kind of sustenance.

Rather than answer on the subject of his liking of artificial sweeteners or his preferred synthetic flavor, he just lifted his chin and stared. If you didn’t count all the tormented hollering, he hadn’t spoken a word to them in two days. He just shivered, underdressed for the frigid weather, and blinked blearily at them.

“You ain’t screamed,” he finally said pointedly and in a hoarse voice. That meant he wasn’t going to die… yet. He knew the amount of time that could pass before the banshee let one rip was highly variable—it could happen days before he departed from this mortal coil, or it could happen seconds before what remained of the light in his eyes was snuffed out. It would happen, but there wasn’t much comfort in that unless he was on his way to someplace safe. This was not someplace safe. This was… hell. 

His gaze jumped to Inge.

“Why am I here? This about you? This about revenge?” he growled, lowering his chin again. His hands, now more loosely tied behind his back and keeping him from wandering far from the pole, twisted against each other at the wrist. His frustration was building, unexpectedly, since he’d more or less been floating through the last few days in a quiet haze or full dissociative state. He was frozen half to death, he was starved, exhausted from lack of sleep and blood loss, and everything hurt. How long were they going to drag this out? Even he didn’t torture fae for this long. Once they told him what he wanted to know, he killed them. 

“What d’you want?” the warden snarled before giving them time to actually respond. “Just fucking—get it over with. Just fucking get it over with.” He wasn’t begging. Rhett would never beg for his own life. But maybe that was only because he tried to mask the desperation with anger. He snapped his head up to look at Siobhan, looking furious. “Scream, already!” he commanded, like that would help anything.

—

It was agony, following them. Keeping back, suffocating that rage in his chest to something that had him acting tactical instead of lashing out… it wasn’t in his nature. Emilio had always been a flurry of fury, with a style of fighting that could only really be described as animalistic. His advantage always came in the way he kept fighting until consciousness left him, not in anything resembling planning. He knew he was no good at that. He’d proven it time and time and time again. And, right now, everything he had wanted to launch himself at these women who’d taken his brother from him, wanted to rip them into pieces, wanted to tear their throats out with his fucking teeth. 

But then, he stopped to listen. 

He eavesdropped, he let their conversation wash over him. They spoke about Rhett like he was still alive, and Emilio knew he’d never get his brother back before it was too late if he killed his captors now. The way they spoke implied that Rhett was in bad shape; there would be no time to look for him, especially not when he knew he’d have to do it alone. He couldn’t ask anyone to help him with this. Not Wynne, who had good reason to hate him. Not Teddy, who he’d seen having pleasant conversations with Siobhan online. Not Jade, who was so interconnected with Regan that going after the other banshee in any way was bound to cause complications. The only person he could realistically expect assistance from was Parker, and he was pretty sure his rage at him matched his rage towards Rhett’s tormentors at this point. He’d never be able to trust the other warden in a fight.

And so, Emilio was on his own. It was hardly a rarity, hardly an experience he was unfamiliar with. He’d spent two years on his own after he and Rhett parted ways in Mexico, would have kept at it if not for Wicked’s Rest and its citizens’ strange habit of giving a shit about people they shouldn’t. Emilio was fine on his own, could handle himself in a fight just fine. He’d get his brother back or he’d die trying, but either way, at least he’d be saved the grief of losing him.

So, he followed. To the parking lot, watching what car they slipped into. It was recognizable, hard to mistake for anything else on the road. Not many hearses driving around. That was good. He slipped into the driver’s seat of the car he’d once again ‘borrowed’ from Teddy, maintaining a slight distance behind the hearse as he drove with his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. His heart stuttered uncomfortably. Left turn. Nausea tugged at his gut. Right turn. He saw a flash of Edgar’s body on the road, crumpled and bloody. Stoplight. Victor sat beside him in the passengers’ seat, sporting every injury his mind could imagine since he’d been spared the knowledge of knowing what killed him. Accelerate. Edgar’s corpse again, but his hair was longer now. Gray. His head tilted, and it was Rhett’s face there instead. Victor, in the seat beside him, morphed in a similar manner. 

The hearse pulled off the road, and Emilio did the same. Into a parking lot, with no one else around. He switched off the headlights, parked a ways away. He watched them enter, and he waited. One heartbeat. Two. He couldn’t stomach the thought of a third, moved from the driver’s seat and onto the concrete. The ache in his bad leg was a long-forgotten thing, his mind forcibly pushing it aside. Pain is a message, his mother told him once. Messages can be ignored. He was getting better at it with practice. 

He unpacked the trunk. Iron blades, weapons borrowed from Teddy’s basement. He grabbed a knife Rhett had gifted him years ago, the handle worn but the blade kept sharp. He thought it might be poetic to kill one of them with it. Both of them, maybe. Everything in the damn factory, if Rhett was dead inside of it. 

The closer he got to the door, the clearer he could hear the murmurs. The sensation of the dead thing inside made his stomach turn just as much as the smell of blood did. The two of them combined had his mind reeling, skipping back and forth between here and there. The factory was a living room was a street. Long dead corpses rotted scentlessly in the corner. His daughter’s body was crumpled in the center of the room. Rhett was missing a leg. Juliana was screaming. Siobhan was silent.

For a moment, he thought he was too late. He thought he’d gotten here just to collect a corpse, just to give himself something else to bury. But then, Rhett shifted. He spoke. He sounded rough, sounded more pained than Emilio had ever heard him, and the world fell apart and fell back together at the same time. It was strange, seeing his brother this way. For so long, he’d thought of Rhett as invincible by necessity. Victor was dead. Edgar was dead. So Rhett couldn’t be. His other brothers died screaming, too young or too old, so he made Rhett a monument to them in their absence, created an immortal thing out of a husk. He’d been proven wrong before, of course; Rhett was already down an eye, had needed a cane even before the monsters in the shadows had taken his fucking leg. But even so, Emilio had never seen him like this. 

He looked small. Emilio wanted to tear the world apart with his bare hands.

There was no time to waste, he knew. The first thing he needed to do was take care of the mare. Prevent her from using the astral to her advantage, keep her from slipping into the shadows to attack him from behind. If she got one hand on him, put him to sleep, this whole thing would be over. The banshee’s scream was a concern, too, but the mare needed to be grounded first. Fighting deaf would still be easier than fighting unconscious. 

Slipping the sword off his back, he tested its weight momentarily. Balanced. High quality. If he survived this, he’d have to thank Teddy for letting him borrow it. He waited until Inge moved a little, waited until she was lined up the way he needed her to be with the wall. And then, in a flurry of rage, he went in for the strike.

He made no sound as he stormed into the room, offered none of his usual dry humor as he shoved the blade through the mare’s stomach and into the wall behind her with all the strength he had. It went in deep, stuck hard. It would take enhanced strength to pull it out again. Otherwise, she’d have to peel herself off it by slicing through herself, sliding to the side. It would hurt either way. Emilio was glad for that.

—

She never stuck around to see the results of her actions when it came to her sleepers. She visited them on a schedule, slowly pushing further and further into their minds to make it her own playground. Sometimes she witnessed them wake, but that was it — Inge always disappeared until they could fully react. And here was Rhett, tied like a stray, wounded dog with blood sticking to him and the surface below him. He was reduced in a multitude of ways. 

It was a strange thing, to be so confronted with her actions. To have the harm done by her collaborator (not her — for all her assistance, Inge remained convinced it was Siobhan responsible for that missing leg) so clearly on display. It wasn’t that it gave her pause, but it was a sensation she wasn’t sure she’d intend to experience again. Even if she’d gained material for new works. She turned the lollipop around in her mouth while considering the sight, distantly glad that it would be done before dawn. It was not a feeling she had any interest in investigating. 

So she simply stared back at him, popping the lollipop from her mouth to answer his growled questions. Questions. He had barely spoken these past days, an impressive feat that Inge would not have achieved had the places been reversed. They had been, once, though not for as long. Humans were easier to trap. “Well, the idea started when you hurt a mutual …” She thought for a moment, “Student of ours. I’m not generally one for vengeance like this, but Siobhan is an inspiring woman and well, I really would like to see you and your experimental ways out of this world.” It would be bad praxis to reveal that Siobhan and her hadn’t really agreed on what had occurred, but Inge wasn’t tactical, nor was Rhett long for this world. “So we agreed to put our differences aside to kill you. We’ll get there.”

She had judged him, hadn’t she? For locking her in that bunker. For putting Ariadne in that van for a week. For the cruelty of it — not just a quick axe to the head, but something drawn out. But this was different. This was retribution. “I don’t like to limit my fellow creatives, though.” With the way he was asking for it, for that inevitable end, Inge almost felt inclined to let Siobhan follow her whims and let this draw out. Even if she was growing antsy from this space, her mind bending in strange ways, leaving her giddy and nervous and wondering if she should start packing, wondering if she should try to help Siobhan with the next toe and whether she could even handle such a thing. Whether she was weaker, for not being able to fight or maim in such a way, or whether it just made her more sophisticated. Whether she was worse than the hunters for this. Whether it mattered. 

She’d blame that spiraling mind for not noticing what came next until it was too late.

The blade reached her only a few seconds after she’d caught sight of Cortez, eyes widening and mind preparing to reach for her beloved astral — but she couldn’t. The sword ran through the full depth of her and a sound fell from her lips, somewhere between a scream and a roar. Her fingers let go from the lollipop, which shattered like glass onto the ground. Eyes dropped to what had been slid through her insides, wide and frightened and furious. She tried to focus, not entirely convinced that this should lock her in place but it wasn’t there, her connection to her favored place of existence. 

Panic was an emotion spread easily, especially when it went hand in hand with adrenaline, and Inge reached forward to try and claw at the now-free hilt, but she only cut herself deeper. Another wail of pain, eyes dancing through the room, “Do it, Siobhan.” Surely the banshee knew what she meant by that.

—

It was interesting being told what to do. Siobhan had spent so much of her life listening, obeying, deferring. She was, by her very nature, a vehicle for choices that weren’t hers. Rhett wanted her to scream, as though his death was up to her—well, it was up to her but it wasn’t up to her. Another banshee would understand (but not Regan, Regan understood nothing). Inge also wanted her to scream and that one tickled in the back of her throat; she almost did it reflexively, just because some woman told her to. She thought it was all a little funny. 

Emilio burst in like a rabid dog—remarkably silent—and honed on Inge as though she had personally eaten the kibble from his bowl. Siobhan watched it all in slow motion: Inge’s expression, the sword, the wall. The sword was a nice touch, Inge obviously trying to blink away from the scene wasn’t. Did she plan on leaving her here? With the hunters? And she was telling her what to do? Yes, do it. She ought to do it. It was always about her and needing to do it; all her life, a series of things to do. All it would take was one scream, in a matter of seconds, to rid the world of Emilio, Rhett and Ingeborg. Did they understand that? Did they ever once think about her generosity? Or, perhaps, why was it that she just didn’t go around screaming? Was any intelligent thought spared for her? Considering the people surrounding her, probably not. It was embarrassing that she’d considered Ingeborg a friend for a moment; she’d be blocking that memory out. 

Siobhan knelt to Rhett’s level, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Any of you move and I scream,” she said. “Except you, Ingeborg, feel free to squirm.” She looked along the bloody factory ground to Emilio, and the pinned mare; he was bundled up, she was oozing glitter. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, Emilio, that all it takes is one breath for Rhett to turn into pudding. Rhett, you tell him.” With her free hand, she rummaged around the grocery bag, freeing a lollipop. Ripping the plastic with her teeth, she slid the treat against her tongue. “Ugh.” She frowned. “Grape.” The plastic stick danced from one end of her mouth to the other as she thought about their situation. 

Ingeborg probably felt very good about herself, impalement aside; she should have listened to her and killed Rhett on that first night. Emilio seemed very upset. Rhett seemed….pale and sticky; torture had that effect. Was he relieved? Scared? He still hasn’t told her what flavour he liked best; she guessed lemon. “I think we should relax.” Siobhan smiled sweetly. “Get acquainted. Emilio, this is Rhett, maybe you know him: he’s a child torturer. That’s a Ingeborg, you can kill her if you want but keep in mind that you will be robbing the world of her attractiveness—she has material value. In addition, she does smell strangely nice.” Siobhan turned to look at Rhett. “Are you sure you don’t want candy, darling?” 

—

A mutual student? The girl, then. The blonde with the flower. He frowned, his gaze dancing between the two of them as that momentary spike of adrenaline seeped away again, leaving him hollowed and hurting. They wanted him dead, but they wanted it done slow—maybe for each day he’d held that young mare in his van. Maybe more. For as long as it was interesting to them. Well, he could try to keep it uninteresting by being mute again, taking their abuse without complaint. They’d get bored eventually. 

He was just about to slump back against the pole when there was a sudden explosion of movement, and the warden jerked away from it on reflex before realizing it wasn’t Siobhan. In fact, she was crouched in front of him now, hand on his shoulder, and—

His one-eyed gaze fell on Emilio and was fixed there as the banshee voiced her threats. She was right, he knew—Emilio probably didn’t. Why was he here? He should have been home, he—

“No,” Rhett moaned woefully. Tears sprang unbidden to his eye and he shook his head, staring at his brother. “Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.” He could hardly speak above a whisper, throat raw from all the screaming he’d been doing, worsened by his outburst only moments before. He sucked in a gasping breath, glancing away from the other hunter to meet Siobhan’s gaze. “Let him go, he’s not—he ain’t like me. He’s good. He’s a good person, please, let him go, he made a mistake—” He looked back at Emilio sharply with that final word, teeth bared in a grimace. “A mistake,” he repeated. “Go home.” 

He would never beg for his own life, but he'd be the first to beg for Emilio’s. 

Logic and reasoning was not something he’d ever had a strong grasp on, but that was even farther from the truth now. In some desperate attempt to appeal to Siobhan’s chaotic nature and hopefully get his brother out of there in one piece, Rhett gave her a stoic nod. “I like lemon,” he confirmed unknowingly. He spared one last quick glance at his last remaining family, feeling sick to his stomach. “We’re fine here, hua. Havin’ a great time.”

—

It was hard to focus. His mind was still bouncing, still half in the present and half in the past. Flora’s body was still in the corner, crumpled and bloodless and so small. Juliana’s was a few feet away. Edgar was there, too; Rosa, his mother. Even Lucio’s ghost haunted the scene, staring on with the same stricken expression he’d worn when Emilio buried his knife in his gut. None of it was right, he knew; everyone he loved was two years gone, rotting in holes someone else had dug for them.

Everyone but Rhett.

His eyes darted to his brother, who was clearly far more out of it than Emilio himself and with far better reason. It was hard not to focus on the place where his leg ended, on the too-long pant leg and the bloodied concrete beneath it. He wanted to think, what kind of a monster does that to a person? He wanted to condemn it, wanted to think that it was an unforgivable thing. But Rhett had locked a kid in a van for days just to see what would happen. Emilio had tortured so many vampires that he’d lost count now, had done worse than this to them for days and days on end until even their already-dead bodies couldn’t hold on a moment longer and gave out under his hands. There were monsters in this room; there were nothing but monsters in this room. 

In the far corner, his daughter’s body continued to rot.

The mare was screaming. Her — Its blood touched the edge of the sword, sparkling in the dim light of the factory. In a way, it grounded him a little. The screams, the glittery substance. He tried to focus on it instead of Rhett’s blood, tried to ground himself in the present as best he could. Edgar was dead. Victor was dead. Rhett wasn’t. Rhett wouldn’t be. Not as long as there was breath left in Emilio’s lungs. 

His chest heaved as he glared at the banshee. The mare was forgotten now, an afterthought; no longer a threat, and therefore no longer worth looking at. He gripped Rhett’s iron knife in his hand, tight enough to stop it shaking. He wanted to slice the banshee open, wanted its guts to spill on the floor as if that might somehow cover up his brother’s blood that stained it, as if the presence of one would chase away the presence of the other. 

The banshee put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. It made threats. Emilio continued to glare. “Si haces eso te mataré,” he growled. Juliana laughed, a harsh and unnatural sound. He blinked once, hard, trying to remind himself of where he was. When he was. He pushed his tongue against the bottom of his canine, tasting blood in his mouth. Opening it, he tried again. “If you do that, I will kill you,” he said, the words slow and heavily accented as he forced them out in the language that still felt unnatural behind his teeth. “I promise, I’ll kill you if you do that.” Rhett would hate that. You weren’t supposed to make promises to fae; Emilio knew that. But this promise was one he intended to keep, anyway. It didn’t matter if Rhett was a monster; Emilio loved him all the same. He’d do anything for him. He’d tear the world apart with only his teeth. 

His eyes darted back to his brother as he spoke, surprised to see him aware. Not quite himself — Emilio was fairly sure he’d only seen Rhett with tears in his eyes once, in the woods just outside Etla — but here all the same. His chest ached as Rhett ordered him to leave, and he wondered if this was what his brother had felt in those woods when Emilio begged him to let him die. He’d give the same answer to Rhett as Rhett had given him back then: “Fuck off with that shit.” There was nothing in the goddamn world that would convince him to leave Rhett here. If Rhett died here, Emilio would either kill the things responsible or die trying. His glare made that much pretty clear.

Said glare returned to the banshee now, eating its candy like none of it mattered, like it hadn’t mutilated his brother in the floor of an old factory, like all of this was a joke. Like Rhett wasn’t the only family Emilio had, like he wasn’t the last piece of a unit that was otherwise irreparably broken. “I’m not leaving here without him. Whether you’re alive or not when I go is up to you.” 

—

She felt like a fly that someone had swatted and left to die stuck to the wall. Not fully dead but incapacitated in a way where there was little to do for her but watch in growing agitation and continued pain what played out before her. Inge wanted to scream, but only if the scream could have the impact that a banshee’s would have. In stead she followed Siobhan’s instruction (when she should be following hers!) and squirmed, fingers trying to grasp at the blade but getting nothing out of it.

The warden was crying. Putting up a show of emotion, cracking the way he’d not been cracked before despite the horrors Siobhan and her had put him through. This could be perfect. This could be perfect. If the banshee only used her head and did what needed to be done, this could be two birds with one stone — or rather one scream.

But the banshee was impossible to understand, a strange combination of motivations that Inge didn’t get. (Not that she got her own.) They were all talking as if there was something to talk about. Why wasn’t she doing it? She grasped the blade once more, the metal cutting into the palm of her hand as she tried to gain purchase. But to get to the hilt she’d have to bend over and to bend over was to slice into herself deeper. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure what kind of organs remained inside her and if they had any function. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out today, here.

She was shrieking, though not with any intention. Just out of instinct. Her hands were covered in that useless glittery solid now and she was useless. A fly on the wall, left to observe the inaction of a banshee who had once proclaimed to love murder. “Siobhan!” It was a bellow more than a scream, lower than the previous expressions of panic and pain. “Get it over with!” 

—

Amusement fluttered inside Siobhan’s chest: this was the sort of situation that reminded her of her greatest hobby. Emilio’s anger delighted her—his gaze could become so sharp, his words could drip with such acid, he could promise her silly things just to keep himself from charging at her (he was like a dog right now, but with just enough sense to keep himself alive). Ingeborg squirmed on the sword—how wonderful it was to watch her expressions dance, flickering with rage (was that fear under the red glow of her eyes or more anger?). And Rhett—as silly as it was, she’d come to like the man. Over the last two nights she studied his expressions: anguish, sadness, fatigue, acceptance. Her greatest hobby was to watch the ways life existed. What made torture fun was seeing how far she could push an emotion, seeing how she could twist a feeling. And here was something she coveted, something she hardly understood: affection, the most curious of human conditions. 

She waved Emilio’s words away. “I don’t accept your promise. You’ll end up hurting yourself with that one: it’s too vague.” Siobhan’s gaze then flicked to Ingeborg. “That sword looks really cute on you, it brings out your eyes. You should consider it as a permanent look.” 

Siobhan smiled, rummaging through the plastic grocery bag: orange, cherry (her favorite), cola, watermelon, peach, something neon green. “I knew you were a lemon man.” Eventually, she found a bright yellow lollipop and tongued hers into the other side of her mouth so she could rip the plastic wrapping open with her teeth. She held the piece of candy out by Rhett’s mouth. “You are a very astute man. I like this awareness: you’ve always understood how pitiful you are, haven’t you?” She looked at Emilio. “But that’s not a ‘good man’, that’s a selfish one. He holds more compassion for you than he does for poor Ingeborg on the nice sword. Who, for all my knowledge, has never tortured any anxiety ridden blonde children. Emilio’s selective, isn’t he? You don’t charge in here, promise to kill someone to save someone else, unless you’re selectively compassionate. Of course, most humans are like this, but it hardly makes him ‘good’ does it?” 

Her grip tightened on Rhett’s shoulder. “I don’t like selfish men, Rhett.” And Siobhan knew she was cruel enough to kill Rhett only to anger Emilio. Then she’d tie him up and…well, maybe she’d go for the arms this time. And who would come to save him? Would this be a never ending cycle of interrupted torture? The idea exhausted her. “Emilio, are you aware this is a terrible man? Objectively terrible. He won’t argue—tell him, Rhett. Why don’t you? Tell him all the terrible things you’ve done…or does he already know?” She looked at him, wondering if he was the sort of man to share his secrets or if he had any shame for his duty. Did Emilio want to save him regardless? Why? Why? 

Why would anyone want to save this wretched man? 

“Emilio.” In her curiosity, Siobhan’s head cocked to the side. “Why should I let you go? Why should I let Rhett go?” She blinked. “Don’t try to threaten me again, or threaten Ingeborg, it’s juvenile. If I cared about staying alive, I wouldn’t be here. If I cared about Ingeborg staying alive, I would have screamed already. Use your brain, I know you have one.”

—

Wincing beneath her tightened grip, Rhett stared at the lollipop still held aloft in front of him as he spoke. “Emilio. Shut up,” he ordered his little brother, knowing that the man’s temper would not do them any favors in this situation. Then, with the smallest tilt of his head in Siobhan’s direction, he began speaking to her, answering her questions slowly, making sure he didn’t miss anything. If he missed something, she might think he was trying to ignore it, and she might do something rash. Something unhinged, like she was. He had to be careful about what he said for once in his stupid life.

“Pitiful, aye. N’ he knows all ‘bout all the things that make me like that.” Most of them, anyway. “He is bein’ selfish, right now. He should’ve let me go days ago. But he’s family, n’ he don’t let family go easy.” His head was swimming, vision blurred. He felt like passing out, but he had to keep going. “He’s the one that got her out. The blonde girl, the mare. He’s the one that let her out of the van, the one that made me promise… not to go after her again. No one else woulda been able to convince me, so… if ya… care about ‘er, ya got Emilio to thank. Ya should… let him go ‘cuz he’s got more green than red on his ledger. Does more good than bad. Only does bad when… when it involves me, or the people that took away our family.” It was surprisingly introspective for Rhett, but he’d had a lot of time to think about it. The warden sucked in a wavering breath, squinting his eye closed. “I don’t wanna leave here.” He’d tried to run once, back before it had gotten really bad, but now… “But that don’t matter, ‘cuz ‘Milio ain’t gonna leave this place without me.” He finally brought his gaze up to look at Siobhan, and for all the world, he looked genuinely apologetic. 

“I get why ya did what ya did. But don’t make my brother pay for the wrong shit I done. I know he’s bein’ selfish right now, but he is a good man. I promise he is. I promise.” That’s how sure he felt, despite what Emilio might say, what he might think. He knew the last living Cortez was a better person than he himself believed. “I’ll be dead next year anyway. He just wants a few more months.” With that, Rhett deflated from the effort of remaining coherent, bending forward to bite the sucker from Siobhan’s grip and then lean back against the pole, closing his eye like he was relaxing into a nap. He should’ve still been worried for Emilio, and he was, but he was too damn tired to do much more about it. As it was, his grip on consciousness felt weak—held only by one pinkie finger. He hoped that he’d still have a pinkie finger as he slipped away from them, his mind carrying him elsewhere just in case things went wrong and they all had their guts liquified by a pissed off banshee. 

—

The mare was screaming; Emilio ignored it. With the threat of its escape through the astral plane eliminated, it would be simple enough to take its head off when he finished with the banshee. Or he’d leave it here to starve, focus more on getting Rhett to safety instead. He needed some kind of medical care, though Emilio wasn’t sure how to provide it. (If he took his brother to the hospital, what questions would he have to field? Would Zane help him out, understand that Emilio’s presence would need to be an under the radar thing?) Either way, the mare wasn’t important at the moment. Its screeching, its pleas for the banshee to act and its fear disguised as rage. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered at all was sitting in the floor with a goddamn lollipop stuck in front of his face.

The banshee spoke, and Emilio kept his steely gaze on it, body tense and ready to strike at any moment. It would do him no good, he knew. The iron knife in his hand could be thrown with accuracy, but it wouldn’t be faster than a scream if the banshee chose to release one. The most he could hope for was for the blade to find the banshee’s throat just a moment after its scream obliterated him. Maybe if the sound was focused on him, Rhett would survive with only his eardrums ruptured. Maybe someone would come looking, would find him before infection took him. Or maybe they’d both turn to mist with the echo of the banshee’s cry. Maybe they all would. It still felt better than the thought of walking out of here alone.

There were insults, there were implications. This was about the other mare, the kid. Wynne’s girlfriend, the one who hadn’t deserved what Rhett had done to her. But the kid hadn’t even wanted to speak poorly about Rhett; Emilio doubted she would approve of someone being tortured in her name, of someone being killed. He thought of Flora, of the blood he’d spilled and the dust he’d stirred up because she was gone and he was here and things like that needed retribution. Maybe she wouldn’t have approved, either. Maybe she’d never gotten to be old enough to understand the idea of approval. Either way, the blood on his hands remained just as present as his brother’s blood on the floor. His eyes flickered briefly to the corner. She was rotting. She was always rotting.

The banshee kept saying his name, and he wished it would stop. The syllables exiting its tongue felt wrong, felt different. Even when Rhett said it — that fond, shortened version, the one only Rhett was still alive to use — it didn’t feel right. The name reminded him that he was a person, and he didn’t feel like one now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be one. People ached. People struggled with the things Emilio needed to do. People hurt when you hit them, and he thought something was probably going to hit him soon. He stayed quiet as the banshee spoke, eyes darting to Rhett as his brother joined in. I’ll be dead next year anyway, he said, like it didn’t matter. Like there weren’t little girls rotting in corners and long-dead wives screaming in the distance, like he wasn’t the only family Emilio had who hadn’t decayed long past the point of recognition. Emilio wanted him to shut up, but he was afraid of what might happen when he stopped talking. He was afraid that if Rhett stopped speaking now, he’d never hear his brother’s voice again. The thought made him nauseous. 

He let the silence stretch, periodically looking from the banshee to his brother to the empty corner where his mind conjured up long buried corpses and long silenced screams. He knew he should say something. He was supposed to. He knew that.

“I’m not good,” he confirmed, looking at Rhett as he said it. “Neither is he. Neither are you. Or that.” He gestured to the mare like an afterthought, like he’d almost forgotten it was there at all. (Would Teddy want the sword back? He should leave it in place until he’d killed the thing, at least, but he probably ought to clean it after. The thought felt laughably mundane, even as his mind clung to it.) “But he’s my brother. And I’m not the only one who needs him. He’s got a kid who wants him around, who wants to know him. She’s good, and she deserves to keep him. To get to know him, to decide for herself if she wants him in her life. You can —” He looked to Rhett, to the empty gap on the floor where his leg should have been. “You can do what you want with me. Let me call an ambulance for him, and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. Take my lungs, my liver, my heart, take whatever, but not him. You can take me apart like a goddamn puzzle, but let my brother go. Please. Just let him live, and I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

—

Siobhan was accosting her with a compliment that made Inge just shout an expletive her way, “Kutwijf!” Her mother tongue, because maybe that would shield the truth of her frustration. The truth of her dread, her — well, her fear, really. It was an ugly thing to admit, but as she was stuck on the wall and her ally in all this seemed to be negotiating with the two hunters rather than killing them, she was afraid. She tried to lean into her anger more. Even as Siobhan revealed her hand. She cared not about what might happen to either of them, had no intention as of yet to commit the murders that seemed to Inge as the only logical next step.

Why were they here? Why had Rhett put her in that basement, Ariadne in that van? What was the point? Inge had thought that perhaps this all could lead to one less hunter, that a proactive stance against a monster like Rhett would lead to the erasure of him — but here she was, pinned to that wall, waves of cold pain radiating from that wound. She and Siobhan had done what she condemned all hunters for. Played with their food and not pulled through.

And then there was the revelation that Emilio had been the one to save Ariadne. The man with the murderous eyes of his mother had saved a girl better than them all. It didn’t add up. There was an angle to it. There was some motive she didn’t understand. 

What was the point? Emilio may have saved Ariadne and Rhett may not have killed her, but there was still blood on all their hands. Emilio had a point — none of them were good. But Inge didn’t want to die, whereas these hunters seemed all to ready to lay themselves down to rest out of some kind of sentiment that she’d perhaps never felt. Her siblings were like strangers. Her late partner she had let die so she could get out. (A price deserved, considering she’d killed her once.) And even now, she had no interest in dying for another. “Well, I guess that makes it simple, doesn’t it?” Her voice was shrill and ugly, directed at Siobhan only. She would be damned if she would stop trying to make her demands. “They’re both down to die for the other, so why not do them that favor?” She wasn’t quiet after she stopped speaking, another shriek of pain accompanying her words from the strain her words had put on her abdomen. She wanted this to end.

—

Siobhan wasn’t sure it made anything simple. The word ‘family’ caught in her head, stuck in a warped loop. The bloody factory floor morphed into long, soft blades of green—the fields of Ireland. Muffled cries echoed behind her ears—smothered, she knew, by biting down into the flesh of her palm, sweet blood filling her mouth. Mother hated it when she cried. She turned to Rhett and waited for the pain that would follow his broken promise—Emilio wasn’t a good man—but there was nothing but fatigue and honesty. He believed it and that was enough. She looked at Emilio, listened to his plea. He really would have given her anything, just like that. And why? Why? Siobhan’s hand trembled against Rhett’s shoulder; under her gloves, under the myriad of scars on her palm, was the half-moon carved by her small teeth and it throbbed. “I don’t understand.” Her voice dropped to an almost whisper. “I don’t understand.” And then her grip tightened all at once, and she crushed Rhett’s tired body under her fingers. “What does family matter? You knew! This is a bad man!” Her voice rushed over itself, vibrating through her. “Family isn’t above punishment!” 

The scars down her back throbbed as her body trembled. The grass and the crying withered away and instead it was her own screams, her own blood and her mother’s heel between her shoulder blades. Siobhan still remembered what the dirt tasted like the day she lost her wings: sulfur, wet clay and saliva. It was a temporary loss, she reminded herself. The same essence of family that Rhett and Emilio were on about was the one that meant her mother was waiting for her, keeping her wings safe, eager to reattach them and be with her daughter again. Yet, even as Siobhan told herself this, her face continued to twist. Her back was on fire; her mother had insisted on pulling them out like a weed, roots and all. “You knew… You knew and you let him live. You know and you come here demanding his life? This man?” She jostled him. “This putrid man?” She heard one of her own bones pop in her hand as she squeezed his shoulder. “What does it mean that he’s family? What does that mean?” How could he be saved? How could he be loved? How could he be forgiven? 

Siobhan’s watery gaze snapped to Rhett. “What does it mean? How can he want to save you? How can he give himself away to save you? You, who are not worth saving. How can he? Why? What is—what is that? I don’t—I don’t understand.” She looked at Inge, still stuck on her wall, and blinked rapidly at her, trying to ask without words. Inge was a mother, so she must understand better than these men. If Inge child’s betrayed their family, she would rip their wings out, ruin their beauty, cast them out and strip them of familial title—no longer a daughter. She would. She had to. Good mothers did that. Family would watch it happen too: grandmothers, cousins, aunts. Family was just. “I don’t understand, Inge.” 

—

He was only marginally aware of what was happening in the room after he’d stopped speaking. He could hear Emilio talking, probably refuting everything he’d said in some stupid attempt to swap their positions—they didn’t want Emilio, they wanted Rhett, for the shit he’d done to that girl. For the shit he’d done to the one pinned to the wall, still screaming her threats and pleas. But of course, just because a plan was stupid didn’t mean that would stop Emilio from trying it. He knew that much about his little brother.

That is, until the banshee’s grip on his shoulder threatened to break his collarbone and he snapped back into the moment, groaning and weakly trying to tug himself away from her as her words caught up to his addled mind. She shook him, sparking the anger that had fizzled out to little more than embers. She was demanding to know what they meant, to know how someone like Rhett could still have someone like Emilio who cared for him, in spite of everything. 

He was annoyed. He spit out the lollipop to better speak.

“Rack off,” he barked angrily, sinking lower to try and relieve the pain that was her fierce grip on him. Something snapped, and he roared the next words in response. “This ain’t a fuckin’ therapy session, you stupid bitch. It ain’t a negotiation, neither! Fuck, all’ah you, just—” His  words caught in his throat as Desmond crouched beside him, a large hunting knife protruding from his back. In his arms was little Flora, eyes vacant as the day he’d buried her. The warden stammered, gasping for breath as his fury was diluted by fear and sorrow. “Ya choose family, ya dense slag. Yer mama ain’t got no skin in the game. Fuck’s sake, let go.” Of his shoulder, of her fucked up relationship with her mother… or both. He didn’t really care. He just wanted this over.

—

The banshee was angry. Yelling (but still not screaming), tightening its grip. And it was hurting him, hurting Rhett. Emilio could see it in his brother’s eyes, in the way he came back to himself. He wished he’d stay in his head, stay out of the conversation. It would be easier to convince the banshee that Emilio was the better toy to play with if Rhett went silent. He doubted a hunter who was already broken would be nearly as much fun to pick apart as one still standing, and that was what the banshee was after here, wasn’t it? Fun. The thought of it — that his brother was a game they’d played for days now, that everything he’d gone through had been for the entertainment of the creatures in this room — made him a little sick. The thought that Wynne’s girlfriend in that van had been the victim of a similar game with Rhett as the creature entertained didn’t help.

The banshee was still talking and Rhett was yelling and Emilio couldn’t make out any of it, couldn’t pick apart the words over the rush of blood in his head. Flora was dead and here and rotting. Juliana was glaring and decaying and gone. Rhett was on the living room floor with blood all around him. The banshee had sharp teeth. The mare was shedding dust. Victor had been dead for twenty years now, and Emilio still heard him laughing.

“Stop.” He didn’t know who — what he was talking to. To Rhett, who was going to make things worse for himself in some misguided attempt to make things better for Emilio? To the banshee, whose grip was too tight? To the mare, whose voice was too shrill? To the ghosts that existed only in the confines of his own mind, or to his mind and itself and its awful method of time travel that he’d never consented to? He took a step forward, and it was a risky move. The banshee only needed to scream. But it had Rhett locked in its grip, and if it was going to kill him, Emilio thought it might as well kill him, too. If Rhett was going to die, he wasn’t going to die alone. 

Another step, and then another. His feet made a sickening squelching sound as they moved through the blood, his brother’s blood, that soaked the ground. He kept walking anyway, until he was right in front of them, until he was reaching out and grabbing the banshee’s wrist where its hand held his brother’s shoulder, until he was squeezing it to loosen that grip in any way he could. 

“It doesn’t matter why,” he said hoarsely. “It — there is no why. He’s my brother. He’s my brother, and I love him. Let him go, and I’ll do anything you want. I promise, I will. I’ll stay here with you. Or I’ll go with him, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone anymore. I’ll make whatever fucking promise you want me to make, just let him go. Please. He’s my brother. He’s the only family I have. You don’t have to understand. I don’t know how to make you understand. But that doesn’t matter. I’m — Christ, I’m fucking begging here. Anything you want, I swear. Just let him go.”

—

They were talking of family and punishment and Inge squirmed on her sword with no stakes in the game. Her parents had been distant and quiet in their love. Her siblings had been companions of silence, each of them haunted by the dead sibling most of them had never met and none of them spoke of. She must have loved them, once, when they were kids. She never really stopped loving them, maybe — but there was no liking them. No sacrifice. No grand gestures. They were not parts to hold over her, they were just abandoned limbs from a past life she didn’t think of much. They weren’t to her like Rhett was to Emilio. So she didn’t understand, either.

And the ones that mattered, the truly familial – chosen and blood – that had once existed had already been severed. She’d watched both her daughter and partner die. For Vera she would have done what Emilio was doing, but there was no comparing Rhett and her child. There was no common ground, besides perhaps the love that existed. And Inge didn’t much care for such sentiments as a sword throbbed in her belly. She didn’t much care for it because love was a wound that could not be tended to. It remained bleeding and raw much like her abdomen. 

And above all, there had been no space for heroics in the face of the disease that had taken her daughter. There had been no space for morals or punishments, no use for them. They’d made up and they’d waited it out, the spread of disease. There had been no people to plead with, unless you accosted the doctors who were already on your side. Did Emilio understand how lucky he was, that he got to at least try? That there was at least something to do? That he could drive a sword through an antagonistic body and carry his weapons and make an attempt to sway a woman who could not understand the love he wielded? He was so lucky. He was so undeserving of it. 

“I don’t care,” she retorted, mostly to Siobhan, “You don’t have to understand. It doesn’t matter. The love doesn’t matter. The punishment doesn’t matter unless you do what you gotta. Just end it. It doesn’t fucking matter, Siobhan.” 

—

“Bitch? Slag?” Siobhan shook Rhett violently, rattling his body against the rusted pipe, ringing it like a gong. “A slag? I hold your life in my hands and you’re calling me a slag? Where’s the respect? I’m twice your age!” She leaned to the side and spat out her grape lollipop, which had been mostly crushed under her hurried conversation. “A promise?” She perked up, then, self conscious about how typical of her species she was being—it was just like a fae to lunge at the first chance for promised favors—and in front of a warden, she cleared her throat. The tendrils of the Gaes, warmed up her stomach. She exhaled on the memory of Emilio’s words—I promise. He would do anything she wanted, he promised. She snapped her jaw shut, clamping down on his words. “I accept your promise.” She had claimed something more valuable than a leg and yet, where she expected and waited for glee, ice knocked through her body. 

In her head, her tearful words still cried out for answers: I don’t understand. Siobhan’s gaze fluttered between the bodies: Emilio, so certain and sacrificing in his love; Ingeborg, who understood something that she wasn’t sharing; Rhett, who had given up on himself but not once on his brother. Hollowed out, she was observing something beyond her; each of them spoke an unknowable language. Rhett said family was chosen—Siobhan didn’t understand. Emilio and Ingeborg said it didn’t matter if she understood, but their idea of what did matter was opposed—Emilio wanted Rhett free, Inge wanted them both dead. How could both opinions exist in the same space? How could someone be loved this much? To be begged for? What was love? How did it relate to being a family? What did these words mean other than nonsense? Emilio and Ingeborg were right, what did it matter to her? Why did she care? She ought to kill them; all three. 

She stared at her accomplice, still stuck on the damned wall. If she found herself missing a leg, tied to a pole, would Ingeborg beg for her life? Of course not, they were hardly friends on a good day and after this, she was certain that would have many, many bad days. And if Ingeborg happened to be stuck on a wall, what would she do? “I want promises from you both,” Siobhan said, rising from the floor to grab nearby bolt cutters—she’d been hoping to use it to chomp through Rhett’s toes. “Neither of you will personally end or help to end Ingeborg’s undead existence. You may hurt her, I don’t care, but you will not kill her; give me promises.” This was a kindness and she hoped to feel something; a sudden invitation into their secret language. With this act of what she assumed to be love, she waited for the sudden clarity of family and affection. Instead, her arms trembled holding the bolt cutter to Rhett’s ropes. “And promises not to disclose the identities of Rhett’s torturers with anyone—you will not tell anyone about Ingeborg or myself. I want this too.” 

—

All he could do was stare up at Emilio miserably as his brother made promises he shouldn’t have, but all the fight had left him with those final insults in Siobhan’s direction. He dropped his head, resigning himself to whatever was to come. 

The mare stuck to the wall was doing her best to get them both killed, and Rhett couldn't blame her. But as blind luck would have it, the banshee wasn't interested. He didn't move as she requested promises from them, feeling himself start to slip away again. And as tempting as it was to give in to the out of body experience, he couldn't bear the thought of Emilio suffering for his inability to remain in the present moment. He didn't want to promise the banshee anything, that went against everything he'd ever stood for since Mariela had used it against him, but… this wasn't about him. He knew that. It was about making sure Emilio got out of here safely, and if he had to abandon his principles to do that, he would. He always would. 

“I promise I won't kill Ingeborg,” he muttered without looking up, his voice raw. There was no emotion in it, nothing snide nor sad, just a statement of fact. “N’ I promise I won't tell no one who so generously hacked off half my bad leg for me.” Okay, there was a bit of sarcasm in that one, but it couldn't be helped. Finally, the warden angled his chin up at Siobhan again, realizing that he couldn't see her at all — she was nothing more than a silhouette against a dim background in his limited field of view.

He smirked, letting his gaze wander uselessly. He knew Emilio wouldn't have any issue promising these things; he'd already given the fucking thing a freebie, after all. Idiot. 

—

It took the promise; he figured it would. It didn’t matter, anyway. All that mattered was the man trapped in the banshee’s grip, the only family Emilio had left. Emilio kept his eyes locked on Rhett’s, expression still and icy as the banshee took the promise. He wondered, almost distantly, if Rhett was disappointed in him. If he still thought Emilio was worth it, even now, or if whatever remained of the respect he held for him vanished the moment he started to beg. 

The banshee would use the promise, he knew, but only if it allowed him to survive the experience. He thought that might still be in question, thought it was the kind of thing he ought to be worried about. He wasn’t. He didn’t care what happened to him, meant every word of his stupid pleading. If the banshee let Rhett go, he’d do whatever it asked. He’d pull his heart out of his chest and hand it over. He’d put the saw it had used to hack off his brother’s leg to his own throat. He’d do anything, anything if it meant Rhett got to leave here, if it meant he could go home. Rhett, after all, had a daughter waiting for his return. Emilio had nothing.

Another promise was asked of him, and his eyes darted over to the mare stuck to the wall. He’d almost forgotten about it there; it wasn’t a threat anymore, and it had been written off as a result. An afterthought, a concept not worth his attention. Distantly, he thought it was interesting that the banshee cared enough to request such a promise. There was no request that they not kill the banshee, after all; only that the mare’s head stay on its worthless corpse. Emilio regarded it for a moment but, in truth, he knew it didn’t matter. He said he’d give anything, and he’d meant it. This was included in that.

“I promise I won’t kill your mare,” he replied, letting his eyes move back to the banshee, “or tell anyone who did this, just as long as neither of you hurts him again.” Tacked on the end, a condition of his own. He wouldn’t make a promise only for them to track Rhett down as soon as he was gone to slit his throat. It was a fair enough trade, he thought, especially since he didn’t bother including himself in the conditional. Something like that might have threatened the other promise the banshee had taken; he doubted it would go for that. But Rhett… They’d had their fun there. Emilio wouldn’t risk the chance of them having any more.

—

“She’s not my…oh whatever.” Siobhan sighed, taking her promises from Emilio and Rhett with a forced smile. “Yes, I agree to your deal: I will not physically harm Rhett again.” She waited for Ingeborg’s voice, confirming, before she pulled the final thread of magic and bound them all together; for better or for worse, though usually, it was worse. 

The bolt cutter went through the rope, sawing and snapping at the threads; there was something to be said about her insistence on using the wrong tools for every job. Eventually, Rhett was free. Siobhan stepped back, leaned up against her table of supplies and watched them. Love was no more clear to her seeing Emilio take Rhett away. Something, however, sparked watching Rhett’s blanket drop from his shoulder and Emilio’s rough hands pull the fabric over him again. In seeing the man’s arm steadied so carefully on his brother’s shoulder; their steps done in time together, Emilio’s limp and Rhett’s tired hops. Emilio’s body angled towards them, using his body—his life—as a shield. Their soft voices—or was it just Emilios?—too quiet for her to understand. Despite the bloody floor, Rhett’s haphazardly bandaged stump and the pieces of his leg, buzzing with flies, there was a strange peace; a delicate pace. Until the edges of the factory stole the family from her view, she considered if that was love: if it was those two broken men, tethered, going on to live another day knowing they’d both be in it. If it was Rhett’s weight on Emilio, Emilio’s arms around him. If it was knowing that they both would have given their bodies—limbs, ligaments, organs—just to be certain the other would breathe for one more night. Love seemed to be violent in its sacrifices and selfish in its stubbornness. 

She didn’t understand it, but she knew they did.

Siobhan looked at Ingeborg, still on the wall. She wondered if anyone loved her—maybe they were the same, in that sense. Silently, she gripped the saw beside her, painted with Rhett’s dried blood, and approached the mare. Her strides were long and deliberate, the blade knocking against her thigh. She made it halfway across the factory floor before she dissolved into laughter. “You should look at yourself; it’s hilarious.” Siobhan bent down and picked up Rhett’s rotten foot. “This one’s for me….” And his rotted calf. “And this…” She pointed at the pile of bloody toenails. “You can have those.” Blowing Ingeborg a kiss, she was gone, not feeling much of anything: not remorse, not confusion, and certainly not love.

—  

She was puzzled by these developments, confusion washing over her face as Siobhan made the moves to keep the two hunters from killing her down the line. Inge wondered why she wasn’t throwing her own life into the promise — did she care so little for it? Or did she think herself so invincible? Though she had gotten to know Siobhan a little more intimately over the past few days, this shed another light on the banshee. She squirmed on her sword. Three promises were made and she spoke in a quieter tone as she too, agreed, “I promise not to harm him again.” It was hard to hide the defeat in her voice.

So the banshee, the harbinger of death, was letting them all go. Was keeping them from killing one another in revenge, even. What a miserable turn of events. What a worthless twist. Inge had expected this to end with a corpse to get rid of, but in stead there was the stains of blood that Rhett left as he and his brother moved away. She watched them for a moment, then looked at the blood and flesh, then at Siobhan. Her cruel ally. Her protector, in a way. But also her traitor. She’d wanted a corpse. She’d made that abundantly clear. All she had was her ripped open gut.

She watched her near closer, toying with her saw like a child holding scissors. Not rushing over to come to her rescue, to peel her off the sword. Menacing. “You —” Inge’s face grew furious. “What was – why are you not – you …” She was laughing. The high ceiling made the sounds echo, round and round and round. Was a banshee’s cackle also magical? It had to be, with how miserable it made her feel.

It dawned on her when the kiss was blown that Siobhan was not just pulling her leg and Inge inched forward, eliciting a scream of pain as she hurled words at the other, “Get me off here, you can’t just leave me here, you absolute — SIOBHAN!” The name was repeated a few more times, losing volume every time and Inge remained. Like a fly stuck on the wall, with no purpose and no accomplishments, made witness to a scene that had already ended.