#willowxariaxpercy

[ofshadowedhearts]

With Blood

@sierrashouseofhorrors @dreamtcraft

There were crimson smears on the screen of her phone. For a moment Willow looked down on it in horror, trying to remember what it was...how it had gotten there. The screen feels too bright, and it suddenly hits her that the room she’s in is dark. She lets the phone slip out of her hand, blinking, trying to adapt to the shadows. How long as she been sitting here? The corners of the room are familiar, the bookshelf...her parents house...she’s at her parent’s house.

One of these things is not like the other. Except there’s one, two, three things that do not belong. Crumpled shapes, whites of unblinking eyes looking at her, staring at her like they were waiting for her to do something. Had she done something?  There’s a smell that’s overpowering, copper and thick and wet. Blood, her brain finally tells her. You’re smelling blood. Her phone buzzes and she picks it up. Through the crimson she can see a text from Aria. Where are you? Willow’s hands are shaking. She types back. My parents. Something happened. Come quick. She sees that she’s messaged Percy too, but that hasn’t been answered yet.

It occurs to her, with a slow detached fuzziness, that she ought to figure out why three people are on the floor staring at her. The closest shape is by the front door. Mother. Willow remembers now...walking through the front door and tripping over her. The house was pitch black, she hadn’t known what was going on. She’d screamed, she’d cried Mommy and she hadn’t even used that term when she was a child. Mother was cold, cold and empty, so she moved on to the next shadow.

She’s remembering now, in fragments, in a shroud of heaviness weaving itself around her torso. Dad was by the kitchen table. It looked like he’d fallen out of his chair. The head of the household’s seat was stained with red. His throat had been slashed. Willow had put her hands over the wound like if she didn’t see it then it wasn’t there. As if there was any blood left to keep from rushing out.

She doesn’t move to the final shadow. She’s afraid. Small, keening, whining sounds are starting to tear up from her belly and through her throat. It’s like screaming, but at the volume of a whisper. Now she remembers. Looking up...hearing the drawn out scrape of silverware against good china. 

Rowan. He’d been sitting there, practicing cutting the dinner he never ate anymore. He’d looked so proud of his mastery, and when Willow had turned the nearby lamp on she’d seen the knife was covered in blood. Their parents. No...not theirs...hers...because Rowan wasn’t Rowan. It had been whispered about for weeks, but in this moment she knew it. She truly knew that this thing that wore his face wasn’t him. Angry. She’d been so enraged at the fact that he was just sitting there...smiling...cutting and cutting and the bodies on the floor, the scent of blood, didn’t bother him at all. In a move of aggression unlike herself she’d launched across the table and struck him.

Her head hurts. She remembers that he pushed her and she fell against the fireplace. But that had been an opportunity. Willow didn’t know whether he’d have stopped and returned to his plate, or tried to kill her too. But it didn’t matter. His mere existence, the mockery of it, was a knife to her soul and she needed him gone, she needed it gone. Fire poker in hand she’d swung again, and again and again and again and.....

At some point she’d turned the lights out again. At some point she’d back herself against the wall of the foyer. Her hands were stained with blood. He wasn’t her brother...but that face...that face was his. And she’d made it stop moving...made it go waxen and cold. Watched the light die from eyes so familiar. She wanted to be dead too, perhaps.

She hears the door get forced open. She’s rocking, knees pulled up to her chin. She’s not sobbing anymore, she’s not crying, she feels cold and empty and hopeless in a way she thinks she might never recover from. “Everyone is dead.” Her own voice sounds detached and distant. “Am I dead too? I think I might be.”

[willowxwispxrp-blog]

Trembling ~ Willow, Aria, Percy

@ariafcwn

Her head was swimming, her head was a blur of color and sound and fear and hope, and the solid steady beating of Rowan’s heart monitor was the percussion. She hadn’t slept, 4pm when she got the call, it was now 2pm of the next day and she didn’t dare close her eyes for more than a few seconds for fear that her brother might disappear from the hospital bed.  She’d been clutching her phone for hours now, clutching it with trembling fingers. The ability to function had been missing, she hadn’t been able to pull herself together enough to even think about reaching out to anyone, until a nurse had called in and said they really needed to speak to Rowan’s parents. No, not Rowan’s parents, their parents. If Willow weren’t such a mess she would have winced at the detachment in her own thoughts.

She’d made the call, out of obligation, and because Rowan deserved support. It was uncomfortable, and the words she reluctantly spoke into the phone reminded Willow that she could, in fact, communicate. And so she sent a group message. Aria. Percy. Hit send.

At the hospital. Rowan is here. He’s alive. Need you.

Funny how just the text helped her breathe a little easier. Made her feel safe enough to tilt her head back for just a little catnap, her free hand twined with Rowan’s in the hospital bed. 

Noise, the door. Aria...the world became a little less blurry as Willow shifted. She would have gotten up to hug her friend but that would have meant letting go of her brother’s hand and that...that was not an option.

“Is this a dream?” she asked, plaintive, eyes wide, her voice unsteady. “Aria I don’t think I can handle this if it’s just a dream.”