Name: Anika Booker
Occupation: Tattoo artist at Anchor Light Tattoo
Age: 31
Sexuality: Bi
Species: Hunter (The Fellowship)
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Relationship Status: Single
Personality Traits: Impulsive, bold, confident, loyal, cynical, argumentative
Biography (tw: murder of loved ones, violence)
She was born a sweet child, cradled and nurtured with love and warmth — by her mother, her father, and her two older siblings. An innocence about her that was not too long lost by a darkened game of fate. She remembered having a heart that longed to be protected; remembered how it felt to be kissed, and sheltered. Remembered how life was, before death. Before that palpable sense of dread sipped through and permeted her surroundings.
She knew the essence of fear from a very young age. Her father never tried to, but he'd always scared her. The warmth his arms used to provide her with, laid cold and numb by his side.
Anika never felt safe in her own house.
Nobody did. It was probably why her mother threw their stuff in the car and drove away. She woke up in a new house — no punch holes in the walls, the floors never creaked, and no ghosts lingered in the attict. The absence of her biological father, now replaced with the presence of a step one. She couldn't love him — not like a daughter should.
Yet her siblings smiled, and this time they meant it. And that mundane, pretty white picket fence in suburbia seemed to put a band aid over a bullet hole. Until there was nothing left of it. Walls painted red, too soon.
She was small, so she hid at the first sound of struggle. Anika still remembered the screams and the inhuman sound that followed up the stairs. It was seconds, maybe minutes before her step father pulled her from undernath her hiding spot and rushed her to his car.
No survivors. It was on the radio that very same night.
For so long, had she wished they ripped her apart too. Found her under that damn bed and tore her limb by limb. Just so she wouldn't live in darkness now — in a void, like the ghastly being she has become. She prayed to God, to have her reunited with her family, but there were no Gods in the world she was now thrown into, or they have long abandoned girls like her. Anika discovered that the same way one would discover that hurricanes provided the best shelter, deep within the eye of her own storm is where she'd feel the safest.
She made sure guilt was engraved in her bones. Yet, she learned to hammer that into her own doouble edged sword — to take that weakness and evolve into something greater. The older man stuck by her side for months, unvailed the truth behind a world she never knew existed, and trained her to become the thing she needed most — in the hell that bursted open through the cracks of the earth and the nightmares that were brought to life in broad daylight.
This was how the word made her a hunter — it pried everything from her hands and watch her shatter.
Connections
Michael Booker / father
Headcanons
Anika has always loved painting. She has a torn up piece of paper that was once her diploma — proof that she's a certified painter. Not that it was going to get her somewhere, but it did help with finding a job.
An introvert that would only be seen in a crowd if her life depended on it.
She's always hated how distrusful she's become. Living a lonely life she would never be satisfied with.
Wanted connections
YOU FOUND ME ( Valka Hadley ) / A fellow hunter she grew to trust while she was on the run. They can either be on the run together, or the other could simply shelter her for a while, before she went on her way again.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT ( Tommy Skinner )/ A supernatural cteature that followed in her footsteps and is noW eager to finish the job. They are keen to wipe out the entire family, and knows Anika and her father are still alive. Could have run into each other a couple times before, when she managed to escape with some scars. The other could've been wounded, as well, or simply missed out on the chance.
THE EXCEPTION ( Lara Rivkin ) / A creature that had saved her from inevitable demise. Thus, the two exchanged favors for a while, and have agreed to be of mutual need to one another, when danger arises.
The cold had bruised her hand, pale flesh turned red and blistered. Her skin was dry and cracked around the knuckles, as her hand rubbed against her jacket, trying to force some warmth back. She’d given Henry her gloves, even though they swallowed his small hands whole. The cigarette between her lips felt like it was turning into an icicle while she waited outside Liam’s door. In the quiet, snow-covered porch, Anika stood alone with her doubts. How much longer did she have to wait outside, before he opened the door? Would he even let her in? And if he did, would he still want to talk to her? She’d left so suddenly. Anika couldn’t imagine anyone letting that slide without so much as an explanation.
One of Liam’s old neighbors, an old man shuffling out of the apartment building he used to live in, had given her the new address. A giant mansion with a garden and everything.
What the fuck was Liam doing living somewhere like this? Anika knocked a second time. Then she thought the sound must’ve disappeared into the house like a rock dropped down a well, so she reached over and rang the doorbell too.
There was no answer, except for the wind tossing the snow around the porch. She stepped toward one of the windows, where the curtains weren't fully drawn and she had a clear view to the inside of a pretty fancy living room and a staircase standing right in the middle. There were footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Green and yellow striped socks flashing against the dark wood. It wasn't Liam, but at least someone was here. She banged on the window, "Hey— I'm here for Liam." Tap, tap, tap. "Is he inside? Come the fuck on, it's freezing out here! Liam!'
Dead end after fucking dead end and all Althea wanted to do was give the fuck up. It'd been months of zero fucking answers. She'd come down to the beach for a moment of reprieve, but it's just as miserably cold here as it is anywhere else in town. The sea water pushes chunks of ice up onto the beach, and she can barely even smell the stinking salt that usually comes with Port Leiry waters.
Finishing a drag on her cigarette, she tosses it into the water.
Which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake. Almost immediately there's some sort of sound rising up from the waves - a wailing, haunting sound. Something crawls out of the waves - a vague humanoid shape, but Althea's not stupid. No human sounds like that and no human can survive these temperatures. Ice forms on its skin as it moves, jagged and sharp towards her.
"Fuck this fucking place!" She yelps out, clamoring for her gun.
Back in Texas, her gun had been put to rest in the back of her closet, tucked safely away from tiny, sticky hands. There had been no danger lurking there, in the armpit of fucking nowhere. At least none they knew of. Anika had mapped the woods around their trailer herself, and Reid frequented the shadows for dinner and unwanted visitors. Hunting had become a forgotten part of her, something she no longer felt served any purpose in her life. The mark on the back of her neck was still there — a reminder she only caught in mirrors while pinning up her hair. But there was no magic running through those inked lines anymore. No vervain pulsing through her veins. Anika had retired from a life she'd always hated.
There was a grave at the beach in Port Leiry she hadn't brought flowers to in months. The small stones forming a circle laid under a thick layer of snow, uneven heads poking through the white blanket as if dreaming beneath the frost. No name marked the grave, but it still rested quietly on her lips as Anika knelt and pulled off her gloves to touch the frozen ground.
The peace of the moment shattered with a scream somewhere in the distance. Her head snapped toward the sound, green eyes catching on a thin figure standing waist-deep into the cold ocean. Who the fuck was taking a dip in weather like this? Waves crashed against her boots, as Anika stepped close enough to notice this was no human. Scales covered it's neck and ribs. Long hair stuck to pale shoulders. What the fuck—
It opened it's mouth and from the depths of it came out a sound that wasn't aimed at her. Anika was so focused on the creature, she never took any notice of who was standing across from it. Althea's hand was outstretched but frozen in place, fingers twitching away from her gun, as though in a trance. Anika assumed there was not much time for strategy, so she dove knee deep into cold waters, pulled out a knife from undernearth her jacket and lunged straight for the creature's throat. A wet, gargling sound came out, choking on velvety dark blood that hissed like it was acid. Eyes turned grey, glassy and dead.
Port Leiry wasn't home. It was the people in that damn place that drew houses with crayons for Anika on crumbled pieces of paper. It reminded her of the picture Henry made for her birthday — a very pink face with sloppy lines and big dark eyes that creeped her out. (She hoped he didn't actually see her as some bug eyed creep.) Her name sat in the corner: Ani—ka, the last letters dragged underneath.
She lived in a paper house now, behind a paper picket fence, surrounded by paper people looking at her with wobbly eyes and crooked smiles. Because reality was frightening. So she'd put on dark sunglasses to pretend the snow wasn't there, to avoid eye contact with anyone who might recognize the version of her that wasn't paper.
Henry was somewhere nearby, Anika could still hear his giggles even after he disappeared from her peripheral. But even through the snowstorm, beneath five coats of white, Lara still stopped to stare at her.
Anika looked up at her friend through her shades and pulled her phone from the pocket of her leather jacket, waving the dark screen. "No signal and shit." It didn't sound like an apology, but Lara probably knew by now that this was what Anika's apologies sounded like. "Would've told you I was stopping by. I'm not that big of a bitch."
A day in a shitty motel, waiting for the sun to drop out of the sky feels so much longer, when there’s nothing but animosity as company.
Reid paces the dingy room and Anika’s gone out to find Henry a new Scottie the Trucker. They left that behind in Texas and he’s asked about it every ten miles.
Anika’s avoiding Reid, like he’s the plague. Although they both still wore their wedding bands, they acted more like a divorced couple than newlyweds. She looks for a new Scottie in every gas station until she found something that looked like Scottie. Satisfied with his toy, Henry behaves alright for the majority of the day spent in Archer City. He doesn't want anything but attention, and to avoid giving hers to Reid, Anika obliges to the kid's wants and needs.
17:35. 1st January 2026.
The minute the sun disappears behind concrete and it’s dark enough he can crack a blind. Reid’s making buddies with the motel clerk.
He’s only gone for ten minutes, before he’s waiting for Anika to coerce Henry back into the truck. Hands wiped clean of anything unnatural. He catches Anika’s gaze when they get into the truck and head out.
She knows.
And he tries. “Day alright?”
His feeding habits didn't bother her as much, as his general personality did. In all honesty, that wasn't at the very core of her fury either, but she liked to pretend it was — simply because the truth was much harder to admit. A dry reply: "Yeah." Then she went back to stretching her legs on the dashboard and finishing her crossword puzzle.
19:20. 2nd January 2026.
The fuck were they risking going back through Colorado, after the way they left.
Anika and Reid had just switched seats again. That was the most of the talking they did— 'suns out, you drive." and "it's dark, now's your turn.' Like a couple of hitchhikers. Anika hoped that by tomorrow, they could do that silently. It wasn't a task that required much talking. They only did it out of habit.
Diner food had the truck hot with the smell of reheated frozen food. Henry ate like he was a starved boy, who’d just been spoiled rotten with a late dinner. Sat up straight with styrofoam boxes of fries, and slider dogs balancing on his lap, and in the middle space.
He just kept eyeballing the apple pie, which Reid had told him could only be eaten at the end.
Crumbs spilled down the gaps in the seats.
Anika’s balancing a soda between her legs. Also Henry’s, who’d discovered he couldn’t have everything at once, when learning to eat in the back of a truck.
Reid turned from the wheel, to Anika. “Make sure you eat something, too.”
She usually just told him she wasn’t hungry. And he’d wanted to call her a liar.
Her stomach's grumbling—often a giveaway she couldn't hide. "Yeah." That put an end to both her silent strike and her hunger one for the day. She wanted to say something else, how she missed eating noodles in bed with him, while he kissed every inch of her face covered in sauce. It was easier to fall into those memories, when there was nothing before her but roads for miles. "Pass me a hot dog."
07:53. 3rd January 2026.
Anika’s had to pick up the last two hours of the drive, because they’re out of night and the sun nearly cost him three fingers on the wheel when they’d singed. Henry had cried, and Reid had promised him it’d be fine and that they’ll stop soon.
Half a day in a truck had a three-year-old restless.
Reid had refused to stop unless it was to go to the bathroom — a dusty side of the road — when he can sit in the back with Henry, and block out most of the window light.
Twin Falls, they know.
Henry demanded truck videos on Reid's phone, and Anika watched the two in the rear view mirror, as the sun blazed through her window. The back was all in shadows — a thick blanket over the two, that had put Henry to bed quite fast. Her eyes settled on Reid, and their stares locked for a brief moment, before she averted her gaze. The ring on her finger blinked in the light. The curse of having just one hand, the band on her ring finger was always there, in her face — a reminder that she should at least look at her husband, if she didn't wish to talk.
Cold fingers brushed through a boy’s hair, as he laid wrapped in the same heavy blanket against Reid’s side. He almost suggested he took it to the truckbed, and got comfy out there. But Henry might’ve caused a one-handed woman to crash, if he didn’t have some kind of distraction.
The amount of times Reid had considered asking Anika if they were going to keep doing this silent, bitter love-hating would have fed him for weeks, if that was all it cost to satiate the roiling pit inside him.
He isn’t convinced she wouldn’t roll the window down in the back, if he even attempted to put a band-aid on what parts of them are utterly broken. Instead, he’s holding onto the memories of them laughing the last time they were in Twin Falls. Where hot showers were exciting, and towels were littered all over the motel floor, because they were barely leaving the bed.
The shithole that had been the Tipsy Tractor, hadn’t been half bad either. Especially memorable, when he beat her at the game of pool he’d promised. From the backseat of the truck, with his head tipped down towards Henry in the shadows, there’s a small, wistful smile ghosting his lips.
"What are you smiling about?" She intruded on his thoughts, of course. Because her eyes rarely left him, especially when he wasn't watching. And she had that special ability to read the lines around his mouth and the ones around his eyes, and know exactly what he was thinking. She might've picked up on that during the days they were roommates, cooped up in an apartment that is now ash, where his face adorned the pages of her sketchbook.
The familiar stretch of road delivers them the Now Entering Port Leiry, OR, sign.
Only, it’s caked in snow that doesn’t appear to cease. The roads barely gritted and Reid forces the truck through the thick of it, wipers spattering away wet flakes. By the time they’re reaching the edge of the city, the truck’s had enough.
But they’re back.
Anika could see her breath, float out of her mouth, her shoulders shivering and her eyes dragging over the frost outside, then to Henry, who'd gone to sleep but looked just as cold as she was. "Where are we going?" she asked, although she hated the idea of doing it.
He thought he’d known this city like the back of his hand — did know it. But the back of his hand’s no longer black and inked like he once knew, it’s now scarred and pinkish. And he can barely make out one street from the next; everything’s white, and there’s cars staggered, trapped in the snow. Left there for however long.
They’ve come back to a town of snow and ghosts.
It’s quiet enough, and dark enough that he thinks they can figure something out later.
“Get behind the wheel. I’m gonna push. You steer us clear.” He’ll think about where they’re going to stay whilst they’re here, when he knows where the hell they are. Port Leiry looks different, when the roadsigns are iced over, and the ground is lost beneath a snowy sea.
21:30. 5th January 2026.
He’d finally figured out that they were a few blocks from Baliol Street. And as long as he was facing North, he knew what buildings were either side of him, too.
Henry had woken up, shivering and complaining of the cold. Anika is too, but she’s refusing to admit that. Reid’s got half a mind to knock on a door, and borrow the place for the night. But that’s just a temporary fix. He needed to get them out of the chill, before he began searching for who they were there for, in the first place.
If his phone signal worked even half, he might’ve been able to call through.
“There’s a short stay around this corner. You need me to carry him?”
That’s the stage they’d reached; they’re asking each other stuff that they’d usually just go ahead and do. Unquestioned. Permissible things, in case one bit the other’s head off for saying the wrong thing.
"I got my father's house keys," Because she'd rather get stabbed, over and over again, than set foot in Port Liery's motels. She braced herself for the cold, quickly walking out of the truck to get to Henry's side and drag him out, with his head on her shoulder and his small arms limp around her. "If we can find the damn apartment. What's over there anyway?" That short stay. Every corner turned hostile, as though someone was about to jump out and attack her any minute now. Her heart was in her throat, making it difficult to breathe.
She’d left that detail out of their days of silence.
Reid doesn’t particuarly want to rip up the skeleton of a dead friend — or Anika’s father. But he supposes that compromise is their favourite thing to neglect ever committing to.
“I know where we are.” He mutters, grabbing out their bags from the back and nodding for Anika to follow. The quicker they were inside, the faster they could save the kid from getting sick from the cold. “It’s ten minutes this way.” Maybe longer, trudging through snow and fighting off the falling flakes. Then, as if it might be the first opening to a real conversation in days. “I didn’t know you had keys for his place.”
Does she own it, too?
Is he sitting in the corridor, because she won’t invite him in?
Or can he walk into a dead man’s apartment without issue?
"Yeah, I couldn't get rid of them." It was quiet, the way snowflakes danced above her head and did their funny pirouettes on a mess of disheveled black hair. Cold seeped through the thin fabric of her long sleeved shirt, the leather jacket thrown somewhere in the back of the car beneath take out boxes. Henry was wrapped in Reid's sweatshirt, long and grey, down to his ankles. She hurried up after the vampire, "How the fuck do I even get rid of them?" It wasn't a question. It was sorrow finally finding a way to leak out of her.
He understands that isn’t a literal question requiring the obvious answer. And it’s cold to tell her to throw them in a trashcan; that isn’t what she needs to hear. Problem always is, that he never seems to know what she wants — let alone needs to hear.
Reid assumes her father lived in the same place that he remembers. Almost ten years ago now, and he doesn’t really remember what the door looked like, but he knows the building. He’s got to trust she’ll know the rest. Maybe she didn’t want him to answer, either. But he does with a sigh, “I don’t know, Anika.” A hand cracks through the iced up apartment building door, and he moves aside, to assume she’s capable of leading the way. Henry’s asleep in her other arm; she’s mastered balancing him in the crook of an elbow and a hip.
The kid stirred, as she bounced him up,just enough to ease up the tension in her arm, and keep it from trembling as she wiggled the key in. It was an old, wooden thing, easy to break through with a kick, but she wasn't about to alert everyone that newcomers have arrived. She hushed Henry back to sleep and walked through, leaving Reid behind. The door was wide open, but he needed much more than that to follow her.
He can walk the length of the corridor, like a shadow on her back. Silent, and tedious. But at the apartment door, he has to pause, eyes that trace the doorframe. His tongue pokes his teeth, because he expects he knows what’ll happen if he tries to step through. So he puts his palm up against the threshold. It’s a magnetic force that shoves back, far harder than he can and his hand drops.
Maybe that’s better. If he can’t get in, then neither can any other monster.
It’s early enough that he’s got hours of the night to go find Lis, or Belle. He already knows Anika and Henry will be safe, sleeping in a dead man’s apartment. They’ll be plenty of weapons there, too. He steps away from the door, shoving hands in the pockets of stained jeans because his jackets wrapped around Henry. He doesn’t even try to ask for an invitation, because it’s just another thing she can weaponise against him, the next time she wants to be cruel.
“I — yeah.” What’s the point of even trying? “I’ll be back by sunup.”
Probably sitting outside the door, but she can figure that all on her own.
She glanced over her shoulder, holding his eyes for the longest they've looked at each other in days, threw him the keys. "You can come in, and take those."
He catches the keys mid-air, and he half expects to look down and see a crossbow keychain.
There isn’t one. Just a worn leather strap with lettering long gone.
Nodding, he hadn’t realised how much he’d convinced himself that she would never have invited him in — or at least, left him out for a few days, like some death-defying doghouse. There’s remnants of who they used to be, stuffed in the cracks of hardened armour.
Pocketing the keys, he swallows, “Thanks.”
Then, he juts his head up in a swift motion, indicating for her to come to the door. “Hey, c’mere.”
"Got a whole ass kid on me."
Reid gives her a look, like he knows she’s making an excuse. Put him down. Kid must be so exhausted being the mediator between violent guardians, that he’d have slept curled on the floor.
But there’s a couch right behind her, if she stopped to realise Reid isn’t being an ass.
Anika turned to put Henry down on the couch, careful not to wake him (as careful as someone like her could be) and finding an old blanket to cover him up with. It still smelled like her father. But she didn't dwell on the memory. Instead, she found her way back to her husband, "Better?"
“Almost.” Either side of the threshold, Reid’s hand is allowed to pass through, and push the dark locks of hair back from her face. Features softening, because fighting’s tiring. If she’s going to kill him with one of her father’s stakes, then she could do it with their eyes closed and lips touching. “I love you, you know that.” Against her mouth, it’s the clearest truth. “Even when we’re like this.”
Whatever the fuck it is they become when they’re pitted against each other.
Before he allows her time to argue about what he’s stolen from her mouth, his hand slips from the side of her face.
Reminding her, because communication has to start somewhere. “I’ll be back later, okay?”
She chases his mouth, reclaiming what's always been hers for a moment longer, before he leaves.
"You better come back, and in one piece, Halstead."
Henry lay splayed across their bed, arms and legs hanging slightly off the edge of the mattress, blankets warm and loose around his small body, tucked between two sets of bare legs. It was to fireworks booming outside that Reid sucked a pretty bloom of blue and purple into Anika's shoulder. There was cheap champagne on her breath, when she said: "Happy New Year, baby."
Her fingers slipped beneath his chin, tipping his face up to meet his eyes, blue and warm with love and adoration.
Two plastic cups rolled across the floor.
Against her mouth, “Yeah, happy new year.” When he shifts closer, he’s blockaded by the small child asleep between their ankles.
He hasn’t forgotten that there’s been no message back from anyone, since. And it plays on his mind — because he's convinced Lis, of all people would’ve gone out until the sun comes up, on new years.
She’d have dropped him a line about it.
Reid pulls back, quietly apologetic. “Just gonna go try calling again, okay?” so that when he slips out of the bed, in just grey sweats, she doesn’t have to worry he’s about to lose his cool.
The kitchen is still a mess from earlier, when he wanders in to dial every number in his phone. He messages wishing them a good new years, and that he misses them. Others, he just tries to dump anything on — even ‘are my messages coming through?’ to McCormick, and Mercer.
Snowstorm.
He can’t shake the feeling that it’s another hurricane, where something other than the natural kind is at play.
There’s toys left on the floor of the lounge, with cake batter stomped into the floorboards. A pollock painting of the modern kind. Reid smiles, wistful, because it feels as close to something other than monstrous that he will get — even if it’s not deserved. If Anika feels the same, she doesn't voice it so directly. Not at least, in her usual blunted way.
He’s about to uproot it, or at the very minimum, disrupt it.
Reid props himself back in the doorway of their bedroom, phone tucked in his hand, nestled at his side. Henry in his sugar coma, and exhausted from being up way past bedtime — and Booker laying pretty in the blankets, waiting for him.
There’s something of a picture worth taking here. Resting his shoulder on the doorframe, he purses his lips, knowing that what he's about to say is will go down like a brick in the ocean.
“I need to go back.” She knows where. She knows why, too. “Something feels wrong about this snowstorm. I need to check they're alright.”
Her eyes blinked against the ceiling, in their bed where he'd been holding her just a moment ago, with lips plush and sweet to her skin. Platonic, almost — because there was no midnight kiss. No making a wish she never wanted to make in the first place. No watching the fireworks or some ridiculous shit like that.
Anika sighed, because she knew they've had it too good to be true, until now.
"Go then." A quiet defeat.
She couldn't fight his demons. They'd always win.
He knew by now what it looked like when they’re about to have more than a disagreement.
Who would take care of Henry, when he went away? Quiet anger seeped through the cracks of her defences. She didn't want to have a stupid fucking conversation in the middle of her foolish attempt at making this night something meaningful for them. A sweet moment that he tore apart. They didn't get moments like these, before a monstrous thing came to claw at them.
Reid chews on his words for longer than usual, sifting through the better thing to say — to ask — without shattering the fragility of her upset. “You’re staying.” More of a question, than it is a statement. If he got closer, would she push him away?
She got off the bed, turning her back to him to grab her jeans off the floor. "No, I just can't fucking wait to go back to the damn place where I watched my father die." A bitter laugh escaped her. She mocked him for acting like a fucking fool. But it was her who was the real idiot, wasn't it? For thinking their escape could last longer than a couple of weeks.
He frowned, watching her retreat from him, like he’d left that bruise on her shoulder for another reason. “Anika.” he sighed, because what is he supposed to say? It’s my sisters. Imagine if it was yours. He’d died there, too. Long before her father did. They’d lost so much in that town, but it’s where his family were. “Anika—”
No longer half naked, Anika padded across the floor to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. A ringed hand gripped the sink, shoulders slumping as she they gave out beneath the weight of her expectations shattering. With her head bowed, Anika took shallow breaths, to regather her composure and allow rationality back to her messy thoughts. Was she staying or was she going?
Reid found his way to the other side of the door, quietly leaning against it. As if she might realise he’s there, with just a piece of splintering wood between them. “I just want to know they’re safe.” Is he overbearing for that? She makes him out to be a criminal, for trying to be half the brother he once was. For trying so hard to give a damn between a broken emotion switch, and caring about nothing at all.
If he locked the box, he thinks he could stay in Texas, and he’d believe they’d be fine. It’s cracking it open to find the slither of hope that he could be better — that Belle might forgive him some of his mistakes, and that Lis might still grow into herself, yet. That didn’t mean he didn’t know Anika would hate every second of it. It’s a balance he cannot control, and he wonders when Anika might notice how vicious his dishonesty is, about what he feels. “Can we not talk through the door.”
Her eyes burned. The sounds of fireworks going off pressed into their bathroom window. A trail of smoke in the winds outside. If she looked up, in the mirror, she'd peer into a memory. The path to her past would open up and beckon her to enter — walk back to the ruins and stay there, in darkness and melancholy. Anika didn't think she deserved to live in the past.
Watery gaze remained on porcelain white. "Go—" she muttered, "And take the kid with you." Make up a life for him too. A life with loving aunts and legacy that wouldn't ever be his by blood, but would still make him a son, nonetheless, if he was treated as one. "Go back to your family."
Reid’s set the charges, and detonated the bomb that is Anika, all in one fell swoop.
They were still talking through the goddamn door.
“You are my family, too.” She is. And she’s still putting herself on a seperate page, because what the fuck were they doing if they couldn’t have a conversation?
"Bullshit. Your family is in Port Leiry." She said, swinging the door open with a woosh. "And I fucking asked you. Did I not fucking ask you, on my fathers grave, if you wanted to come with me? Huh? I did and you agreed. And you've regretted it ever since."
She wants to push him away, and the kid. Call it a night, just like that? If she hadn’t opened the door, he would have said something regrettable.
Then she’d know what regret looked like.
“Can you slow down for a second?” Reid’s blocking the bathroom doorway, where she stands. “I’m telling you I need to see my sisters and you’re condemning me for it.”
"Where have your sisters been the last two months?" Hating her guts probably. But at least they were alive. Unlike hers.
“Answering my damn calls and texts.”
"Well, maybe they've fucking moved on."
Fuck you, Anika.
He bites back the retort, because he doesn’t want to believe that. Yet, there’s a part of it that feels like she could be right.
“Then they can tell me that themselves.”
She's afraid, he figured. Whatever they left behind would haunt them, if they crossed the county line. “The world outside of us still exists, okay. We can come back to fucking Texas, if that’s what you want, but you’re acting like —”
As if she’s making him choose, like some comic book anti hero.
Henry stirs from behind him, because raised voices aren't quiet, beneath the fireworks.
"What am I acting like?"
“Nothing.” It’s a foolish response, because she’s never letting it go. She can’t. It’s physically impossible for her to drop anything. Reid knows better but she's dynamite and he’s lit the fuse already.
"It ain't nothing so now you're just a liar."
She shoved him away hard, to make herself escape him and the small bathroom all together. The damn house felt like it was closing in on her.
He moves away from her, because there’s nothing he can do to salvage this.
He’s tired of it.
He’s been tired of it, everytime she acts batshit about something so trivial to him. They’re opposing forces, light and dark — and all the grey washed mess is always darkening over until the painting is all black. Until there’s nothing left.
Fuck the kid, she wanted to yell, and fuck this house, and fuck you. Because it was all for him — a kid, a house, this version of herself she couldn't recognise, it was all for him.
“Yeah. I’m a liar then.” He’ll agree. Because the hell does it matter? “You don’t want to talk, then we won’t. I don’t know what you fucking want.” That's another lie, because he thinks he does. And it’s them, in an isolated corner of the world untouched by civilisation.
Reid’s fine with that. But he doesn’t just shut the world off that used to — still does, matter to him. “Anika, I love you, but you can’t run from the entire fucking world, all the time.”
She had finally stopped running. It was him that had finally slowed her down. It was him that helped her build a home from the ground up. But his home had always been, and always will be — Port Leiry. Deep down she'd always known that. That one day, his home would call him back, and he'd leave.
"No, no, you love yours— no, fuck, that's not right, you love your sisters, and then you love that kid, and you love yourself because I managed to love you, so now you feel better for yourself, and Im a fucking—" You're supposed to be his wife.
But how much did she know about marriage when she was the product of a broken one? Anika dug the heel of her hand into her eyes, wiping the wetness away. She'd gone down the stairs, where Dana's dinner was still spread out in plates, leftovers nobody bothered to move to the fridge. She had to busy herself with something, picking up and dumping cuttery into the sink.
“And I love you.” Fuck, wasn’t it enough? “You’re my family. That’s what being a wife means — a fiancée, however you want it. You’re a Halstead too. I’m not fucking — what the hell are we doing, Anika? We’re arguing about the tiny sliver of care —”
He shut up, because she isn’t finished.
"This place took my fucking hand. Where the fuck were you when they butchered me?" It was fear — the force that made her crazy. She'd only ever allowed herself to feel it when she was with him.
He hadn’t thought they'd dredge this back up — because he said he wanted to see his sisters.
She knows exactly where he was.
“Don’t do that. You can’t bring that up as a weapon.” Reid shot, and he crossed the room, to stop her on her pursuit of dirty dishes and stale food. He isn't going to plummet into that, because he’d lock the box again — and everything would numb. “I thought we were —” Doing better?
"It's me who has to fucking live with it!" A loud crack tore though the room, where a shattered plate made a mess of blood and glass. It made her stop, the sudden fragility of the moment they were holding, how quiet everything went right after. "Being your wife means going back there." A softer sound. "And there's nothing for me there."
The back of her hand hit the faucet and water splashed over blood.
He’s a fucked-up, deadman, with a half-a-hunter-almost-wife. They had bigger problems, if there’s harboured hatred they can’t let go of.
Softer, with a dry throat, his voice is lowered — the scent of blood makes him want to get closer, “— Do you hold that against me? What happened to you?”
"A lot happened to me." A pause. "I hope your sisters are fine. But there was a moment, way back, when I really fucking wanted you to know what it feels like when they're not." It was not her hate that had complicated things for her. It was her love, for him, that has sprung out from poisonous grounds, that had really fucking complicated things for her.
What does he say to that?
The silence stretches, and he stares at the woman washing the blood from her hands, spitting venom at him out of spite.
She’s hurting. And in that hurt, she tears him apart. Reid barely recognises who they are supposed to be; this was what they were good at, wasn't it? Fighting. Surviving a vicious world that had chewed them up time and time again. He couldn’t imagine that her virulent words it made her feel any better.
It made him walk away.
Because nothing good would happen if he walked towards her.
"Henry, wake up—" She was sitting on his bed, gently nudging his small shoulder. "Wake up, kid."
A small series of drowsy murmurs left him. His tiny hands were fighting back hers. Anika sighed, "You can't fucking fight me, you're the size of a rat."
He startled awake when her shaking turned more urgent, blinking up at her in confusion. "Sorry, we just— you gotta get up and put something on. I’ll find you something. You want that turtle man shirt?" She rummaged through the pile of clothes tossed over the chair while Henry slowly nodded, still dragging himself out of sleep.
"Can’t find it, kid. Gotta pick something else." She held up a blue shirt, jam still crusted along the collar. "What about this?"
Kids didn't give a shit about stains, did they?
The good thing about dressing a three year old that was still half asleep was that they didn't fight back. Henry was quietly lifting his hands, while lulling his head from side to side, like a drunk old man. Anika put on his socks and a pair of shoes and took him in her arms. He didn't even ask where they were going. Or why she was waking him in the middle of the night just to get dressed.
His head slumped onto her shoulder, small mouth hanging open as drool soaked through her shirt. He was asleep again before she even made it outside. For a three year old, he weighed as much as a fucking sack of bricks. Reid was already sitting in the driver’s seat when she reached the car, just as silent and angry as she’d left him.
"Got the kid." She said. "Anything else?"
They'd lost an hour of night, where it would have taken Anika ten minutes before, to pack. Eyes onthe rear view, watched Henry stir in his sleep, wrapped in his blanket. The last time he’d been so fucking cold towards Anika, they’d been at a motel — and it had been painted red.
He didn’t know who the villain was, but it felt an awful lot like him, still.
She blamed him — for the loss of her hand.
She wished his sisters were dead, once.
He’s taking her back to the place that ruined them both.
But if he looked the fuck around, Colorado, Oklahoma nor Texas was doing any damn better for them.
Reid starts the engine, silent. It’s the loudest thing above her and Henry’s heartbeats.
They were both staring at Henry, as if to avoid looking at each other. Anika closed the door and took a small step back, casting a glance to the driver's window with her arms folded tightly over her chest. The engine's roar sounded like a warning. Get in or get out. She knew the risks with either option. Yet, she stayed on the side of the road, feeling less like a companion and more like a heavy luggage, he'd have to drag around.
Go, she wanted to say, but didn't. Go, I don't want to die. Because he'd given her something to live for. She was living a life she feared of losing. Fear was a master at the silent kill — a gaping, gun shot wound to their relationship that neither saw coming. How was she going to fix this, when she felt so frozen in one place?
She isn’t going to get in. And he won’t look at her, or imagine the expression of betrayal on her features. That’s what she thought it was, right?
He won’t beg her to go with him.
He won’t even ask.
Hands squeeze the wheel, and his eyes linger on the blackened charcoal of a ring. Green lightening of the resin struck around the centre. There was only the headlights, and the overhead — a warm yellowed hue that made the polished wood gleam. His thumb of the same hand reached under to twist it around his finger.
It had been a promise, a commitment. A dream and a hope. He finally understood the guys down in Oklahoma, when he’d watch the game, as they joked about calling their wives the ball and chain. He’s halfway between pulling her into the damn truck, and letting her stand in the cold; a shadow in the rear view.
Fuck. Is there a vow about doing and saying stupid shit when angry and afraid?
They need one. Because he’s scared that he’s wrong just as much as he’s right about Port Leiry. Anika could be speaking truth — maybe his sisters have finally moved on, and left him to rot. But he’d never forgive it, if he didn’t find out for himself. Maybe she’d never let it go that he was a monster made in the basement, whilst she was turned into one all the same.
She knew the strings of grief, and she used them to stake him.
Reid shifted the gear into drive.
She knew she'd regret it. Letting him go like that. Maybe this was all she was ever meant to be — an angry woman destined to end up alone. Childless. Loveless. Afraid. The ring was stuck on her finger no matter how hard she tried to twist it free. Why the hell had he given her that stupid ring if he was going to leave? Was she supposed to watch him walk away from her? Her head turned the other way, where there was only darkness. Behind her, their house sat in shadows, too. She'd find nothing inside but silence.
What the fuck are you doing?
Her heart pounded inside her chest. She could feel it drumming in her ears. It was so loud, she couldn't hear her own thoughts. He didn't want to look at her. Not say goodbye, or something equally as shitty. She was just left there, punished for fearing a world that never stopped taking from her. Even now — It was still taking. There was nothing left to give.
With the handbrake on and murder in his gaze; love that hurts so much it feels like hate. Reid lets go of the wheel, and reaches over to the passenger side of the truck. Shoving the door open with an impatience. His eyes find the windshield, because he’d never wanted to say venomous things to her, like they once had. And he would be that monster again if he gave himself the chance.
In or out, Anika?
Her eyes were on the car, stubborn in their search for his face. It was easier to look at him, with the door wide open. An invitation that she wasn't sure why he made twice.
"You hate me?" she asked, "Is that why you won't look at me?"
He hates that she can be as monstrous as he can be. She shouldn’t have asked him in this moment — she should’ve gotten into the truck, and shut up. There’s nothing human, or kind about what he wants to say.
He checks on Henry in his periphery, so the boy doesn’t hear how nasty the two of them can become.
You really were right, Anika. You’ve still no idea how love works.
Eventually, his eyes settle back on her — the woman he wanted to wife, standing on the damp grass outside the ranch. Windowed by the car door, swung open in a dangerous welcome. He hates that he loves her, all the same.
“Are you done being a fucking bitch?”
They were losing night by the minute.
She lifted her hand, the one with the ring on her finger. "You married a fucking bitch."
Or had he forgotten that? Playing house had really changed their perspective of one another. But they were seeing each other clearly now. He was still a monster. And she was still — a fucking bitch.
He jerked the truck back into park. A hand slammed on the wheel as he shoved out of the drivers side door. Marching around the hood to face Anika. He hadn’t been able to do it an hour earlier. Tense with anger, and with teeth threatening to slip, he isn’t sure it’s much better timing, now.
He’s too close, and he knows it when he grits his teeth, “Yeah. And she’s either in or fucking out.” Her call. He isn’t waiting any longer — or letting her fuck around spitting her nastiness when he could be on the interstate already.
She could smell it on him, hunger that threatened to consume. "What are you going to do? Hurt me?" Her voice didn't waver. He was capable of worse. And yet, his sire had only ever known his mercy. Port Liery was like a locked box filled with tiny figurines. They each had a part in his life. He held the key. Anika stepped closer. "Come on."
She wants a reason to walk away that isn’t her own stubbornness. Reid had been long done with trading blows of cruelty — but Anika’s never done. Easier to hate, than it is to admit love hurts worse.
He steps back, because she’s taunting.
“Fuck you.”
It’s the first time he’s allowed the merciless thought to cross his mind so violently; to bleed into her, and snap her neck. Lay her in the passenger seat, so she has a real reason to hate him. To loathe him — like he loathed a monstrous nature. It scares him, but not as much as it should.
They were never going to change.
He slams the passenger door shut, and is back in the drivers seat in a blink. They’d continue to stab each other, if he let her draw him into her mean, terrified box of shit things to say. She’s had her chance; he didn’t expect an apology, and maybe he’s in the fucking wrong, too. But it’s a long drive back to Oregon, and he isn’t sure what he’s going to find, when he gets there.
Anika’s just a shadow in the rear view, when gravel spits out the back of the tyres and he turns onto the main road.
The ring had finally come off. She was watching the car get swallowed by darkness, when it slipped through her hands from all that twisting. The sound of metal hitting the concrete pulled her attention and she looked down. There it was, a soft gleam amongst shadows. Anika left it there. Then she looked back up at the street, where no car was coming back. There was no man running back to spit more regrets at his wife. No child crying for his mom. She wasn't his mom. Henry was sleeping, and he was fine. He'd live a good life, she thought. Her chest felt tight and breathing had suddenly become very difficult. Reid's absence and the deafening silence right after he'd left had made her wish for strange things, like screaming and fighting until their lungs gave out, or saying cruelties and apologising right after in their own way. There was no more of that. It was only quiet now, when she sat down on the pavement.
02:40. 1st January 2026.
There’s no forgetting Anika. She is an ember inside of him, taunting him. Speaking words she might’ve said — or could have, if he had stayed to listen to them, a little longer. Words cut deeper than any blade she ever drove into him. He knew what she meant, when she made him bleed. It’s just torture and cruelty to drag out his adversities and turn them into fears, and regrets.
If Henry hadn’t been in the backseat, Reid might have shut the lockbox lid, for good.
Is he in the wrong? His disregard for the city — his hometown, and its demons and all they’d endured. For the sake of knowing his family were alright. It felt like his head was being cleaved in two.
Reid had been at the rest stop, only ten miles down the road from the ranch where he’d been for over an hour. He hadn’t been able to pull away, after pumping gas. Just let Henry sleep with shitty overhead yellows as his nightlight. His phone had been in his hand, tapping on his thigh for long enough he thinks the bruise has healed twice over.
Some guy in a pickup, who’s noticed Reid blocking the gas pump, picks the worst goddamn time to tell him to move.
Halstead’s head twists to look at the Texan approaching. He’s chewing on gravel by the time he’s figured out how bad he’s going to hurt him, “Dude, don’t even try. Go to another one.” They — he, can never catch a break. Since Anika’s not there.
He wishes she were.
For a moment, when the Texan gets back in his pickup, Reid thinks he’s about to slam into the back of the truck. Henry’s inside. And god help that cowboy, if he even got close.
He drives past, cursing, and circles around to the other side, to get his fucking gas.
Reid’s feet don’t get back into the truck, because he doesn’t know how to drown the hate clouding up the resin in the ring on his hand. Emerald and onyx, staring at him like a dare. He doesn’t know why it would have changed anything for her. It’s never enough. He isn’t — between silent threats, and fears. Between being unable to have a conversation before a fight.
What if one day, he doesn’t walk away?
What if she dared him again, and he did because he was no different to any other monster?
‘What are you going to do? Hurt me?’ ‘Bullshit. Your family is in Port Leiry.’ ‘Where the fuck were you when they butchered me?’ ‘But there was a moment, way back, when I really fucking wanted you to know what it feels like when they're not.’ ‘I don't wanna spend three months in a basement, over someone else's mistakes, again.’
Then she’d ended up in an attic.
They’d found Henry.
Reid could stand propped against the truck, until the sun came up, thinking about every nasty thing they ever said to each other. He could wonder how they were ever able to draw lines in the sand when they’d already tried to so many times before.
He told himself he deserved what she said, because she was human, and he was a dead thing. And there’s some version of love in the middle of it; a dark, broken sort that they both need.
By the time he got back into the vehicle — and drove the fifteen minutes back to the ranch — he’d given her enough time to do something stupid. He expected she made plenty good use of it, too. They haven’t got any lines, just weapons pointed at each other shaped like their tongues.
She was no longer sitting outside when the truck drove past the ranch. Tires screamed outside their bedroom window. Anika didn't need to look out to know who it was. She walked out with a duffle bag, locked the door behind her and waited for him to look at her, before she made her descend to the truck.
He did — look at her, and she hoped that meant he hated her a little less than he did an hour ago.
The passenger door cracked open.
"I found Henry's stupid turtle man shirt." Anika said, sitting down. "It's in the bag."
What the fuck else was she supposed to say? Sorry I was acting insane? Sorry I'm fucking scared? He knew she'd never apologise, because she never learned how to do that. He was also supposed to know how afraid she was. He'd seen it before, hadn't he? He'd seen fear in her eyes. He knew what it looked like. He had to know.
What she doesn’t know, is that he’s afraid of so much more than that.
Reid didn’t even know she’d been looking for the damn shirt. He just slumped in the drivers seat, and watched her, waiting for if she would twist and drive wood through his heart.
She might have done, if she’d known what he’d been thinking about earlier.
Her eyes dipped down where her hands were clasped together on her lap. There was no ring on her finger. Quietly, she added: "Why'd you come back?"
Of all the things she could have asked him. This is the stupidest.
“Because I fucking love you, idiot.” A sigh. She isn’t wearing her ring — and he doesn't know if that’s worth asking about. It’s whiplash, from boiling rage to defeat, and back again.
Is he a monster? No different to the next.
Reid kicked the car back into drive, before they lost any more time.
I love you was kind. I love you was more than she deserved. "Did you figure that out now, or—" A pause. "Sounded different before." Why'd he leave in the first place, if he loved her?
She didn't want a real answer. Anika was just buying herself time. But there was nowhere else to go now. "Listen," Eyes on him. "I'm really fucking scared this time."
Foot on the brake, the truck hits a stop at the connecting junction.
Does she think he doesn’t know that? She runs. She fights. She makes everything into a war because of fear. He does that too — but when he doesn’t run, he’s doing something awful. She’d put him in the position where he had to stop and breathe, before he compelled all that fear out of her and became something other.
He isn't afraid of the city as much as he’s afraid of what they’ll become stepping foot into it, if this is what they are already.
“I’m not going to let anything fuck it up.” A vow he’ll probably end up breaking. Eyes linger on hers, but his hands stay palming the wheel. “It won’t be for long. I told you that.”
Anika averted her gaze. "She's still there."
They have different she’s.
But it doesn't matter which. “My sisters are there, too.” Their friends. More powerful creatures than Reid likes to ever give credit for. Maybe Anika’s afraid because there’s no hunter magic in her blood, and those pinpricks on her skin don’t heal. She can’t hide that he’s a monster from him, either. Firmer, with less adoration, and more possession.
“Now you listen to me.” his hand reaches for hers — ringless, and still warm. “She’s never going to touch you.” He’d murder to keep that promise.
There was comfort in his touch. Their hands were meant for each other. Like two puzzle pieces. Anika closed her eyes and leaned her head back into the seat.
“Nobody is going to lay a hand on you. That city — it’s nothing. Those people, they’re nothing. Our friends — our family, they’re what we’re there for.” They were going to go do their business, and fuck off out of Halstead lives, again.
If they’d just pick up the phone, it’d save a whole lot of fucking psychopathy. “Okay?”
Fingers squeezed his hand. "I don't need you to protect me. What if someone hurts you?"
She'd kill them.
He laughs. It’s not funny. But they’re deluded — so are his half-cocked promises. “Believe me, I know.” He tried to strain the bitterness out of that, but it’s hard, when he just fought himself about hating and loving her. “We aren’t going to be around long enough to give anyone a chance.”
He should have killed that Texan at the rest stop — no, not killed. He didn’t mean to think that, he’d meant —
Same thing. Because the burn in his throat isn’t making his tone sound any softer. And he thinks she needs it to be.
You hurt me more than anyone ever could.
Really, he had nothing to fear other than her.
“You divorcing me?” he asked, when they turned off the stony driveway. His thumb ghosted over her finger. “You took it off.”
Fuck.
She wasn't stupid enough to think he wouldn't notice. But she was also lacking optimism when it came to their arguments and how long they lasted. This one seemed to have resolved faster than others. Well, they had been together for a long time already, that certainly was supposed to mean something.
"You did leave, baby." If anyone was divorcing someone, it was him. "You gotta stop the car, though."
He’d argue, she left him first; he held the door open and she chose not to step through.
Choking down the next fight, he lets it go. Because he’s still wearing his.
Then he veers into a lay-by, and stops the car. “Why?” He looked up at the crescent of the moon, and then the clock on the dashboard. Lip twitching, he checked on Henry mumbling in the backseat. He resisted asking if she wanted him to stop, because she was walking away, again. “Anika.” He tries not to stress the time at her; they've done this dance a hundred times; she knows.
"I gotta get my ring back." Her hand was still in his.
Get it back?
“What —?”
The fuck did she do with it? The hurt in his face got lost in the disappointment, because she’s not pocketed it, out of sight. She’s actually done something with it. She’s given up all her hope, as she always does, when they argue.
Their hands were still laced.
"It's just on the sidewalk. I was twisting it and it came off, and uh— I didn't know what to do with it." She sighed, "I didn't really know if you were coming back."
To her, it didn't seem like he was.
For fucks sake. “Like back at the ranch? Or you walked somewhere?” Reid hadn’t been sure he was coming back, either. A man possessed, really. He wished she’d stop throwing shit away every time she heard something she didn’t like.
"Yeah." She nodded, "Back at the ranch." Hearing it out loud made her feel really fucking shit. He made those rings. And she was throwing one of them away like it was nothing. "I didn't mean to, I just—" Shut the fuck up.
Reid turned the truck around and they headed back to the driveway. Quiet. Because it’s already done — she’s done it, and he can’t change it. But Anika is going to be the death of him, and she should know it.
The neighbours must think the truck screwing around on the road is a fucking psycho, since it’s been up and down so much in the last hour.
Sighing, he slows on the gravel of the drive, “Just show me where.”
"There," she pointed outside the passenger window at the sidewalk outside their house.
He gets out the cab, shutting rhe door gently behind him. As he walks over to the spot she gestures to, he’s focusing his eyes on the ground, looking for any objects out of place. A part of him wants to leave it behind, and tell her that if she threw it away like this, then she never wanted it to begin with. It shouldn’t come off so damn easy.
But he’s too tired, and too hungry to give a damn about provoking another battle with her.
Black and emerald gleam under a monsters gaze, nestled between winter leaves, and tree dirt. He stops dead, and looks at the ring for a few moments longer. Thinking about the time he’d spent, away from her, to craft them.
Picking it back up, he’s soon back in the cab, and dropping it back in her lap.
“You take it off again, I’ll assume you mean it.” He mutters, before he gets the car moving again. He won’t come back a third time tonight, so if there’s any other secrets about things she’s done, then he doesn’t care to know them.
It sounded like a punishment. Of course it would. He always had to find a way to make her feel worse somehow. Anika looked down at the ring in her lap, suddenly finding herself wishing he hadn't found it. Black wrapped around her finger again. He could leave her all he wanted, but she was the one getting chastised for thinking he meant it this time. She made a mental note to shut the fuck up next time. If she hadn't said anything about the ring, he wouldn't have turned back. If she hadn't been honest with him, Reid wouldn't have dealt another blow.
"Wake me up at the next stop." She muttered, curled up in her seat and closed her eyes.
Henry looked cute in his reindeer pajamas. Bouncing on the couch, cheering: “Can I now? Now? Now?” He was talking about the gifts beneath the tree; there’s only a few. But they were wrapped in colourful paper and labelled with his name. Reid had written Anika’s on some, and he wasn’t sure she’d even noticed amongst the evening hot cocoa making, and the marshmellows stamped into the kitchen floor. She was still huffing about chocolate being everywhere whilst Reid's stopping the toddler from knocking over a half empty mug; the sides stained with dried cocoa.
It was chaos. Anika never really cared much for cleaning, or putting back things that certainly did not belong on the floor, or on top of the lamp, or lost in a shoe, in the hallway. With Henry, this was where things ended up, regardless, of their origin — and nothing could ever be found.
“Tomorrow.” Reid told him, for the eighth time in half an hour. Hindsight says that the sugar rush right before sending him to sleep, had been a mistake. “It’s bedtime, now.”
Anika scoffed, crouched down by the side of the couch, finishing up a present for Reid in secrecy. Wrapping up gifts wasn't like shooting up monster, she'd found out it was especially hard when you only had one hand. The wrapper ripped, and Anika tried to talk over the sound:
"You really think he's gonna go to bed now, with all of that under the tree?" Fuck, it was one ugly gift. She threw a quick look at the pile of presents with her name on it, and realized they all looked like they've been done by Santa's freaking elves. She couldn't compete with that.
The ring on her finger couldn't compare to the pair of socks in one of the wrapped up boxes for Reid.
He had no idea what Anika is doing crouched behind the couch. But Reid’s patience would thin out if it’s another patch of cocoa stomped into the carpet. He realises that he has to pull out the big guns for this bedtime battle: “Santa doesn’t come for little men who don’t sleep.”
A pointed look fired at Henry, as he bounces on the cushions. He watches the joy deplete from his face, like Reid’s just set fire to all his gifts.
Meanwhile, Anikas creation was getting uglier by the second, as urgent hands worked double time to make it more presentable and less — whatever that was. She laughed malevolently, "Santa doesn't even know where our ranch is."
Henry sat back down, in one sad, defeated hop, pouting at his adoptive parents and Santa, who he was now certain would never find their ranch and therefore leave him without his truck.
"What about Scottie, the trucker?" He whined. Trucker came out sounding like twucker.
While Reid wasn't looking, Anika shoved her present under the tree, far in the back behind a few big ones. "The what?"
Dana's kids, Mary Beth and Lily-Mae, had a deadbeat dad, who picked them up every other weekend, if he didn't forget, and bought them dollar store presents they later bragged about to Henry.
Look what our daddy got us, Henry, they'd say, and it'd be this big truck, chipped at the edges with rusty tires, a plastic man with a cowboy hat they've named Scottie gripping the wheel.
Henry wanted a truck, too. Because his daddy rarely took him anywhere.
"I told Santa, I want Scottie. He has a cowboy hat."
It’s difficult not to smile, because Reid never would have imagined arguing with a toddler on Christmas Eve about toy trucks with cowboy hats, and names. It makes him think about a rancher, back in his hometown — and about a Halloween that hadn’t started so shitty, exchanging a cowboy hat for buying drinks. Henry doesn’t have those memories, though.
“Then you better get your teeth brushed, and tucked into bed, hadn’t you?” Reid tells him, with this fake sternness that sounds a little like he’s choking down a laugh.
He knows Anika hasn’t bought him the damn truck, and he can’t remember if he did either. Eyes search for her in the living room, moving around like a ghost. He tries to catch her eye, as if the question could be read in his gaze.
Did we get him the truck?
Anika shrugged, shaking off any responsibility he might've shifted onto her, for trucks and plastic cowboys.
He thinks they might have got the blue one — maybe green, was that Scottie? Fuck.
He can’t remember, because they’d been arguing about cookies that day. Fighting some clerk about the Christmas stock, and how Anika hadn’t cared to decorate and Reid said it wasn’t about them, but the kid needed to see tinsel and baubles. It was a minor sacrifice in the way of finding a reason to endure. But he doesn’t know if the truck ended up in the cart.
He’d had to chase Henry around the store enough times, he remembered Anika just wanting to leave.
Reid tipped his head back to the kid, folding his arms as if he were cross: “I don’t hear your feet moving, little man.”
Henry padded across the room to wrap small hands around Reid's legs and press chubby cheeks into his sweatpants. Then tipped his head back, aiming those big, green eyes at the vampire, like a stake to the heart. The little man waited for Reid to join him in the bathroom, where they'd brush their teeth together and make funny faces in the mirror with mouths full of foam.
07:45. 25th December 2025.
Anika wore the same shirt she had on the night she agreed to marry Reid. An old, grey one she'd pulled from his things, a little ripped at the back so when he leaned over, while she was painting or washing the dishes, he could kiss the nape of her neck.
She’d lost track of how many nights in a row she’d slept in it. Probably many, but she didn’t want to sleep in anything else.
That morning, she woke up early, and tip toed in the kitchen, pulled the Christmas present with the ripped, ugly wrapper she'd made for Reid, and with the stealth of a puma, walked back into the bedroom.
She climbed onto the bed, and sat down on her heels with her feet tucked under herself, staring at Reid's sleeping form. When was the last time he fed? With Henry around, finding time to disappear and feed on a human had become difficult. Anika had offered her blood, though he was firmly against it, and it had seemed to satisfy his hunger for only a little while.
A hand reached out and pried one of his eyelids open. "Got you something." she said, with a smile unnaturally big for her.
A pale hand snapped up to grasp the one pulling at his eyes — an instinct that says he's ready to lunge. Anika’s scent is quick to flood his senses, and he lets her go as quickly as he'd turned. An apology hanging ready on his tongue, for the suddenness.
Nightmares came and went, and his feeding habits were out of sync. He remembers it’s Christmas, and offers her a warm smile. The same hand comes up to reach for her cheek as he sits up from the bed, “Morning — I wasn’t expecting, that.” He should’ve; they’d been safe here. Morning playfulness isn't new. Just a little jarring, coming from Anika on Christmas morning.
His reaction made her question the idea of this surprise. It was silly, stupid and unlike them, but so was exchanging engagement rings, and that had been all Reid.
So Anika thought it might be nice, wouldn’t it? To do something for him, too.
"What did you expect? Breakfast in bed, naked?" she asked, sardonically.
This was the happy version of her. At least, what she believed happy was.
He wouldn’t have been mad at a naked Anika waking him up on Christmas morning.
The place reeked of gingerbread, and something burnt. He’s surprised that Henry hadn’t found his way in to jump up and down on the bed, but he’s glad that he hasn’t; he wouldn’t have liked surprising Reid out of the rare sleep he gets. His first Christmas holiday with them, spoilt by a monster.
Reid's eyes dipped to the gift, wrapped in strange shapes in her hands. His smile widens, as he shakes off the sleep. “You got me something?” He repeats, like a fool.
"Mhmm." She nodded, tucking her long hair behind her ear, sheepishly.
It’s sweet, and her smile is oddly upbeat — he lifts a brow at her; it’s suspicious too. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Without another word, she shoved the present into his hands and waited in anticipation for him to tear through the ugly wrapper and find out that inside, hidden in another less christmasy packaging was a pair of socks. Blue and long, white letters along the side reading 'best husband in the galaxy', little planets scattered all around.
She'd spotted them next to the pantyhose on sale at the dollar store when she'd gone to get Henry's crayons. Then she remembered he'd made her play one of those games back in Denver, spaceships racing through open space, shooting weird alien creatures.
The paper’s tough; overtaped in some corners, and it tears easily in others. Blue cotton that’s soft in his hand, brings an ache to his chest. It’s special, because Anika’s done it; she’s found something and made it personal.
"'Cause you're a nerd, you know." And my husband, she wanted to say, but decided to wait for him to mention that part first.
He stares at the socks, laughing quietly at the stars and the planets — and the words that makes him look back at her, eyes dipping in the corners. He leans forward in the bed, ready to kiss her, “Just this galaxy?” Playful, before he steals her mouth, for a moment. Reid doesn’t defend his geekiness. Not this time. She can have this moment, without him saying something that she'd misconstrue. He loves her, and the socks.
"Mhm, 'cause I'm here."
Anika Halstead thought 'handsome', a stupid word she wouldn't say out loud, as she watched him pull back, softly, “Does this mean it’s okay to call you my wife?” The only other word she could think of, for the way he looked at her, would maybe be 'beautiful'.
Mouth soft and warm against his, loving hand coming around to comb back blonde hair and then slide down his bare back, dragging nails up and down, up and down.
"It's okay to call me whatever you want." Her breath danced across his lips.
Is she ready for that? No paper. No vows. No altar. Just a promise that their worlds were no longer just a collision of meteorites, but a new world, together.
08:30 25th December 2025.
They walked out of the bedroom, like newlyweds, his arms snaked around her waist, scrunching the fabric of her shirt at the center of her stomach to keep her as close as physically possible, nose pressed to the crook of her neck. Her head leaned back to give him more room to breathe in her scent, while she laughed and laughed, because his beard tickled.
In the living room, a trail of wrapping paper laid scattered like breadcrumbs, leading to a little gremlin hungrily devouring another present. The windows were wide open and sunlight blasted in like some kind of an atomic weapon. She'd forgotten to shut the blinds the night before.
"Someone's found his presents." she said, turning to Reid. "You hurt?"
He flinches, as he head lifts from her throat — feet backing up to create a sudden distance between him and Anika. A man retreating into the shadows because a sharp hand has sliced between them. He nods, through a quiet hiss. “No. It’s okay.” Eyes linger on his arm and shoulder that'd been caught in the beams, smoking like he’s the coal. He can’t look at the window without burning out his retinas, so he focuses on Anika and Henry, looking at him. “I’m alright.” He smiles tightly at the boy, as the burns on his skin slowly fade.
Anika would notice how slow it is, and know he’s fallen back into bad habits.
Worried eyes studied the burn, "Baby, it's cause you ain't feeding."
But it’s Christmas. And Henry’s looking at him like he isn’t sure what'd happened. He's torn open all the gifts, even the ones without his name.
Reid shot Anika a look that says he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact in front of Henry. As soft as her voice had been, it’s truth. And the boy hadn’t needed to know what they were, even if Anika’s tattoo was drained of it magic since Oklahoma. Reid’s habits were different.
He knows he needs to stock up from the hospital more, but it’s a journey that takes time he’s busy spending with them.
Quietly, he murmured, “It’s okay.”
Henry noticed the shift between the two, and how Reid was now hunched, and small, angry bubbles had covered his upper arm. Presents left behind, Henry joined his parents in the shadowy corner of the room, wearing his truck pajamas, going on and on about kissing it better, and how he'd seen Anika kiss it better before.
"Why did the light hurt you?" Maybe, Henry thought, Santa could bring his daddy some medicine, for the bubbles.
The light, he says. Because I’m a thing of the dark, Henry.
Reid looked at Anika, as if to ask for a clever story to tell. But he isn’t sure what to say — it’s the holidays, it’s not a gift to know what lurks in the shadows. “I’m sensitive… that means my skin doesn’t like it…” A beat, “But we only talk about it between us, Henry. You can’t tell your friends.” He wouldn't usually be so blunt with it, but he didn’t know how to dull down the language for him.
He would lie to the boy, tenfold, if it meant he could skirt away from the details of the truth — it’s cruel to ask a curious boy to keep that kind of secret. He would barely understand what it means.
Anika laced her fingers with Reid's, squeezing tight to give him a semblance of reassurance. The truth was hard to say, especially chewed down and spit out in the form of something a three year old would understand.
"Maybe we can get you gummies for it."
What Henry was actually suggesting was — pills. The colorful gummy bears Reid and Anika got him, when he had a tummy ache. Sometimes he’d drag one of the kitchen chairs over to the counter and reach up into the cupboard above the sink, find where they’d hidden the small bottle, and sneak a couple when they weren’t looking. He was a sneaky kid, just as smart as he was troublesome.
Reid smiled. Because it would be nice if that ailment wasn’t so agonising. But he knew that it was necessary, to keep himself and everyone else, safe. He could do less damage, if he slipped; if he was limited to only the dark. The catch on the lockbox inside him is already broken enough. It’ll shutter entirely if poked the wrong way.
“What gifts did Santa bring you, hey?” A hand squeezed Anika’s back, as he glances to the open window, and then back to the boy on the floor, in the middle of the light. “Show us what you got.”
Anika remained beside him, where she belonged. Not in the light, not with a child they barely knew. With him. The man she chose to love. If the shadows were where he had to be, then that would be her home too.
The kid looked up, beaming with joy, holding up a blue truck to his guardians. "Look! Looook! Looook! Look!" It wasn’t really Scottie’s truck, but a small plastic doll steered the wheel, a cowboy hat, one she’d taken from another doll at the store, perched on its head. Anika thought that had to do it.
Henry made no difference between this one and the one Dana’s kids had. He jumped up and down, "Vroooommmm vroooooommmmm"
Reid laughed, looking at the truck, and Henry’s excitement like it was a gift all on its own. Then, he bowed his head to Anika, to kiss her temple, “You did good,” a quiet knowing that she’d put together something the boy would love.
He had one of his own; space socks on his feet, pulled up taut to the ankles.
He hates having to ask her, too. “Can you get the blinds?”
She nodded, already on her way to rid the room of any daylight. Henry didn’t mind the shadows. The sooner he grew comfortable in the dark, the less Anika and Reid would have to worry about him. The monster under the bed would be just another shadow he could befriend. When he grew up, Anika thought, he’d learn how to stab them too, to protect himself from the ones that wanted to hurt him. Before shutting them out completely, Anika peeked at the street outside, empty and vast, no cars, no people around. She liked it like that, peaceful.
"Better, baby?"
He nods, grateful for the understanding. It didn’t come with an argument, either. Christmas seemed to serve them well. Henry would figure it out when he got older — if he stayed with them, that long. If there was somewhere safer for him than two fractured pieces of glass. Reid rolls his shoulders back, allowing reddened flesh to fade as he steps forward into the shadows — he smiles over at Anika, jutting his head towards Henry’s mess of wrapping paper and toys, “Did Santa bring you anything?”
It's probably somewhere on the ground, by now. Since Henry can’t read labels.
"Santa's never been a big fan of me." Anika leaned a little closer to whisper in his ear, "Says I'm a naughty girl and all that."
A grin, as he reaches across to squeeze her against his side. “You are?” Under his breath, he plays into the teasing, "Then someone else has left you something.”
"Oh?" She said, fainting surprise, "And what's that?"
Her eyes drifted to the mess of wrapping paper and gifts scattered across the floor. Henry was driving his truck over a torn package, something darker and softer peeking out from underneath.
Anika turned back to Reid, cocking an eyebrow expectantly.
“Why don’t you go and look?”
She pulled the package beneath Henry's truck, the kid's lower lip puckering out at the intrusion. He had to find another place to ride his truck on, because that mountain of fabric was hers. It was a leather jacket — brand new and almost shiny black. Anika let out a small gasp of surprise, slapping a hand to her mouth, "You got me a new one? Where'd you get the mo— You stole that shit, Halstead?" A narrowing gaze, eyes that turned to slits, with no real malice behind her voice. Even if it was, stolen, she'd never return it. Finders, keepers.
Reid’s eyes roll — because Henry’s repeating shit, shit, with a maniacal laugh, and Anika hasn’t even noticed. She’s busy accusing him of theft.
“It’s yours.” Not stolen. And he’s about to drop the big ‘it wasn’t really santa’ bomb, for the sake of clearing his name: “I kept the receipt, in case you wanted to exchange it.”
Quickly, Anika shoved her arms through the sleeves, fixing the collar around her neck where her long hair had been trapped. Reid had never seen a smile quite that big on her face. Not even, when he did his version of a proposal and slid a ring on her finger. Then she'd looked more in awe. Now, she was beaming, her smile all teeth.
"It's pretty great, yeah? It fits nice?"
She didn't need a mirror when Reid was standing right in front of her. She liked seeing her reflection in his eyes.
A moment to smile before he’s turning his attention to the boy running a truck up Anika’s leg. “Henry, Anika has a naughty mouth, don’t say that.” The boy went back to car noises, as he banged the truck on every surface he could reach.
"Hey, I ain't your highway, kid." She nudged the truck, shifting out of its reach. "Climb over on your dad."
It slipped — dad. As deserving of the title as Reid was, she'd never called him that. Henry had a dad and he was dead. The kid didn't seem to notice when exactly the man had turned from Reid to Dad, but Anika shot her fiancé an apologetic look, and a small shrug that meant 'sorry—accident.'
Reid stares at her, swallowing down that unease. An ache in a heart that did not beat. The smile left his eyes, but he nods his approval at how she looks in the jacket. Distracted, suddenly — by the boy, and Anika’s skewed perception. Henry had a dad, and he was a different kind of dead.
“Yeah, it does fit nice.” A truth, as Henry uses his leg as a racetrack next. In the same moment, he pulls Anika toward him, by the cuff of her new leather, “You look hot, actually.”
Anika stepped over Henry, as though he was a chihuahua, wrapped her arms around her fiancés neck to pull him in for a sweet kiss. "Thanks, Santa." She murmured softly. "You keep being good to me, and I might let you in my bed later."
“Might?” Playful. Teasing. He nips at her lip, whilst a truck is wheeled up his thigh and over his hip. His gaze wanders down to the little man jeering excitedly over gifts. He pokes Henry, ruffling his hair gently, “You hear this? Hope you’ve got room on your floor.” A joke that the boy was too young to understand.
“You hungry?” he asks, then turns to Anika again — mouth capturing hers, to add: “I’ll make something."
There was a blooming bruise on Dana Summers’ cheek. A cigarette hung between bony fingers, the butt stained red with dollar store lipstick, some of it smeared across her front teeth, too. She was skinny, like a starved-up dog, Anika figured there wasn’t much food in her belly, let alone in her fridge.
That angry boyfriend of hers liked to leave his mark, then fuck off for a couple of weeks.
Mary-Beth and Lily Mae were as blunt as any five-year-olds, asking how their mommy got hurt.
"Tripped and fell, girls. Ya know your mama’s clumsy," Dana said, waving a thin hand, smoke trailing every movement. "Ain’t nothing to worry about."
They trusted that broken smile of hers, and skipped over to the fridge to grab sodas. Reid had made sure they had everything for tonight; soda, juice, candy, chips. Anika didn’t know kids needed that much junk. But Henry, grinning like a monkey on crack, because he got to stay up past his bedtime and watch the fireworks, seemed determined to eat all of it.
Anika shot Dana a look. "I can kick his ass, you know?"
She could do a lot more than that.
"Make him pay for what he did to you."
"Naah, I'm fine." Dana didn't like to whine, she'd gathered, a strong woman, independent and tough. Stupid too, if she was letting that asshole turn her into a punch bag. Then she killed the life out of that cancer stick, smoke coming out of both nostrils as she eyed the ring on Anika's finger, "You got hitched over the weekend?"
It made Anika look down at it, too.
"Yeah, something like that. It ain't anything big, just—" Somehow, she struggled to find the words that described the turbulent, strange and wonderful relationship between her and Reid. "—He loves me, I guess."
To Dana Summers, that sounded like something out of a fairytale. There was no envy on her tongue, when she replied: "Yeah, he does."
They bumped shoulders. "Where is he anyway?"
Reid’s outside on the porch, trying to get phone signal. The New Years messages to his sisters won’t send, and he’s getting kind of sick of scrolling through previous messages, and overthinking how much they might want to talk to him. He’d given them his new number, a while back, and they’d dropped lines intermittently, checking in. Reid’s tried to keep his nose out of their business, because he’s not there.
Belle’s always quick to remind him about that, too.
He’d asked them, when they’d been in Oklahoma if they wanted to fly out and visit. He’s glad they never did, now. Because that’d been a shitshow in itself. And Belle would have picked a fight with Anika, had she been around.
His signal refuses to pick up — and when it does, it never delivers his texts. They’ve talked since being in Texas; argued, mostly. Unbeknowst to Anika, who doesn’t need to know the animosity between Halstead siblings; she can’t help. A lot of their warfare, is because they feel like they chose Anika, over family. Reid would say that there’s not a choice, and there’s nothing to choose between.
Reid won’t expect Rose to forgive him, or Lis for what happened to their parents, either. But he’s been trying to keep the thread between them, alive.
What he does know — over the last months, is that Lis got out of rehab, and she seems to be doing real good. And Rose doesn’t answer many of his messages on a good day, between hating on him and reminding him of every failure. But she does get back to him, eventually. He can’t get a single letter through to her, now.
Then he tries Birdie.
Nothing. Failed to send.
Aurelia.
Same thing.
Then he tries to call — first Lis, then Belle, Birdie, Croft, Aurelia, Colt, Cam —
Dialling tone; unable to connect the call.
Reid steps further afield, off the porch, until he’s a shadow in the field ahead. Full bars. Yet —
“What the fuck?” To himself, as his eyes snap up to a firework let off prematurely. A single, red flare of spray in the distance, before it disappears into the darkness again. Is it his phone? He pockets the thing, and marches back inside. It’s stuffier in the ranchhouse, where Dana’s brought her cooking over, and kids run rampant on the floor, excited about showing off their Christmas gifts.
Everytime he glances Dana, he gets a little more agitated thinking she’s sharing a space with a fuck who wants to decorate her black and blue. He’s asked Anika if he should take care of it, and she’s always said she would, but Dana’s forever putting her off the idea. When he smiles at them now, walking through the door, it’s with a tightness to think that there’s more than worry in his chest.
Probably stupid, he thinks. As he crosses the entryway to kiss Anika softly, and nod a greeting back to Dana. Polite. Sharp. A little irritable, but nothing that he wants to let on. “Something smells good in here, Dana.” It’s the food. It’s always her food. Because it’s never Anika cooking.
"Sneak a piece, before those kids devour whats left." Dana said, looking over her shoulder at Reid.
“Sure will.” He replies, taking stock of the cornbread on the table.
Anika knew when something was wrong, without even so much as glancing at his face. There was a tightness to his voice, lacking its usual warm charm and humorous sarcasm that laced almost each word, always.
"I'll be back." She exused herself, as she hurried after her fiance, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, when she finally caught up with him. "You wanna tell me what's going on, baby?"
He isn’t sure it’s anything, except having to dwell on past mistakes. And he reaches up to lace his fingers through the hand over his shoulder. Turns towards her, as he picks at the cornbread, “Can I borrow your phone?”
She frowned, "Answer my question first."
In the corner of the kitchen, between the fridge and the sink, Anika leaned back against the countertop, studying Reid's face with an intensity he knew all too well.
"I can’t get hold of my sisters.” Anyone, in fact. His face said he’s worried but not enough to derail the evening. He’d just feel better trying to call them again, probably. “It's probably nothing.” Assuring, the both of them.
She hadn't heard from them either. Mostly because Halstead women avoided her like the plague. "Here, try mine." Anika gave him her phone, glancing past his shoulder at the kids munching on more of Dana's dinner. They seemed to be doing fine, without them. So she stole another moment — "You tried Birdie? Maybe she can tell you where they're at."
He had tried both Birdie and Croft. Twice.
Nothing.
Silently — despite the unease, he thanks her for the lack of argument about the phone. And scrolls for names in her contacts.
Puts it to his ear.
Dialling tone.
Beneath his breath, he bites back the curse before it breaks free. There’s children around and he isn’t Anika — they don’t need to hear that, even in the excitement of New Years. Offering it back to her with a frown, he’d not thought much of him having a busted phone, but Anika’s, too? He’s got half a mind to ask for Dana’s next, in case they’ve forgotten to pay the phone bill.
He’s rationalising, and they both know it.
"Still nothing?"
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. “Service might be out or something.”
Silence. Dana came over to grab a beer from the fridge, opening her mouth to say something but then quickly deciding not to. Anika's head bowed slightly to her chest to peer at Reid through furrowed brows.
"You think something's wrong?" He looked like it — those deep, prominent lines on his face, around his eyes and between his brows. He was worried.
“I guess I’ll have to try again later.”
He has no reason to think anything’s wrong. But he doesn't like the not knowing. For all he knew, a Texas windfall took down a pylon and there’s shoddy signal. Even if it’s showing him bars. He shakes his head of the frustration, and tries to put the whole thing aside, at least for tonight. He doesn't want to be responsible for Dana and her kid’s thinking they’re inhospitable.
He dislikes that Anika can read him as easy as she can, though. And he pulls a smile back onto his face, nodding towards the cornbread he’s yet to touch. “Do me a solid, and eat this for me.” It’s not bad, but Reid’s found that certain foods — especially the stodgy, breaded kind, taste more like chewing on a dish sponge.
Mossy eyes followed Reid as their giggly boy wrapped small hands around his legs, tugging at his joggers and dragging him into their mess of scattered toys and crumbs of junk food.
Reid puts on the boyish smile so quickly, he might’ve convinced someone who didn’t know him that there’s nothing else on his mind, besides racing trucks and talking about when the fireworks start.
Anika shoved a large piece of cornbread into her mouth and unlocked her phone. She tried Lara’s number again, firing off a couple of texts while Dana watched her curiously.
"Everything okay with you two?" she asked.
Anika nodded, "Yeah, he's just worried 'bout his sisters. They ain't picking up his calls." she said, tapping on her screen. A sudden blue glow licked her face and a loud ping drew both their eyes to the phone.
A message made it back.
'signals weak af. hello?' Lara texted.
'you ok?' Anika typed back, 'reid said no one’s picking up. you seen his sisters?'
'we’re fine? it’s starting to snow. i haven’t seen them. its like everything is on the fritz'
A sigh of relief left Anika's mouth, and she was off — shoving the phone in Reid's hands, forcing him to read the exchange. "There's a snow storm or something, I told her to keep an eye out for them."
Snowstorm, in Port Leiry?
“Since when did they get snowstorms?” He muttered, mostly to himself. Anika wasn’t a native, and Reid’s see the power of weather made into weapons. They’d learned from the hurricane, all about sudden shifts in the natural order. But relief doesn’t settle for long, as his eyes glance at Anika and Lara’s exchange. “Hey — thanks. Tell Croft thanks, too. From me.”
But she already knows he is. Grateful.
Her hand rose up to meet his cheek. A smile, soft and reassuring, forming on her lips. "It's fine. It ain't a big deal. " But it was, to him. Worried when he did, even if he didn’t want to.
Her phone went back in her pocket. He'll try texting them again, shortly. And hope that in the meantime, someone can gets eyes on his sisters. Even though, it’s nobody’s job — but his, to take care of them. He’d done a shitty job of it thus far. Reid doesn’t want to keep the streak hot.
"It's just a little snow, baby. They're fine." There was no way for her to know that. Anika only hoped that whatever was happening in Port Leiry, stayed there, and didn't threaten to touch them.
She’s probably right. They’ve had snowfall. But he doesn’t remember the signal cutting out so severely. Maybe they were just ignoring him, for the most part. Between throwing Henry up into the air, and saying that he’s a firework, and throwing Anika a look that she knew all too well, he shifted them back to the moment. “Who wants sparklers?”
Dana, who lived on the neighbouring ranch, next to the only market for miles had stopped by for coffee. She’d cornered Anika once while she was grocery shopping, asked her to read the expiration date on a can of beans she was holding. Said she’d forgotten her glasses at home.
A single mother of two girls. Anika only knew that because Dana’s mouth ran like a mill. Harmless farmer girl, the hunter had decided. Too young for two kids, but who the fuck cared? The girls were like two tiny grenades. Who else would they take after?
“You doin’ anything for Thanksgivin’ with the boys?” Dana asked, fishing another cigarette from a half empty pack.
Anika didn’t own a calendar. Barely glanced at the one on her phone. Time didn’t mean much to her. Reid had an eternity ahead of him, and she was living on borrowed minutes already. The only one time mattered to was Henry. Bath time. Dinner time. Play time. Shit time.
Well, poop time. She wasn’t allowed to say shit anymore.
“I ain’t much for holidays,” she said, brushing it off quick.
Dana squinted at her, “Yeah, you don’t look the type. But boys gotta love pies, don’t they?”
Dana didn’t know the only pies Reid cared for came soaked in blood.
Anika reached over, stole a cigarette from the pack on the table, and kept her eyes on the yard. Dana’s girls were chasing Henry, trying to jab his ass with a long stick. He was laughing like crazy.
She’d never heard him laugh like that.Not even when Reid tossed him into the air at night, fresh from the bath.
Anika had learned a few things about kids.Mostly how not to kill them.
“This one? No. He eats chicken wings straight outta the fridge.”
Dana barked a laugh. “Hell, you raisin’ a pit bull or what?”
19:35. 27th November 2025
In a couple of hours, the stench of sweat had followed Dana out the door, along with the two bullies in braids and skirts. Henry had taken a slice of the pie she’d left behind and was crouched under the table, stuffing his tiny face. That was where he liked to lie and watch TV, chin propped on his hands like some feral little thing. Was that normal? Did kids do that? Anika caught herself asking that question at least seven times a day. She was starting to think she was going insane.
“Hey,” she said, nudging the table leg with her boot. “Give me some of that pie you got under there.”
“No,” he said, mouth full.
Henry was about to find out just how thin his adoptive parent's patience was. A silver fork gleamed in the darkness beneath the table, then stabbed the pie like a killer in the night. Kid let out a whiny cry. Most of the time, Anika and Henry looked less like a mother and son, and more like siblings. She'd forgotten what that felt like.
"Henry, you gotta start sharing. I don't want you being an asshole."
"What's an asshole?" he asked, through dramatic sobs.
It’s a greeting Reid hadn't expected when a foot nudges the ranch house door open. “We try not to say those words, Henry.” Evidently, he’s not got the most ideal influences.
Reid has to stifle the laugh, still, as he places the paper bag of groceries on the sideboard. Mild bewilderment stares at Anika and a toddler underneath the dining table. “Even if there’s good pie on the line.”
He assumes it’s Dana’s. And the second clue that says she’s been by today, is the mess the place is in; the kind only children launching toys like missiles could create. Third — and most obvious— hint is that neither Anika or Henry can make baked goods.
They’re still managing the animosity between them, where Henry is concerned. Conversations that never get finished, and neighbours that force them to wind stories tighter and tighter, until it’s choking the truth.
He hadn’t been gone long. A desire to make a dinner for them that will never be a thanksgiving spread, but something to repaint the holiday in less misery for Anika. Something less awful for Henry to recall, too.
He fixes a smile, and closes the front door.
Reid has a smaller, grey refrigerator bag hanging off his hand. It’s a new habit, brought on by the necessity of their isolation. There’s over a dozen medical centres in Dallas, and it hadn’t taken too much trial and error to find a decent contact, willing to take a risk and supply a steady flow — they’ve learnt that low profile is making sure there’s as little evidence they’re in city as possible.
Thanksgiving needn’t be another shit memory for Anika, if Reid had left a trail. He won’t make the Denver mistake again.
He puts it down on the dining table above them, so he can tap Anika’s foot with his own. “You two finished yet?” Messing with pies, or whatever they’d gotten up to in his absence.
Mossy hues found him the second the door cracked open. There was nothing she wanted more than his eyes on her. If there was anyone who could make her smile just by standing there, it was Reid.
“If you’re asking about the pie,” she said, “I hope for Henry’s sake there’s a piece left.” Her voice turned vicious in the same breath she slipped under the table, right by the kid’s ear. “Or else.”
Henry yelped, dropped the plate where the last piece of pie was hiding, and crawled out from beneath the table, straight into Reid's legs.
His failed escape made her burst into laughter. “Where d’you think you’re goin’, you pie thief?”
Reid reaches down to run a hand through Henry’s hair; it’s getting long, and he should get it cut. “Quick Henry, take the pie and go.” He murmurs playfully, encouraging the kid to dash in the opposite direction.
And Henry did just that, ran like his life depended on it. A flash of blonde in a sloppy bowl cut was the last thing Anika saw before he disappeared around the kitchen corner and into the hallway.
“I’ll distract her.” He adds, sending a wink at Anika like a gunshot. He’s soon there, feeling the laughter rumble up from her belly as he pulls her out from beneath the table.
He’d like to keep hearing that laugh, until the end of days.
“Is this what our life’s like now? Trading pie for fifteen minutes alone?” Her hand looped around his neck and dragged him down until their lips meet. Laughter spilled from both their mouths, forming a river of soft noises, rumbling and going down their throats. Filling themselves with each other had been something they've grown quite good at. “How long d’you think we’ve got before he comes back? Think you can get your pants off fast enough?”
“Do you hate that?” He asks, fearing the real answer. It’s hasty, and hot — heated in the knowing that their time is dictated by a toddler on the loose. Reid’s smile is devilish. They only needed to be loosened at the zipper, before she’s soon getting her answer.
Hasty fingers worked on his clothing, dragging pants and briefs down to his knees, while letting him take care of hers. She gave no answer to his question, just pressed her lips to his hard and bruising. That'd shut you up.
She’s always got the most callous way to never have to answer his questions. But they’re in the worst position to argue when he lifts her up, and lowers her down, slowly. The clock is ticking, a little gremlin boy could scamper back at any moment.
Once they’re comfortable, it’s anything but slow.
Fifteen minutes seems like a lifetime, when the dining table creaks — under a steadying hand refusing to break momentum. Kisses that swallow moans, and a heartbeat hammering heavy enough for two. Reid’s mouth dips to the crevasse at her throat, and he feels his teeth graze her skin whilst they quickly work themselves to an end.
He bites, just as their hips stutter.
It’s electric — a fight they’ve stopped having, for the most part. A monstrous desire that they’ve —he, has learned to balance.
Then there’s a squeal, and Reid pulls his mouth away like a dart, eyes snap to the door. Dark gaze lands on Henry, staring at them from across the room. Fuck. A tongue tries to wipe away bloodstained lips — and he attempts to casual unbury himself from Anika, whilst hastily dragging their pants up. “Henry… little man, it’s okay. Alright? We were just playing —”
Playing what, she almost said, hide and fuck?
Reid’s broad frame threw a shadow across her chest, half hanging out of a shirt torn at the shoulder. Henry hadn’t seen the worst of it. Still perched on the edge of the table, Anika peeked over Reid’s shoulder at Henry’s scrunched up face.
A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it, slipping past lips pressed tight in a losing battle.
“Kid, close your eyes,” she said through a fit of chuckles.
Henry squeezed his eyes shut so hard his whole face turned red. Then he slapped his small hands over them, like he was hiding from the monster under his bed.
Fuck. It repeats in Reid’s head, like they’ve just committed a crime. In some ways, they had. Zipper and button done back up, and a sleeve that wipes frantically at a mouth still tasting of Anika. He looks at her, as if she might actually have an idea about how to play this down.
She didn't.
He realises quickly that she finds this a lot funnier than he does. Is it? Should he laugh, and pretend that they were just messing around, and Henry caught them in a game?
“You can open them now. It’s alright. We’ve finished.” He clears his throat and makes space between them again. Anika adjusted her shirt and hopped off the table, ruffling Henry’s blonde hair with a final, breathless laugh before leaving the two of them alone.
He’s plucking at straws, because he’s yet to know if the boy understands. “Did you eat all your pie?”
“I want to play this game too,” Henry said, voice wobbling on the brink of tears and eyes, big like two full moons.
Reid laughs, an edge of nervousness creeping in. But he crouches down, to be closer to Henry’s height. “It’s a game for the grown ups,” he said, reaching forward to bring him in for a hug.
Henry popped his lower lip out. The tremble of his mouth said to Reid that something bothered him. “Did we scare you?” Did I?
Just a little, he wanted to say. Instead, Henry's small arms wrapped around Reid's neck and they stood like that for a while. Henry hadn't been held by his mother in almost eight months. He hadn't been kissed on the cheek by his father longer. What he wanted most in the world was simple — arms that stayed. In Henry's head, that was what the game was. A game of warm hugs. His lips no longer quivered, they stretched into a big smile, full of small teeth. "No, Anika says I have to be brave."
“You are very brave.” Reid answered him, in a voice that suited making a childlike promise. Softly, he stroked Henry’s head. He could only imagine what the boy had seen. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes soon.” The last thing he wanted was the boy to run into danger because Anika told him that bravery was how it had to be. “Me and Anika didn’t mean to scare you, okay?”
They pulled away just slightly, so Henry could look up at Reid. He nodded, then his face fell a little, chin down to his chest. "Are the bad people coming back?" he whispered.
The bad people.
Reid brushed long hair away from Henry’s eyes, and made sure that he was looking. “No. They’re gone. They aren’t coming back.” He wanted him to feel safe, and he didn't need Henry to have nightmares of what he and Anika got up to when he wasn't looking, either.
"Really?"
Henry didn't remember much of his time in the cold place (that was what he called it) but he knew what anywhere else was better. Even if this, here, wasn't home — it didn't feel cold.
“Yeah. Really.” Reid would never let people like that get hold of Henry. Whatever they planned with him, they would never get the chance to see it through. “It’s just us. Nobody else, okay?”
Anika might not like the way he said that.
Then, he ruffled the boy’s hair and stood back up. Encouraging him back towards his room, “You ready for bed, brushed your teeth?” He expected to hear what story he wanted tonight, and who he wanted to read it to him.
Henry liked to turn the pages for Anika, whilst she held it in one hand. And Reid liked to watch them, from the other side of the room, when they were like that.
"But I don’t wanna go to bed," Henry whined softly.
It was new, this thing where he bargained for a little more time. Most nights it ended the same way — Henry passed out on the couch, toy soldiers and cars with barely any wheels left scattered around him, the TV still blaring some ridiculous kids’ show. The last time Anika found him like that, there’d been a weird animated pickle man on screen.
"Well, you gotta," she said, standing in the doorway, "’Cause you’re a kid, kid."
Anika was leaning against the frame like a one handed bad character in a storybook, that showed up just to ruin the fun.
“Hey, little man, you’ve got time for a story. Just get tucked into bed, first.” Reid encouraged with a smile. Poking Henry’s side playfully, he kept the tone light. Even when he looked up at Anika and subtly indicated for her to say something helpful, too. Or offer to read the book.
Anika looked like he was expecting the world out of her. She'd turned into a professional bedtime story reader. Could she make actual use of that skill and start getting paid? Maybe she could read to old people at nursery homes. No. No way. "Come on, kid. I got a new one for you tonight." Her voice echoed in the hallway, as they walked away. "It's about this dog that gets taken away by these real bad people. There's other dogs too, and it's really cold."
She only remembered that it must've been her birthday, because it was the month of December, and because Reid was hovering over her like her mother used to, many winters ago. Barely awake, eyes squinted at her boyfriend — the dead man, who still remembered birthdays. Or so she thought. Maybe he just remembered hers, because she was now an inseparable part of him.
A groggy sound left her dry mouth, like a dragon woman who did not wanted to be woken up.
"You look creepy when you smile like that."
Was there more than a toothy clown grin? Was he hiding a present behind his back? She'd fucking kill him if he pulled out a box and yelled surprise. The only thing worse than that would be a fucking cake.
Suddenly wary and afraid of what today might offer, Anika rubbed the sleep from her eyes and pulled herself up into a sitting position.
Knowing it provoked a reaction, only made him smile more. Reid hadn’t made extensive plans for a birthday Anika didn't even want to celebrate, but the least he wanted to do is acknowledge it. Fill it with little tokens of things that she likes — or make new memories she’d have that didn’t make her so dismissive of it.
“Happy Birthday, my love.” He kisses her, whilst she’s still groggy — and between them is the result of his morning misadventures.
It'd been years since the last time she heard those words. Although she knew they were coming, nothing could prepare her for the wave of nausea they brought over her. A memory unfolded, like the pages in a book, and she was ten, or maybe twelve, blowing off the candles on a red velvet cake, while everyone around her clapped and cheered. Make a wish, Anika. Her father's voice was a distant, forgotten sound. She wished for stupid things, like getting a dog. Having her parents not yell at each other.
What would she wish for now?
Anika smiled into the kiss.
A tray of pancakes, berried and sauced. A coffee he’d remade four times (he drank the first three, out of principle of wastage) until he got the milky heart shape on top at least somewhat distinctive and there’s an artistic rendition of Anika herself, as drawn by a budding new crayon maestro Henry. He said he wanted to give it to Anika in the morning, so here it is.
Scribbled hair, and a pink face, coloured in five different shades — a Picasso-style uneven eyes, and a red lips drawn so wide, she might rethink her phrase about creepy smiles. It’s cute — and it’s addressed to ‘Ani’, and a smaller, out of line addition of ‘ka’ too far right. Reid had watched Henry, with his tongue poking out sketching it carefully for her. He’d tried to sign his name in the corner, too.
"Is that for me?" She pointed at the breakfast laid out like from a magazine. Her finger dipped into the syrup, then she licked it clean. "You really did all that for me?" For that stupid birthday.
“Well I didn't do it for the ghost.”
It was delicious, both the sight of Reid beaming over something as silly as a date on a calendar, and the coffee he’d clearly fussed over for a while. Anika was glad there was no cake, and no surprise shouting. No people hiding behind doors waiting to jump out. Not that they had friends out here. Just Henry.
Reid had thought about what Anika might want for weeks. He had no idea what the woman who asked for nothing wants. She always wanted things that couldn’t be purchased. He considered waking her up earlier, with something that might stir a less dragonite response.
But Henry in the other room might have thrown a spanner in the works, if he wandered in asking about his birthday drawing for Anika.
Sticky fingers found Henry's drawing. It had syrup stains all over it now. Is that what I look like, to him? It was impressive, actually, that a three year old could draw a stick figure with that much hair.
"How'd you remember this? My birthday?"
“Same way that you shouldn’t forget it.” He sat down at the end of the bed, “Food’s gonna get cold.” It was always better warm, and steaming.
She popped a blueberry in her mouth. Then stuffed another one in his. Her fingers danced across his jaw, warm like sunlight through the window. "I don't like my birthday, baby. It reminds me—" That I shouldn't be alive. "—of my sisters." Sad eyes dipped down to the scattered fruit on her plate. "And my mother." Her father purposely left out. She didn't feel anything for him anymore.
“And that’s not a bad thing.” A hand skirted along her wrist, where it rested on his face. It came out quieter, because he never wanted to rip open a wound — and never on her birthday. “You don’t talk about them, much.”
She fell quiet, for a moment. Their silence had always felt comfortable, yet now it felt stuffy with ghosts.
He thought of his sisters often. Maintained the thread between himself and Port Leiry, when they texted. Rose was mad at him — and spoke in short bursts, and Lis never picked up. Reid knew why; he was here with Anika and Henry, in Texas. He wasn’t with them, after hiding his death for years. “It doesn’t have to just be that. It can be you and me, too.” Reid added, a soft but solemn smile. He wasn’t sure what ghosts he was stirring, but he hoped they weren’t disturbed from their resting place. “— And Henry.” Maybe.
“I never talk about them,” Anika murmured. “Like you never talk about yours.” It was a sad truth. “Like… Henry probably won’t ever want to talk about his parents.” She was sure he remembered them. Little fragments of a world he’d once known and loved.
He chewed on the blueberry, and it was like saltash on his tongue. "It’s different.” His were alive, and resentful of his choices. Most of which came from the desire to protect them.
A subject change then, because cowardice took root; he wouldn’t linger on topics that hurt them both — they were the kind of talks unsuited for birthdays. Reid gestured to the colourful, creative sketch. A gleam of pride in his gaze, “He was so excited for you to see this.”
Their eyes lingered on the wobbly stick figures living on the page — a moment long enough to appreciate childish naivety. Then she spoke: "We don't even know his birthday." Anika couldn’t wash the darkness out of this day. But maybe she could keep Henry’s from becoming the darkest day of his life
"What if—" she said slowly, thinking it through as she spoke. "What if we make one up? A date for him. A day where he blows out candles, makes a wish, and…doesn’t grow up hating himself for it.”
He smiled, because it was an idea he didn’t think Anika would be brave enough to voice. Reid had thought about it, before. Going back and hunting down records at Oklahoma City Hall; birth certifcates, and copies of a life that they didn’t deserve to be a part of. Just so they might know.
“I think he’d like that.” What kid didn’t enjoy being gushed over, at that age? Pain was still confusing to the mind, and easily smothered with adoration and distraction. It was the getting older part that laced bitterness into memory. “But that doesn’t have to be done right now. Today’s your day.” He kissed her nose gently, and she laced arms around his neck, stealing a kiss from his lips, while he was still busy talking. “I have a surprise for you, after you eat your breakfast.”
Anika wrinkled her nose, "A surprise? Good or bad one?" She'd been too used to the latter.
He wasn’t sure yet.
Reid isn’t an artist, and he hopes Anika knows that, because the kitchen was in utter disarray. Cans of spray paint, and bundles of tape, off-cuts and dried — mostly ruined paintbrushes hang over the kitchen counter. It wasn’t quite finished, he wanted Anika to help him.
He figured that he would sort out the mess later as Reid took her hand, and led her into the thick of it.
Bare feet padded across the room. "What's all that?" she asked, mouth hanging out in a perfecty shaped 'O'.
A canvas sits on an easel, a background sprayed in blues, and greens; shades of their eyes, and colours of life. Tape was haphazardly ripped to strips and stuck in shapes — the ones he’d forgotten to peel off when he was trying for ‘clean lines’.
He’d watched a video on stencils and sprays — it was his best chance of executing his idea.
“I wanted you to have something, from me.” Because he couldn’t give her much; a dead thing; he didn’t know if he had a soul, even. He’d have given it to her though, he thinks, if he did.
"So you tried to paint?" she asked, dumbfounded.
She wouldn’t know what to do with roses, or chocolates; he’d gift her those anytime. She wasn't one for expense or glamour; it was always things not easily acquired.
Maybe if he had any talents to show, she'd appreciate the gesture, but he’d butcher a serenade, and a slow dance to some romantic song would only end with her stumbling and laughing the whole time.
“I’m not so good with the paints — so I uh,” He holds up ripped stencils that he’d damaged unsticking them from the canvas. Maybe it’s a stupid idea he’d put together overnight because Anika is a hawk, and notices everything.
Like how clammy his hands had become when he worried the stencils between his fingers.
In messy, frayed colours adorning the canvas, is two hands holding. Ringed, and a little darker in places — one of his had a scar now, and Anika had lost the one that bore hers. They each only had one that he’d tried to capture on the canvas. Used layers of stencils atop each other, over and over until the details were just small lines printed.
He thinks the idea is there.
She’d have asked questions, if he’d have done it sooner. Not that anything could stop her from asking now. Reid didn't seem prepared. But when was one prepared for Anika's type of questioning?
"When did you even do all this? It ain't bad or anything, just—" Anika stumbled over her words, "—wait, is this my sketch?"
If she looked closer, she would see it’s the details that he wanted her to see, really. If she ran her fingers over their hands, she’d notice that something was cut into the canvas, raised up from the surface — two things, actually.
And her sketchbook — the one that had caused an argument a while back, lay open next to the easel, with a page torn out.
Because Reid had borrowed it to smelt a replica of her design — a hunters talent he hadn’t exercised in years. Dark wood, and blackened metal, molded, sanded and polished so it looked like lightning striking through the centre in a loop; two of them, embedded into the canvas for Anika to pull.
Rings that matched.
It could mean whatever she wanted it to. It could be a waste of his time — because he’d ruined her artist corner, and defiled her sketchbook without asking.
If there’s anything Reid has learned, it’s that Anika doesn’t like to be taken off guard.
But she must have really been shocked, because for a long moment there wasn’t a single peep out of her mouth.
She stared at the canvas like it was a monster she couldn’t bring herself to shoot. The same way Reid had once stood at the threshold of their relationship — a monster she couldn’t bring herself to hate, or one she had tried, desperately, to hate and failed.
To her, he hadn’t been a monster for years now. She loved him with every ounce of her tired heart. And he loved her, she thought, he really must've, if he was hiding rings inside a painting. That was a funny thing to do for someone you didn't love.
Say something, she told herself, anything.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing at the rings sticking out of the canvas, like she had absolutely no idea what those were.
He swallows, because he’s suddenly doubting everything he’s done. It's too much. She's not ready — she thinks he wasted hours of his night, spray painting stencils until hands looked somewhat recognisable. He’d been careful when arranging the rings, to try and make them look like part of the image.
“For you, Anika.” Reid says, “You and me.”
He can’t ask her for forever; he won’t ask her for forever, because it’ll destroy them.
But he can ask her for as long as they have.
She glanced at him and wondered what she was expected to say. She was wary of saying the wrong thing with no immediate means of escape, save hurling herself into the oncoming traffic outside.
"Those are rings."
“Perceptive, Booker.”
What was Reid expecting, really? Anika thought he’d been trying to trick her when he’d ran her a bath. Everything felt like it had an ulterior motive to her.
Quieter then, "Are they supposed to stay there?"
Reid turned to her, teeth stabbing a lip like he’s trying not to laugh. It came across amused — it hid the worry in which he believed this might have been a mistake. “Do you want them to stay there?” Evidently, that hadn’t been how he planned it. But maybe she’d pluck them out when she was ready to. Slightly more informative, he pulled at her drawing, “I thought we could wear them.”
Her eyes dipped to his lips, fighting not to break into a smile. Her own mouth curved, following his head. "Not really a jewelry person, me."
Because she'd never had anything like that to wear. Nothing her father had left her, before he died. No family heirloom, no pendant passed down from mothers to their daughters, no charm bracelet, though she'd always hated those dangling from her sisters wrists and the whining that followed when a charm slipped loose and disappeared into the ground.
She could wear it around her neck, like widows do when their partner is dead, he supposed. It wouldn't be inaccurate. Reid wants to say ‘Okay’ and leave it there. Just to see if she’d walk away, and they’d forget all about the graffiti and the rings he crafted.
“You could be.” He muses, like there’s still an option to say no.
She could be. He wasn't wrong. Before him, she never thought she could become the person she was now.
"Yeah? Better find out if it fits then."
That made his smile widen.
“I love you.” and when he next moved forwards it was to gently slide her one out of the slot in the canvas. He held out his other hand for her to take. “Can I?”
Anika said it back — I love you, three stupid, little words that made her heart jump into her throat. "Careful, it's my only hand," she teased, "You'd run out of options if my fingers are too fat on this one."
She put her hand in his, an impulsive decision sprung from her love for the man who stayed up all night doing arts and crafts for her. Then she waited with quiet expectation, like something spectacular was about to happen, like lying in the grass and waiting for a meteor shower, hoping to catch a shooting star as it passed across the sky.
His hands were steadier than he thought they’d be, thumb gliding over the ring he’d polished for hours, so the details weren’t scuffed. He could hear the drumming of her heart, as the pulse vibrated under his fingers.
He slipped the ring onto her finger, and let it settle there, fearing everything might disappear in his grasp the moment he realised it fit. They didn’t say anything, as Reid softly traced the back of her hand with his thumb, picturing Anika at the altar with him; a dream he’ll likely never have. This is as close as they’ll get to a promise tied tight. She’ll still doubt him, even with a ring on her hand. She always would, he thought. Whilst he would always quietly know she deserved something better.
But he loved her, like a moth loves a flame.
"It's pretty, the ring." Her eyes traced every detail, as she muttered, "Where'd you get it?"
Did she think he’d stolen it?
“I made them.”
"You made them?" she slapped her words to his, stunned.
He made the rings, the same way he’d once made the hilts of bowies, and the shaft of a glock. Arrowheads had bred interest in self sufficiency. Reid could pour hot liquids into molds, at the very least; resin and hardwood weren’t difficult to acquire. They taught that in woodworking class, even.
Anika didn't have that experience. She knew how to carve wood, make bullets fit for a dead chest, sharp enough to pierce, but bending metal wasn't something she'd been taught, by Winston, or any of the others, Brotherhood or Fellows.
“It never seemed like diamonds were your style.” It had nothing to do with cost, but the woman who had to wear them; a jewel that didn’t sparkle so keenly as emerald did. Reid nodded to the folded up page by the canvas, splayed out and stained with paint spatter, “I used your instructions.”
"This? It was a stupid fucking thing, Reid—" A fantasy, that he was never meant to know. A what if. Something that she knew she could never have, a normal life, a house, a home, a dog or a cat, a photo of him kissing her cheek at sunset or something ridiculous like that, sitting in the corner of a coffee table.
They've tried to play house. It hadn't worked the way they hoped.
In the mess of her revelations, her smile saddened. "Why now?"
Because of Henry? Because Reid was planning on meeting the sun soon, and didn't want to leave her with nothing?
"I didn't mean to make this a big deal, that's why I got mad at you, when you went through my sketchbook, I never wanted you to see it."
Maybe it’s trivial to her. It's probably a dying tradition now, anyways; rings and vows. Reid can’t ask for the piece of paper, because he’s dead. And he can’t ask her to walk in the darkness with him — there had to be a line. “Hey — it’s okay.” Maybe he wouldn’t have had the design drawn up, but a sketchbook didn’t stop the act being the promise it was. This didn't need to be agonising for her.
But why now?
Because there’s never going to be a right time. They’ve fought each other, monsters, themselves — they've battled ghosts, and horrors enough that tomorrow isn't promised. “It’s not about the sketchbook.” His smile lifted in the corner, and it felt like the heat pressed against his hand. “I wanted to do this.” Long before Anika. Back when his life had been ahead of him, and boyish arrogance hadn’t doomed him. She’d made it seem possible, again. Even if it hurt that she’s quick to dismiss it as anything. “It was never stupid, and I can't promise you forever,” She knew what he’d meant — he’s never going to ask, because it’ll never happen. “But I want to do every day with you.”
Anika leaned closer until their foreheads were touching, and their mouths were just inches apart. "We are already doing every day, Halstead."
With or without a ring.
But she was quickly getting comfortable having it on her finger. It didn't feel foreign or strange. It felt just right. "Do I put the other one on you? Is that how it works?" Embarrassing, to not know how any of this was supposed to go.
“If you want to.” His tone shifts into something teasing.
She pulled back just enough to take the ring out of canvas. He was waiting for her. There was something so beautiful about that simple gesture, both frightening and overwhelming, that she almost rushed it — like she did with almost everything. But not him. Reid was patient with her, kind and gentle, and she wanted to give, at least some semblance of it back. So she slowly slid the ring onto his index finger, "This one?"
Reid bit back his smile, “Any finger you want.” He began, softly touching her wrist, “I might move it to the ring finger later; it’ll keep the flies away.” There was only one for him, and he wanted her to feel like it was known. It was the only finger he didn’t usually wear anything on.
Now, he’d wear this for her.
She laughed, "I'm real bad at this."
But she didn't want to be. So fingers quickly switched the ring from one finger to the one where it was supposed to be. Then she placed her hand next to his, and they both looked at the matching rings.
Was that it? Was it official now, that she was his, and he was hers, and no flies were to take them away from each other?
"Better?" she asked, "Do you not have some grand speech?"
She wanted to laugh, but she mustn't.
There’s no grand speech. He hadn’t had the foresight to know if she’d even get far enough to put the ring on. Unpredictably says she could have waved her sketchbook at him and started an old argument. The dark band made his flesh look paler — but it made the olive tones of hers look alive. He’s thankful she likes them, because there’s no artistry in him, as seen by his graffiti.
Her mouth is close enough to his to kiss — and when he breaches the space, lacing his hand through hers, he’s proud to say: “You know Anika Halstead has a ring to it.”
"'Anika Halstead'..could be worse, I guess."
She pressed her lips to his then, while the old refrigerator hummed around them and daylight had just begun to peek through the blinds in the kitchen, and that kiss held the promise of forever.
Henry’s asleep on the couch, belly down, arm hanging off the cushions. Little, stunted snores echo in Reid’s ears as he leans beside the boy, covered in felt pens streaks.
In the moment of quiet, where there is no childish chuckles, nor inquisitive questions fired off that he can’t answer. Reid wonders what the silence would feel like again. Him, and Anika — at each others throats, breezing through towns and cities they can never stay in for long enough.
Then he pictures it with Henry laughing in the backseat.
And he knows he’s in trouble.
11:45. 21st October 2025.
Toys put away, and Henry moved to his own room, in his own bed. He’s quiet when he slips inside the shared one. Anika under the covers keeps the space warm. It cools in his presence.
Even in her sleep, she knew when he was near. When his arms reached for her, her body instinctively nestled into his — face to his chest, an arm limp across his torso. It was as if nothing had tried to wedge itself between them. There was no right or wrong, just them, still very much in love with each other.
A hum of acknowledgement into her hair, as fingers softly ghost along her spine. The silence is a peace they often forget could be. Either in tension, or filled with a child’s demands — the quiet of them here, is simplicity.
They laid like that for an hour, maybe more, tangled up in each other like vines. Until Anika stirred awake, dragged from slumber by how hot it was beneath the covers, where sweat beaded at her collar. We need to talk, she thought, felt it pressed up against her ribs every time they touched. But she couldn't bring herself to speak. Not when she feared the words might break whatever fragile peace they’d managed to stitch together this morning.
How long could they keep doing this?
They’d become ghosts brushing past each other in the hallway, haunting the same house but not really living in it.
He'd like to freeze this moment, and frame it in a new light where words come easy between them. Cocked smiles that light up the room like fireworks set ablaze. Their fingers are rivers, hers the warm springs, and his the artic tundra.
There’s no keeping this in, when Reid already knows the words are knotted on his tongue. A soft, whispery sound in the dark, “We’re doing good with him, aren’t we?”
How could she be sure? Anika barely survived herself, on her own, all those years — how was she supposed to know bow to take care of another being? It wasn't something she was taught. Not something she learned in school.
"He's not ours, Reid." A reminder she knew, no matter how softly spoken, would hurt him. He was already getting attached to the kid. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."
It doesn't surprise him that she stabs a knife into his chest; the same arms that wrap lovingly around his chest as they do bleed it dry. “He’s not anyone else’s, either.” A thinly veiled truth, as he focuses on the fingers on her back. “It isn’t just you who doesn’t know, Booker. It’s us.” Reid expects he’ll only get hurt talking about this for too long. It’s anguish to allow himself the false hope that she might entertain his madness.
"You're doing a hell of a lot better, Halstead. You're— being a dad." And she didn't even know how to be a decent enough neighbor to this kid.
“I know I’m not his — I'll never be that. But what if we can give the kid a life, keep him safe?”
He knows it’s insane, and immoral.
But less so than abandoning a kid to a death sentence with those who would never know what he’s survived. Maybe there’s a better chance of some life, with two people who know how to face the monsters in the dark.
"You think we can keep him safe?" she asked.
Anika didn't know how safe this kid would be with people who hid their guns around the house, but something had been telling her for days that uncle Rainey was a lot less safe.
"Even if we do, Reid, I'm not— built up for this."
As though she has been made in a factory, assembled out of whatever scraps were left on the table. Whoever put her together forgot a few parts. There was nothing motherly about her.
It’s a low murmur, “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” They could take it one day at a time, figure it out — as he keeps promising.
"He doesn't like me."
A puff of a snort against her, “He likes Cap N’Crunch and waffles, of course he likes you.”
Anika wasn't sure if there was anything to like left in her.
"I burnt the fucking toast."
In the grand scheme of their fucking lives — “That’s not the end of the world."
She puffed out of her cheeks. "What am I supposed to do with it, Reid? Play fucking catch outside?"
He doesn't know what he's asking her.
And his silence — dragged on too long, is his mind picturing what it’s supposed to look like beyond tomorrow, and the next day, and in a year, two. When he’s old enough to realise that he’s endured more than any child should ever have to. It’s that conversation in an Oklahoma kitchen where Anika’s made her stance clear that she’s never wanted a role like the one that Reid’s asking her to step into.
It’s another way he can be selfish.
“No, I guess not.” Whispered in dejection. He can’t ask her anything more.
She couldn't play catch with him.
But Reid could. Reid wanted to play all sports known to mankind with this kid. If he wasn't chained by shadows at the wrists. Forced to live in the dark where no kid belonged.
The dark wasn't a playground. And he was no father, but in their silence, Anika realized something: "You look happy with him."
That didn’t change anything. He looked happy with her, too, he imagined. It didn’t always mean that there was good there.
They’ve been nasty things — can still be, if pushed to the limit.
“It doesn’t matter.”
"To me, it does." Because she lived to see that smile light up his face.
“What about what makes you happy?” His long dead dreams became long dead delirium, in the early hours. It’s not that kid in the other room that brings her joy, and he knows she’d fake a smile for him, because he’s opened up his lost desires and gave them a room. But he can’t do that for her.
Anika shook her head. "It's you. Seeing you happy, makes me happy, Reid. You know that."
It was why, she realized, the kid was still around.
“This is a little different to dinner dates, and barbecues, Anika.”
And didn't she know that? Anika didn't know shit about families, but what she knew was that, Reid had become her lover, her brother, her mother, the moon and stars.
"I know." She sighed.
He isn't sure she does. But when she's rested against him, tangled in blankets, he’s reminded that denying saying what they’re thinking has condemned them more than once — “You can't do this, just for me.”
Between the words, is exactly what he’s meaning. He’ll keep looking, if that’s what she needs from him. He’ll move past the grief bubbling in his ribs, escaping a locked chest.
Chin lifted, just enough to have gentle lips meet.
"I'll do anything for you."
He knows, and it’s terrifying.
Their lips brush. “Not if you’ll resent me for it.”
How could he even think that?
The man who saved her. She could never hate him.
A hand came up to rest against his cheek. "Don't be an idiot, Halstead."
By the first of November, the last of the leaves were gone. Night came earlier, around five o'clock the light was already fading. And by six, Reid did no longer have to hide inside.
They had no one to trust in this place, Anika thought, as she opened the blinds and watched the lights go up, one by one, in the distance, like fireflies.
Henry was wrestling with a pair of Reid's joggers, dragged all the way from the bedroom to the kitchen, like on some kind of treasure hunt. His entire head fit inside, plus both arms digging for something, and then coming out disappointed with a cry. Anika didn't know why they bothered buying him toys, when he enjoyed playing with clothes, forks, and plastic bottles.
He looked like he had a tent on his head.
It made her laugh, which she thought automatically made her a bad mother. Because a good one would tell him to stop, or reach for him, and pull him away from the joggers that could eventually suffocate him.
Reid had managed to sleep for three hours; from the late morning, until now. A balance between nourished and something less. Time seemed less sparing with a third person squeezing in the gaps of their quiet.
Being greeted with the sound of Anika’s laughter in the other room is worth the busier spells. He walks out in boxers and props himself against the doorframe so he can look across the kitchen.
A jogger monster is coming for Booker. He cracks a smile. "He gets the clothes stealing thing from you, by the way.”
"Yeah?"
He wasn't her blood.
Thank fuck for that.
Anika leaned her back against the counter, one hand on her hips, "I think he's just bored of the shit you got him." Meaning — dinosaurs and toy soldiers.
A fucking chocking hazard, if you asked her, but what the fuck did she know about three year olds and the shit they could or couldn't put in their mouths.
“He sees you wearing anything but your own stuff.” Reid counters, brushing over the explicit language — it’s a step down from her usual fucking sailors tongue. Then, to add: “I’ve seen you play toy soldiers with him. You know he likes it.”
Like a sudden brick wall between them, Henry chimed in: "Shit."
An innocent sound coming from a child lost in a pair of grey joggers. Reid’s eyes find the ceiling, just for a moment. Then they drop back down to her, once again.
It wasn't that Anika didn't like playing toy soldiers with him. The problem was that she did. "He doesn't know what my own stuff look like. It's just clothes." She said, trying to brush over the fact that Henry was turning into a tiny version of her.
They don't know how long they’re staying in Texas for, so Reid hasn’t brought up the subject of schools, or kindergarten. Between them, he doubts they’d cover half the necessary subjects to educate him into any half decent member of society. Neither of them set the bar high.
He can't help but smile at the wriggling boy, fumbling through the opening of sweats as if he could tunnel through them.
Reid’s there in the next moment, scooping Henry up, joggers included and tossing him skyward, just beneath the ceiling before catching him squealing, and giggling. “Gotcha, little man.” A hand pulls the pants from his head, to reveal a reddened, but smiling face. Henry reaches up, squirming in Reid’s arms. “Again, huh?”
The little boy hadn't asked about his parents in weeks. it seemed as though burnt toast and toy soldiers had taken his mind off the fact that he now appeared to be stuck in a house with two total strangers. Reid had stuffed his feet inside the new dad shoes rather eagerly, but Anika was still learning how to walk in hers. She often thought that the kid must notice the difference. And mourn the loss of what he remembered was home.
Was he old enough to know what loss was? Did he know what death had taken away from him and replaced with two incompetent monsters?
He called for his dad at night, when tossing and turning somewhere between four and five am, digging tiny heels into Anika's back and reaching grabby hands for something solid to hold. Daddy, he'd cry and find shelter in Reid's embrace. Brush a red, stuffy nose against his chest while strong arms soothed him back to sleep.
Reid might not have been his father, but he comforted him like one. He played with him like one. Up he went, caught in strong arms, as Reid looked over to Anika, smirking. “Does Anika want a turn?”
"No, Anika wants to shower."
If they didn’t have a small boy to keep an eye on, Reid would have asked if she wanted company in that endeavour. Childish laughter between his hands, reminds him that he can’t.
But he can tease and poke. “I think Anika does want a turn, doesn’t she, Henry?” The toddler is lowered in his arms and two sets of eyes find the woman on the other side of the room. He puts Henry down, playfully encouraging — “We should get her.” And the boy sets off running right at her.
It’s Reid’s turn to laugh.
And Anika's turn to run.
They chased each other — tiny feet following bigger ones, around the table, stumbling over toy soldiers. Laughter spilled out of them, filling up the cracks in the walls, and the ones in her heart.
"You two are so fucking annoying." she said, between laughs, then stopped before the fridge and held the door open like a shield. "Truce— for a snickers bar?" Emerging from the cold depths of the fridge, was a hand, offering candy for five minutes of quiet.
As if Henry would understand the concept of truce, and not simply reach wantingly for the chocolate. Grabby fingers murmuring for the bar in Anika’s hand.
“Now that’s cheating, Booker.”
She waved a middle finger, with a satisfied smile on full lips.
Henry was munching on the candy so eagerly, as if he hadn't been fed in weeks. They haven't forgotten have they? Reid made dinner last night, and she remembered the kid did put some in his mouth. There were those burnt toasts again the other day. He'd had plenty of food, hadn't he?
Reid shakes his head at the morning sugar rush that Anika is about to supply Henry with. If she wanted him settled, she’s gone the wrong way about it. He’ll miss his afternoon nap because he’s bouncing off the walls.
She thinks she’s so clever, bribing him to avoid playing chase. All she’s done is put fuel in the gas tank. Reid points a playful finger at her in return, “You can run that energy out of him now.”
"It's not like he's gonna eat the whole thing….right?"
Probably not without making himself sick.
“No, we’ll find it melted into the carpet later.”
Rather melted all around his mouth. A few minutes later they found him curled on their bed, with his arms spread wide above his head, and one sock missing. Chocolate all over his face. Some people would call this adorable, but Anika thought he looked like a tiny pig.
At least that meant they'd get an hour of quiet. She'd never known just how much she appreciated silence, before Henry came around. Hopefully she'll get to enjoy it soon, for more than an hour a day, when they find him a nice, little family.
A better one.
Maybe Bob and Kate Whatever would know where to get the kids clothes from.
"You think he needs shirts his own size and shit? What size even is that? Barbie doll size?"
If he didn’t know Anika better, Reid would think it’s a joke. “That’s not difficult, we’ll find him more clothes.” They’ll get him everything he needs.
"Where?"
His lip ticks up in the corner, “A store, like anywhere else. We can drive to the town just before closing,” he hesitates, before adding, “Or you can go earlier, and just look at the labels, it’ll say an age.” The more they talk about it, the more real it feels. It allows the madness to take root, just a little.
Anika scrunched up her face. A nose all in wrinkles. "Look at labels? What the fuck is it supposed to say? Dwarf? Are you kidding me? I don't know this shit." She wanted no part in shopping for tiny fuckers.
"I'm not sure how much money we got." Close to nothing, probably.
He crosses the distance, careful not to set off the bomb that is Anika Booker.
So Reid settled for a delicate kiss to her shoulder.
“It says ages, baby. We can get three, or four — whatever. See how that fits him.” Hard to guess without him trying it on, but even if it’s big, he can grow into it. “We’ll find some money, see if we have anything left on those cards we got in Oklahoma.”
Three or four. Must be on the label, Anika thought. This was an entire different world to her. She knew of monsters, and how to kill them. A world made out of black and white — where there was mostly darkness, and very little light. But what did she know of the world where shops had shirts with lebels three or four, and picture books with rabits on them, and backpacks in the form of a panda? Shit.
Henry stirred on the bed next to them, and she lowered her voice, careful not to wake him.
The only thing Anika has ever been careful about was trying not to die. And she wasn't always too keen on surviving, but it was a basic human instinct — to want to keep breathing.
"You gotta come with or something, I'll end up buying him a bunch of sweatshirts down to his fucking toes. I'm not this kids mom."
“I think some of the stores at the mall open late.” As if that’s agreeable enough that he can go, too. The approaching winter is probably the best season for longer nights, and shorter days.
There was no protest. Reid hadn't tried to convince her that mother or not, she was all that kid had. But Anika knew.
"That means you coming, baby?"
His smile curls, because her worry bleeds into her tone, “Relax. We’ll get him what he needs, right now he doesn’t need anything but a nap.”
Her smile faltered, just a little — "Yeah." She said, and watched the kid, who'd nestled inside their world, sleep soundly. He looked calm, not a trace of worry on that small face. Did he feel safe with them? Bullshit. That couldn't be true, could it?
Green found blue. "I keep thinking that we can get this kid killed."
Or worse. Turn him into a monster.
Reid swallows the lump, because natural instinct wants to argue that with her. Tell her she's wrong, and only thinks in negatives.
But she's right. They might. He just hopes they don’t — and they have to be better than the crackhouse that Henry was almost dumped in.
“Our broken morals will do nothing if not keep him alive, Booker.”
"What if we can't?"
As if them both coming back from the brink of death, no less, isn’t proof enough.
“Stop that.” Thinking they’re going to fuck everything up, again.
"You ain't helping, you know. Telling me to stop that. Like it's a goddamn switch."
She knew he had one. Turned it on when he felt like it, then off again. On — off. Lucky, fucking bastard, she thought.
Reid thinks that Anika knows exactly what she’s saying, and he has to brush it off before it burrows into his chest and rattles the locked box of his emotions. “I can offer a distraction, but you’ll say it’s bad timing.”
They’ve done horrible things, and he imagines they would again, if they had to. Even for the kid. Maybe he can grow up and into an extraordinary life, encouraged into an Ivy League college, and become something he and Anika never will. Maybe if he had people fighting to the death in his corner, with persuasion that pits him above others, they could repent for what they’ve done and he could be the one good thing to come out of all that death.
The look she gave him was sharper than a stake through the heart. "Don't try to change the subject."
The bed wasn't big enough for the three of them. How much space does a kid like that take? He'd fallen asleep right in the middle of it, arms and legs spread wide like a starfish. A heavy blanket draped over his middle.
Just out of the shower, Anika stood by the bed, dripping wet and staring at the boy who'd taken her spot.
"Are we ain't gonna move him or something?"
Reid takes a moment — glad the boy had settled whilst Anika had been in the bathroom. He’d eaten another slice of pie, and there’s a few crumbs on the sheet. The toddler is smart, even if he doesn’t say much. He understands when he’s asked something; can nod and shake his head. Liked the bedtime story about dinosaurs, and flying monkeys that Reid had made up on the fly. Or maybe he didn’t, because he’s asleep.
They’re messing up the kids nap schedule in their list of crimes against Henry.
Slowly, as to not wake him, Reid slides off of the bed and kisses Anika’s cheek, “Take my side.”
Henry stirred, when the mattress moved, and let out a sharp cry. All eyes were on him, checking for anything unusual — a mark, or blood, rushing out of places it shouldn't.
Kid didn't look harmed. Anika assumed, he was just crying out for his mother. She would've done that too, if she was left with two monsters trying to mend themselves. Reid would comfort him, hold him in his arms and hush him back to sleep.
Anika grabbed his hand before he could, and dragged him closer to her. "We ain't good for him." Eyes pinned him. "See? What if he has a fever or something? Do you know what to do with him?"
“He doesn’t.” And if he gets sick, they’d figure that out too — Reid would.
"How are you so sure?" Some paternal fucking instinct that had been rotting inside him, she thought. He was caught in the limbo of one hand reaching to check on him, and the other interlocked with hers.
“It’s okay for today, alright?” She needs some rest, just as much as the kid does. If not more. A squeeze of a hand — an encouragement, “Get something on, and get into bed, baby.” There’s room beside the kid, sprawled out in the covers as he stirs and wriggles. “I’ll be right next to you.” He knows long before she says anything, how it’ll go down if he doesn’t assure her. But he’s not going anywhere — can’t with the sun glaring outside, so he’ll sit on the floor, beside her.
Anika didn't know why she'd agreed to any of this. There was a shirt down to her thighs on now, where her arms were still locked tight over her chest. She was eyeing the two vacant spots on each side of the kid, "Which one should I even fucking —" Stop, she told herself.
It didn't fucking matter. Climbing into bed was easy, she laid there motionless like a fucking corpse, trying not to let limbs brush against small ones. Her body looked paralysed in the most comedic way. The only movement was the rise and fall of her chest.Eyes locked on the ceiling. A familiar brown stain to entertain herself with on the long sleepless night.
Reid lets her settle, as much as stiff limbs can and crawls onto the other side again, with Henry starfished between them.
Lighter, but edged with concern, Reid whispers across the kid, “I can see you thinking over there, Anika.”
"I'm not." A whisper to match his.
“You can say it.”
"Shut up."
A smile cracks onto his face. Tired, but visible.
She turned on her side, to face him. "You not afraid we'll squish him in his sleep?"
“That’s not going to happen.” Anika sleeps two ways, like a rock — or tangled up in blankets. Reid isn't convinced she’d not know herself, either. On edge, because of something he's thrust on them. Still soft, whispery, as to not wake the child, “You think we should have left him there?”
In the dead of night, when there were only soft sobs and whispers, she didn't want to break the fragile thing they held in their hands. Hand tucked beneath her head, voice gentle, "They would've killed him, in there."
Was death a worse fate, than living with two monsters? She'd say it was the same thing.
It was a calculated answer, without giving him one. Reid doesn’t need to be able to dip his fingers inside her mind, to know all she doesn't say.
"You think we know someone who's gonna want him?"
Probably not.
“Someone better than whoever they were.” Not anyone they know, living or dead. If this is all the good he can do these days, between losses, then that’s what he’d have to settle for.
"Clark?"
Could they drive back to Denver, and ask Clark?
No, not ask. Tell. Reid expects it's too much of a risk, not only for them, but for their forgotten friends — the ones they’d left. Thinks if he laid eyes on a lighting kid working at the Church, it’d end bloody.
They can’t.
Anika knew it was a stupid thing to say, so she expected no answer. Just stared at the kid. Then at Reid, who had his gaze drop down to the boy, chest rising and falling, hair slick with sleep. Its musing, spoken under his breath,“He isn’t that bad. And it isn’t his fault. He’s just hungry, and tired.” A common theme as they lay there, staring. A child who knows no better as a pillar between them.
No, Anika didn't think he was that bad. But she was no mother. She didn't know what being a mother was, nor what having a mother felt like. Hell, there was only one hand on her and it was scarred with murder. How was she supposed to hold that kid?
A hard swallow, before a harder truth: "I know you wanna keep him."
A long pause.
In an ideal world, this would be a different conversation. It wouldn’t be so sudden, or violent and it wouldn’t feel so wrong. Anika would warm to the idea, in another life. And Reid wouldn’t feel a responsibility that isn't his, boiling to the surface, in the coldest — deadest of hearts.
“I know that can’t happen.” A fleeting thought, that boomerangs around and around — “That’s not my decision.”
"Who's then?" Didn't feel like hers, either. They both knew he'd be safer far away from them. Getting caught up in their world meant death. And she wasn't that cruel.
Was it the kid’s? Probably didn’t know the difference. “Ours — his?” They could find him suitable guardians. They could be that, until then. “We did okay with Kacey.” One day a week and not everyday.
"Kacey had a fucking dad."
They were just the weird neighbors — good enough for a few hours, didn't charge the guy a damn buck. Never got to keep the kid by the end of the night. Just a few squishy pigs.
Kacey had a mom too, they just hadn’t met her.
“Yeah.” A mind that slips elsewhere, and away from a dingy motel room. “We aren’t letting anything else happen to him.”
Reid imagines Henry in a luscious yard, playing baseball with some clean-shaven father figure, the summer sun beaming down, whilst they talk about little league. It’s never going to be something they’d give him, it’d have to be someone else throwing the ball, and talking strategy. A woman bringing down fresh squeezed lemonade, to stave off the dehydration. It’s a picturesque dream.
Anika knew it was a losing fucking game, to talk about this now. She was exhausted and they'd only argue, if she kept repeating how fucked up keeping the kid was.
So, she gave up.
"Let's just— sleep." She would. He'd stay there, keeping watch, or whatever it was he did, while she had her eyes closed.
A nod against the pillow says he understands this isn’t them spitballing in the kitchen in Oklahoma; they’re not airing past desires, they’re planting seeds in the dying garden, long past saving. Reid’s watering it like hope, whilst she’s resigned to letting it stay dead. He should, too. If he were any less selfish. If he weren’t so messily fucked up in the emotional stability.
He lets the conversation die, and lays watching the both of them sleep.
There was a piece of burnt toast on a ceramic plate. Just like the one yesterday, and the day before that. Anika had genuinely thought she’d mastered breakfast by now. A sad looking egg kept the toast company. Droopy and yellow, like a cartoon sun drawn with a shitty marker. A tiny pinky jabbed the center of it, emerging coated in goo.
Henry's frown didn't escape her. "What, kid? It tastes fine."
Neither of them was convinced by that, but to the kid Anika looked terrifying enough, waving that spatula around, covered in smoke. So he scooped up the egg and shoved it into his mouth.
Cheeks puffed out, he mumbled: "It gwooped."
"It's supposed to goop." Anika lied.
Egg sticky finger pointed at the toast.
"It bwoken."
"It's toasted."
"It bwoken."
"It's not broken, kid." Apparently she'd turned into the kind of woman who argued with toddlers now. "It's just…dark."
"It cwispy."
No, it wasn’t crispy. It was pathetic and sad. She couldn’t even make toast that wasn’t the color of charcoal. Henry kept chipping away at the side that looked marginally less like death and put the crumbs in his mouth.
Fuck.
Damn kid had enough tragedy for a lifetime. He didn’t need to torture himself with burnt breakfast on top of it.
“You know what? You like cereal, kid?” she asked.
His eyes went big with stupid, childlike joy.
“Yeah, thought so.”
The door to the house creaks open. It echoes in the only living quarters on the Goldacre property. A lot that’d been up for sale for eight months, with no biters. Rural, with the nearest grocery store being thirty miles out. Isolated, surrounded by forests — the realtor that Reid had convinced to let them have it for a dollar, would likely make complications down the line.
But it’d worked out so far. Nobody bothered them out in buttfuck end of Texas. (Though, one could argue, every end was) It only meant that they had to drive into the city to get food, or people watch for the appropriate guardians to drop Henry off to. Kid seemed to get used to the drives, and Goldacre. Liked to run around in the fields outside, and scare the shit out of them when he disappeared into the woods to look for twigs.
Didn’t once mention witches, attics and whatever else the poor kid’s got in his nightmares.
Anika’s burnt toast makes him feel like he could be having some already dead stroke.
In his hand, there’s a paper bag with ramen bowls inside. He dumps it on the kitchen side, and smiles at the pair of cereal-toasters. “What's this then?”
They were still on rocky terms — silence followed them around most nights, so they wouldn't have to hear each other scream. Anika had stopped engaging in conversations longer than a sentence; yes, no, fuck you — the essentials.
Henry splashed milk onto the table. Two tiny hands drenched in milky white, poking around pink floating stars in a bowl.
"Bwoken toast."
"It's cereal." Anika corrected, deadpan.
The said broken toast, was on a plate — charcoal-like, and a disproportional amount of wheat stars waded in the white lake within the bowl. Reid can’t help but smile, even if Anika doesn’t say more than three words to him at any given time.
He loses her a little more everyday.
“Looks fun.” Mucky hands covered in breakfast foods, as Reid comes around to give Henry a plastic spoon. Soft, playful encouragement for the kid to eat instead of poke: “Scoop them up — you have to catch them before they float away, or sink, okay?”
When he looks back at Anika, the subtle shake of his head answers the question burning holes into the side of his head: has he found anyone last night to take the kid? She knows he hasn’t — she knows it long before he has to tell her. It's written in the smile on his lips, and the ruffling of a hand through the boys hair, watching him as he starts trying to chase the stars with his spoon. It’s in the laughter when Henry says something out of sorts, or something older than his years.
It'd been hard not to find the humour in Henry picking up on Anika’s obscene language. He’d shouted fucking shit at the top of his lungs running naked out of the bathtub a couple days before. Reid and Anika had argued about that, too.
To Anika, this was like handing over a shift at the diner. Here, take it now, I've had enough. She was more than happy to leave the two alone. Reid already looked like a dad — slipped his feet in the shoes and they fit. Unlike her, who looked like an ugly sister. With her heel sticking out, and toes shoved too deep.
Henry squeezed Reid's fingers with his own, wrapped tight around the silver, where the spoon wobbled in and out of the bowl. A mouthful of stars, dripping milk from the corners.
Hunger won over pride, and Anika was rummaging through the bags he'd brought home, pulling out a box filled to the brim with ramen, extra everything. Her stomach growled. "Fuck, that smells delicious."
"Fwuck."
Goddamitt, Henry.
“Don’t say that.” Reid mutters. No matter what disapproving look he shot the woman, she ignored it. Ramen wins. “Anika has a bad mouth, Henry.” It’s meant to be blunt enough for a child to understand, but it comes off like an insult.
The boy is left alone with the spoon, so Reid can get his own bowl, and make the kid stop asking why he doesn’t eat so much.
“How was your night?” He asks, before she’d stuff her mouth with noodles.
"Fine."
“Like every night then.” He asks. She deflects. It’s a habit they’ve developed. He doesn’t want the kid to pick up on it, but it’s hard to hide that they move around each other like they have sharp spikes jutting out of them, Reid would sooner impale himself on hers, than continue to try and avoid them. He picks at the box, with chopsticks, “If the noodles need warming — they’ve been in the truck a while…”
Now he's fishing for conversation, and it’s like pulling fucking teeth.
He spoke. She deflected. Like every other night.
Anika was sick of the fights. So it was silence now. She was punishing him for being the man that she loved — kind and merciful. It was infuriating. She was punishing him, because it was supposed to be just the two of them. Because she was supposed to be enough.
"They're fine." She said, with a mouth full of noodles.
Even if they weren’t, she wouldn’t do shit about it.
Fine. She doesn’t want to talk to him. He’ll talk to the kid — since that’s the topic of every silence, anyhow. “You sleep good, Henry?” he asks, parking himself in one of the breakfast chairs. Teasing then — “Did you wake Anika up early?”
"Yeah, kicked me in the face three times." Anika whined.
“Yeah, that’d do it.”
He figures they were up before dawn, for them to be up and making breakfast when Reid’s coming back. A part of him wants it to be because she’d missed him — but the rest of him knows she’s all sharp edges and hate, lately.
Least when they fought, they talked.
Henry looked between the two, and nodded, although he missed his bed. He missed his mother and father more, but he couldn't say anything without crying. His chin wobbled, and tears fell down onto the sea of soggy stars.
"You made him cry, Halstead. Good job."
Shit. “Alright, little man—” he reaches for the ramen bag, to find something sweet. “—I got brownies.” He doesn’t know what Henry has endured, so until he can verbalise it, they can show him there’s still good things in the world — even if he’s surrounded by dark.
Anika watched the exchange — brownies for silence. Kid took a big chunk of one, smearing chocolate all over his mouth. The only person who wasn't stuffing his mouth was Reid. But she assumed he's fed already. A finger nudged the other box closer to him, a truce of some kind, at least for tonight.
"You hungry?"
Maybe, for another kind of food.
A smile, and a nod. Reid picks at his own noodles, with subtle encouragement from Anika.
They ate in silence. Like they did yesterday morning. Anika hadn't slept in three nights, only managed to close her eyes in the early mornings when Reid had been back, and able to swipe babysitting shifts. Standing up, she took her boxes to the trash can. "If you're good here, I'll go lay down."
“Okay, baby.” He and Henry could find something to do this morning. Usually, it involved chasing him around the house, or building some badly executed tower of bricks with Henry’s architectural direction. Reid takes the smaller victory with Anika; she’s eaten; she's resting; she knows to argue with foul language when Henry’s sleeping. “I’ll have to remember that ramen joint, you liked it?”
She’d eaten two boxes.
Then left, without giving him any answer, but a door slammed shut.
He’d remember to go back there, if they get a chance to stay much longer.
Henry is covered in chocolate, and a few protested wipes of his mouth with a cloth has him whining with disapproval. “You’re going to get sticky fingers everywhere.” Reid laughs, cleaning the edges of his mouth, and fingers.
Kids should be playing outside, but it’d kill Reid to take him out there.
“Where’s your bricks, little man? We’ll build a big tower.” Like they did yesterday — and the day before. A routine that’s only ever going to be broken by real guardians who know what they’re doing. “Come on.” Reid lifts him off the stool and puts him on the floor where he runs to the basket of cheap toys they’ve got him. Anika did the clothes shopping, and it’s obvious in the mismatched navy pants that are too big, and the mustard yellow tee hanging down to his thighs.
He’ll grow into them, Reid had said, when Anika had told him she didn’t know what the fuck she was supposed to get. Eyes briefly glance to the closed doorway of the bedroom, where he knows she’s laying staring at the ceiling. A tightness in his chest that he’s done this to them.
Quail Creek is dead. Lights off, cars in drives, and an incredible absence of life in every direction. Probably some fucking HOA rule that says no lights between set hours like they’re some ghost town. There’s a casualty count on tonight, and not one person is out on the street desperately chasing the gossip, or looking for missing people.
Not even a curtain twitcher as they rip down the quiet street.
They pull into the drive, and kill the engine.
Reid unclips the boy’s seatbelt after his own, and lifts him up — carries him down the step, and out of the truck. The wet of his pants is icy on his arm, and the shiver in his legs encourages him into the house quicker, ahead of Anika, so they can get him warm. They won’t be here long, Reid knows that, but the child’s suffered enough, too.
He looks tiny in the tub; a small lump of dark clothes against porcelain. Softly trembling in the chill as arms wrap around legs, the claw foot sits stagnant. Reid isn’t sure how best to approach this — if some worried mother is about to storm the house, and scream murder. But the boy doesn’t need to sit in his own urine for any longer.
“I’ll be back, okay?” A promise, as the tap runs lukewarm. There’s no shoes to remove, just tattered, and bloodied rags on a starved frame melting into the water. Fear swarms the lights of the child’s eyes. Reid squashes it best he can. “— I’ll be back with pumpkin pie.”
He can feel Anika lingering, glaring, saying a thousand things in the tight of a jaw, and the narrowing of her gaze. The bathroom door stays open, as faint splashes echo out into the bedroom where he begins to throw empty duffels onto the bed. It’s a routine he doesn’t like, he realises. “Surprised you haven’t already done this.” It’s bitter, but it’s not meant at her. It’s at the situation they’re in, again. She's usually the first to run, or fuck off any idea of reparation. With a sigh, Reid drags his feet over to her, apologetic — and swiftly kisses the bloodstained dip in her brow. “That came out wrong.”
A hand landed on his chest, lacking the usual gentleness she touched him with. A mean shove, instead. "Don't be a fucking dick." Anika spat out.
He didn't deserve her understanding while he ran fucking wild, stealing a child and dumping him in their tub, like it was the most normal thing. Then accusing her, of being paranoid, of having their bags packed in case shit went south.
But not this time.
She was done, with the bullshit and the running. Reid had expected the backlash. When isn’t there one?
Her eyes shot daggers, while his attention splits between water, and the firestorm of his girlfriends gaze. “I meant to ask how you’re feeling.” Not whether she’s okay — it’s a stupid question.
They’d not had a chance to grieve what they’re about to lose, between everyone else’s losses.
"How the fuck do you think I'm feeling?" A weak attempt at trying not to raise her voice. An angry hush that filled the space between them. "You took a fucking child, Reid."
It sounded even crazier out loud. A wild hand shot at the tub — Anika was a woman plagued with madness, but he was the one actually going insane. "Can we fucking slow down for a second, yeah? Slow down, and think about what we gonna do."
They don’t get to slow down.
“I didn’t take —” He supposes, when he lingers on the details for more than a second, he did just take a child back to the house. A frustrated snap of his tongue on his teeth, as his eyes drift to the ceiling. “Hannah couldn’t —” Shit. “What else were we supposed to do?” A genuine question. Dump him with Hannah Tate, grieving a child, and compelled to feel less of it in favour of her other, still alive children? Yeah. Real nice Reid. A fucking mess that is. But he didn’t ask for witches, and cultists to bang on their front door, nor steal his girlfriend and carve whatever spell-shit voodoo into her skin until her bones broke. Then — as if he’s realising that maybe Anika is chiding him for doing something impulsive, where she would have done something ruthless: "You think I should have left him there?” Not we, anymore.
There might be a severe lack of his humanity at times, but he doesn’t have to be another kind of monster.
She didn't know what to think. Anika would've left him there — a horrible truth she'd admit out loud, if the man she loved wasn't so goddamn selfless.
A child, barely tall enough to reach the table, now taken under their wing, as though they knew anything about taking care of a human being. Anika and Reid barely took care of each other. And that didn't always look good.
Now, her eyes were on the kid, soaking in their tub with his clothes on. And for a moment, she thought what he'd wear, when they finally got him out. When he was done washing the dirt off of him, like only a parent would. Maybe he wanted this, didn't he? A dream that had been dead to him, for so long, had now come back, like some miracle sent from above.
"I think he's none of our fucking business."
Anika didn't care how much of that echoed between bathroom walls.
When Reid gets lost in that foresty gaze of Anika Booker, he sees something he isn’t sure he recognises — a shadow that settles over the canopy of the trees, and a fog that blinds him to the sharp, always violent edges of her; fears he’s never seen in the brush before.
Swallowing, he wants to tell her that Clark, or Kacey — and the chick his friend had been into, hadn’t been their business either, really. A life that had been a lie they couldn’t keep the mask on for. It’s different, she’d say.
Even without his humanity — even if he turned it all off, right now, he’s not convinced he would have left a dying child as much as he would have made some ungodly weapon out of it.
But he sure as shit doesn't think he would have let the kid die.
Instead — “There will be a missing report for him. It’ll state where his parents are. You wanna make the 911 call to the dead sheriff, be my guest, Booker.” That’s about all he’s got in the way of a plan. And his phone’s already out, stealing a glance at a low-filled clawfoot, and a boy staring aimlessly at the dirty water. Hollowed out, like they’ve pulled him from a shallow grave.
He'll have to look at the messages from his sisters, later.
Quail Creek’s missing persons is tougher to find online than he thought it should be.
He’d had to widen it to the entirety of Oklahoma City, and outside counties.
But then he’d got the list. No links to Quail Creek — as if there’s a crime rate so low, it’s almost invisible. Fucking witches. And Anika had wanted to trust one to fix the daylight for them. Right. Not an argument they’ll have again. He scrolls, unfamiliar families, and reports and interviews on news sites. None of them look like the boy, but it’s a big damn radius. He could be looking for days for a match.
Narrowing down the search — Anika thinks he’s three, so he filters that. Blue eyes. Dirty blonde hair. Reid stares into the bathroom, as if trying to discern if he’s got other distinguishing features that’d make this easier.
Meanwhile, she'd filled up the duffles. Mostly all their essentials were packed in minutes. Then she'd gone to pack some food to take with them, in the truck. A bottle of whiskey. Pumpkin pie. Barbecue leftovers. Sandwiches. Whatever she could find, that didn't taste dry or old.
Maybe they could burn the house down. Leave no evidence of anything. Live within Dr Sawyers and the rest of the freaks minds for a few more weeks, and then die, the way grocery lists did, in the back of a busy conscious. But where would they go now? Anika didn't think there was a corner of this earth that would keep them safe from vampire mobs and witchy cults. So, she packed her gun, too. And her phone — about to dial up fucking child services.
He hasn't even got a chance, or an opening to ask what happened to her, whilst they kept her captive. No opportunity for her to tell him to fuck off, or lie — or avoid telling him shit. Whilst he’s standing there wondering if she blames him for that too — same way she does for all this.
A thumb scrolling images, half expecting to never find an answer. Knowing it’s a needle in a haystack. Reid thinks he might either explode, or collapse. Neither of which differentiates a hunger he’s cursed with. “Will you—?” No. She won’t. So he stops bothering to ask when he goes to check on the boy. He’s not drowned, that’s a start.
He crouches down beside the tub, and reaches over and assess his wounds. He wants to make sure the dyed water is superficial and not him bleeding out. It’s nauseating; the heat; the blood; the sobbing.
He’s forgotten the pumpkin pie.
He turns his head, and quietly calls through to a girlfriend who looks like she wants him dead, “Anika.” He knows she’s packed it in a bag already.
Eyes drop back to the phone, a constant stream of random images. Scanning, one after the other —
"What? You gonna put him in the car like that, all wet?" She asked, as if he was supposed to have a clue what to do with a child. In a way, she assumed he did — Reid had two younger sisters, and a long dead dream of becoming a father. He'd put the kid in the bath. Washed his wounds. He seemed to know what he was doing.
While Anika just sat there, by the door; bags in hands, and eyes on the cracked bathroom door, where she could almost see a head of messy hair.
“No.” Reid murmurs, earning the curious, and frightened gaze of the boy again. “Can you bring a slice of pie in?” Probably too much to ask for clean clothes but — “And one of my shirts?” He doesn’t know what kind of shorts are gonna fit the kid, but he’ll have to find something.
Anika just needs to give him a minute, whilst he hovers on a link to a homicide that'd made the front page some weeks ago. Long before they were ever in Oklahoma.
Two dead. Young boy still missing.
The kid looks different, smiling; that’s the picture they used on the article, detailing the demise of a mother and a father, the one where they’re all together in the living room — a fire crackling behind them, and an orange hue spread about at the edges of the photograph.
Fuck.
His mouth twitches, whilst the young boy starts to slowly strip his own wet tee from his body. Tangling himself up, and eliciting more cries until Reid has to help him get his arms through the holes. His mind is reeling.
Then he’s back to scrolling, hoping to find something about the rest of the family, but there’s nothing. Just a graphic detailing of a murder, and a child they can’t find. Well, they’ve found him — but who do they bring him back to? He’ll go into the system — worse, end up in the creek because Reid’s not trusting a single Oklahoma cop after tonight.
Anika unzipped one of the duffles and pulled out a box filled to the brim with pie. Then a clean shirt — one of Reid's. That would have to do. Shorts, she assumed, would be too big on the kid. And she had nothing that would fit him, either.
She lingered on the bathroom door— mean eyes scanning the two; one still wet, but at least no longer wearing a wet shirt, and the other soaked, fighting the undress the boy. If she wasn't fucking furious at Reid, she'd consider this a soft moment, where monster met human. A sight between a father and son.
But he wasn't his father.
And the boy was nobody's son.
"Here—" she said, interrupting them. "Pie, and a shirt."
“Thanks.” Reid takes the items, and hands her his phone — so she can read what he’s found.
Mossy hues scanned the tragic news of a boy turned orphan. Fuck, fuck, fuck. A series of soft sighs left her mouth. What the fuck were they supposed to do now? Anika climbed up on the sink, and sat there, silent for a while. The phone rested on the counter beside her. News still fresh— from a couple of days ago. That poor fucking kid was alone in the world. He had no one. And she felt sadness grip her by the throat.
Because she'd been that kid.
It’s a quick action when Reid encourages the boy to stand up out of the dirty water. He gives the shivering boy soap, and support in getting bloodied and wet clothes off a frail torso. A towel is ushered around him when he’s lifted out of the bath — the crying is a little less, and it’s another battle getting the shirt over the kids head, and arms through the sleeves again.
The pie is a peace offering, at this point.
But he’s not slick with blood, and he’s not doused in his own piss anymore. That’s something.
"What are we gonna do?" She asked, between splashes and sobs. The voice of a woman who'd not known kindness. A woman who was an orphan before she became anything else (a monster, a killer, a heartless thing)
“I don’t know yet.” He admits with a sigh. Swallowing down bile that burns his throat. Who could they trust if not the cops?
The boy sits himself down on the damp floor before any protest can be said about it. He digs fingers into the pie, like a starving rat, mushing it in the gap between his lips and chewing on it eagerly. Reid drains the tub, and makes himself busy doing anything but having to answer Anika.
Eventually, in the quiet of a child rustling in a pie tray, he has to. “Find someone. A cousin — an uncle, I don’t know, okay?” Where does he start? Who can he call that would make that connection? Not the brotherhood. And he doesn’t want Anika messing with the Fellowship now they’re out, either.
The bags are packed. Quail Creek is a bridge burnt. They’ve never had a plan, just stolen trucks and cars that lead to places that they’re not welcome. It’s readable on his face too, whether he wanted to hide it from her or not. They can’t leave him in an empty ranch house, in this fucking town.
Damp, blonde strands fell on a small forehead, hands stained orange made a mess of cheeks and shirt. Anika wasn't bothered by the mess, but it looked like he'd need another bath soon. Fuck, if Reid thought she'd be the one to give him one. She'd barely got the one hand shower thing down. Bathing a child would require a fucking manual.
"And where the fuck do we find his fucking cousin?"
She let the question sit there for a moment. No genius thought left Reids mouth, so she turned towards the boy. "Kid, you got any cousins?"
He barely acknowledged that someone way taller than him was talking up there. Reid snares her attention back by taking a step towards her.
“We’ll drive out of state, and I’ll talk to an actual cop. Not here. I’ll get an address from whatever file they have, and we’ll take him there.” He's fishing at straws, and he knows it. Anika will hate him, more than she already does.
But he’ll never forget the image of her laying broken in that attic, and knowing how close he’d come to losing her. Someone’s got that fear in them, about losing this kid. Has to.
It'd been about two hours of quiet, out of three. The last one was filled with — I want my mommy. Kid was still strapped into the middle seat between them, like a bomb. They'd both given up on defusing him. Now they were just waiting for the explosion.
You're a fucking idiot, Halstead — she didn’t say it, but she’d thought it enough times that her eyes did the talking every time her mouth couldn’t.
Twenty minutes to Dallas left, when Anika reminded the kid that they didn't know where his mommy was, but that they'd find her. He wasn't going to stay with them.
They'd figured out, from a cop in Hoxford who lacked verbena in his bloodstream, that the kid had relatives in Texas. We'll take him there, Reid had said. And she felt relief, for a moment, that the kid wouldn't grow up to be a shitty adult. Won't turn into a monster on the street. Or in the system. Look at kids his age and wish for what they had. Anika was familiar with that kind of longing. The painful kind.
Then he drifted off again, small body going slack against the seat. Peace lasted all of fifteen minutes, ending the second they crossed the Welcome to Dallas sign.
The kid's chin wobbled again. "I want my daddy."
They're both dead, kid.
Reid hasn’t mentioned the time — because he won’t reopen that vicious argument with his girlfriend — but he knows that they’re racing the clock. There’s no time for wrong turns, or rerouting. They have to find the kid’s address, speak to his relatives, and then leave like Good Samaritans before the break of dawn.
He and Anika don’t get to have fun drives anymore, if they’re not sat in tense silence, then it’s solemn anger with a parentless child.
All three of them have something in common, there. All equally different reasons.
Kid’s still in Reid’s shirt, with a pair of boxers pinned at the waistband so they don’t slip down. They're shorts on him, really. That’s all they had that didn’t have the kid bare. They’ve stolen one of the Dudd’s fancy blankets from the lounge, and they’ve got him tucked in the seat like a loose burrito. Stopped the tantrum restlessness for about an hour.
4602 Reiger Ave, bridging onto North Colson St has three busted trucks better used as rust buckets parked up a dirt strip, and another without wheels, stacked on four cinder blocks half covering the lawn. There’s trash all over the front yard, none of which Reid seems to be able to discern between green trash bags, and muddied up metalworks. He recognises the bent spokes of an umbrella, the rest could be anything.
They pull up. Park. Anyone would think Reid isn’t in a hurry when he eyes the home; one side sporting duct-taped steel as a wall. Then he looks at Anika, apprehensive but nods to confirm the address.
Kid’s trying to fiddle with the radio, but he can't reach, so he’s just wiggling with a whine in a blanket and a seatbelt.
“We’re gonna go talk to some people, okay?” His thumb releases the belt clip, and he opens the truck door so the kid can crawl out his side. It’s that grey-yellow sky of the world waking up, when he should be retreating to the shadows. They’re back to surviving on mere minutes, again. Testing the boundaries of when Reid’s luck will run out. Encouraging the boy to ease down the seat, and to the door, “That’s it, big jump — nice one.” Down the truckstep and onto the sidewalk he comes, with Reid holding his hand.
There was a gun, fully loaded in the back of her jeans. She stayed close behind the two, following in their footsteps, and keeping an eye out on her surroundings. The whole neighbourhood was a bust — felt like somewhere she'd been before. Only she'd rather sleep on the damn asphalt than inside that dump. The front door was red and one punch away from flying off its hinges.
They knocked, and out came a woman wearing close to nothing, hair long and loose down her shoulders and back. "Yeah?" A cigarette wobbled between her lips, "What d'you want?"
Peyton Gibsen spent nights with Rainey for cash. Then stole his cigarettes and floated back to whatever life she scraped back together. Worked at a greasy diner down the street, where Rainey had picked her up a few weeks ago. He lived alone, sold pills and popped them too. Had money to burn and no one to spend it on but women like her. Peyton only answered the door, because she was on her way out.
Anika stepped forward, pointing at the child, still holding onto Reid's hand.
"You know this kid?"
"Who's askin'?" Peyton asked, a hand on her hip.
Reid’s eyes snap up. Suspicion crawls down his neck, because it stinks of pot behind the door, and something harder on her clothes.
“You his aunt?” It’s blunter, because somewhere along this dirt track, Reid wants her not to be. Then they don’t have to leave him here, chewing on dirt, and wearing less than a borrowed shirt and knotted boxers.
Peyton clicked her tongue.
They haven’t got time to get into it, because every minute is closer to ashfall. “Look — he needs somebody, because he hasn’t got anyone else.” Is that enough to indicate the tragic affair, or does he need to say it in front of the boy? Traumatise him some more.
"Rainey!" She shouted back inside, one hand still on the door lazily. "There's some kid here for you."
There was a muffled sound coming from the depths of that shithole, a groan and footsteps — lazy and hard against the tiles. Rainey hated being woken up that early, and over some random kid too. Peyton moved out of the way, when he came closer. Shirt gone. No socks on his feet. A mess of a hair on his head, crying out for some soap and clean water. He ran a hand over his stubble.
"Who's you?"
That didn't matter. Reid’s jaw shifts, because it feels like he’s about to either dust, or dive.
Rainey’s eyes narrowed to the kid. Fucking Henry, he thought. Where'd your mom go again?
"You know the fucking kid?" Anika asked, again, voice coming out sounding a lot like rage.
"Yeah, my sister's boy."
“Did you hear what I said?” Reid cuts in, because they’re missing the point; two strangers rocking up with a three-year old in tow, like some package from DPD. He thinks that the kid’s more likely to be a mule for something, than anything else. Reid looks at Anika, like she might be enough to bring him back to the moment.
Not the one where he’s feral for a bite.
"What'd she do this time?"
She’s dead, asshole.
“Kid needs a guardian. You it, or not?” It’s a page out of Anika’s book.
"Fuck, she ain't fit for a mother, I told her that myself." He rubbed both hands over his face.
Rainey was already losing interest in the two strangers, eyes drifting towards the kitchen. He wasn't sure how much food was left in there. His stomach growled loud enough for Anika to hear. "Peyton!" A shout, "You headin' to the diner anyway, bring whatevers cheap back."
Then he jerked his chin at the boy.
"Come on, Henry. Get inside, kid."
He'd already turned his back, assuming the kid'd follow.
The sun gleams over the slatted tiles of the house, sparkling the rotted things to some half-assed life.
Henry.
Reid pictures the boy in the yard, not on a swingset, but diving through trash like scrounging for scraps. At the breakfast table, stale cereal, gone-off milk, and a glass of cheap whiskey to wash it down with. Never do you any harm. From a fucker like Rainey, who doesn’t know how to change a diaper to save his own damn life. Using him to peddle, and when he’s old enough, to ship out like Peyton —
A hand tugs at Henry’s hand, as Halstead lifts him into his arms. And then he's walking away, faster than the sun dares to catch him.
Henry would die if he left him here.
Reid doesn’t have any more room his lockbox of guilt to deal with the misery of that. Anika’s the lifeline — and his only sane thread. A raft in the endless ocean that wants to drown him, and he chases to gorge himself on the life that dares to swim in it. Peyton and Rainey are shadows behind him, when Henry starts crying again.
To Anika — and the methheads. “We’re leaving. We made a mistake.”
"What? Reid—"
The truck door is open, and he’s pushing him in, like they both need to escape the sun. Reid’s already trying to hang a jacket in the window, to trap the direction it rises from.
Then, a promise he’ll never be able to keep, as he steals a look at Anika through the crack in the window, “You’re gonna be alright, Henry, okay?”
Rainey never looked back. Walked inside and laid back down on his couch. Kid be fucking damned, he thought, not my damn problem.
And he'd be right. Henry wasn't his problem anymore.
He was Reid's.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Anika stormed inside the truck. Sun was trying to peak through the windows, but she wouldn't let it. She shrugged off her jacket and hung it over as a barrier. They had the two sides covered.
Henry was crying in the middle, kicking the dashboard with his tiny feet, freakishly strong for a small child like him. "What are we supposed to do with him, Reid?"
Reid guns it down the street — a rumble of the truck engine kicking out smoke. He’s going in any direction, so they might find somewhere to stay for the day. He doesn’t have an answer, yet. “We’ll figure it out at the next stop.”
Figure it out. Anika didn't know how they'd ever figure this out. It wasn't about them anymore. It wasn't just them anymore. There was a kid, and he had a name, and a story. And Anika didn't even want to know what must've gone through Reid's mind when he grabbed the boy and ran back to the truck. There was no use asking him, either. He'd say he didn't know. That it was an instinct.
That he'd fix it.
Hands made sure every glassy piece was covered. The three of them stood in shadows, while the rest of the world woke up.
The next stop was Red Roof Inn. Truck had to be parked close, otherwise Reid risked being turned into barbecue meat, before he reached the room. They've locked eyes and then nodded, a silent language they've perfected, although Anika still looked like she wanted to punch him square in the jaw. There was a jacket over his head and a kid holding his hand. Because she'd refused to poke the kid with a ten foot pole. Like he was an infectious disease. She'd carried the duffles instead. Made sure they got the food too, and didn't forget any of it in the back, where it'd rot.
Fake IDs did the job.
The old guy behind the register counter looked Anika up and down, then spoke up: "Kid yours?"
"No, found him on the side of the road."
He didn't know if she was joking or not. Hell, folks around here didn't mess around with child trafficking.
"Yeah, he's mine." She said, just to get him off her case. Didn't need another sheriff up in her business, making things difficult for them.
He slid her over the keys, and grabbed the cash she left for him.
Inside the room — Reid finally drops the kid to his own two feet, arm shaking, hand flexing where he’s not been so lucky. Reddened, and sore. Skin flaking and blackened by the sunrise. The side of his face feels like it’s on fire, too. A hot iron hand that has dragged its nails down his cheek, and slashed at his throat.
Kid wanders the room, fascinated by the cheap lacquer side table, and scratchy comforter.
Reid pulls his hood down, wincing as he moves away from the window light.
She’s going to ask him, and he knows it.
A tired sigh — the kind that only the dead express, when something else exhausts them.
“We couldn’t leave him there. You saw them.” He says, folding up the sleeves of his shirt and letting the scalds knit over. It's agonisingly slow, because he’s given a lot over the last twenty-four hours, and they’ve both lost a lot, too.
We, Anika thought, didn't sound right. Because she would've left him. She would've left the damn kid with Rainley, and never looked back.
Reid knew that. He knew there was no we in this.
“Time with us can’t be any damn worse than what that place could have been.”
It’s not their business, and he expects that’s what Anika would tell him when they inevitably discuss it. Reid isn’t the hero, and Anika isn’t a people person.
Especially not a kid one. They'd learned that, in a kitchen in Quail Creek when they’d poked old wounds — even though, the sight of her in Denver, squishing a toy pig and goading a little girl in front of her father had been something else. A warmth he hopes hadn’t been killed when they left Colorado.
"You fucking took him." she reminded him.
It’s insane, to steal a child. It’s a problem. It’s a police case, and a social services one. Henry didn’t ask to be bled in an attic, and he didn’t need to be wasting away in a drug house, either.
There’s a different perspective he’s got about it: “No — I just didn’t give him up to them.”
Reid’s lost his mind, watching the boy try to climb up the bed, grunting as tiny fingers claw into the blankets. They’ll need to get him some other clothes, ones that aren’t going to get even more authorities called on them for neglect.
Henry was digging himelf beneath the covers, looking like a raccoon rummaging through trash. Head first, tiny feet still outside where toes slid on the sheet, unable to climb any higher.
Damn kid was gonna fucking suffocate under their watch.
He glances at her and says what she’s thinking. “I know it's stupid, Anika.” They can’t even get through a day without arguing over something. “You think I’ve lost it.” He thinks he has, too.
Her attention was split between the kid and the man, who she loved, and would do anything for. Kill a man for him, if she had to. Crazy or not — he was hers. And he had loved her, and called her his, when she'd been nothing but crazy. When there was not a sane bone in her body.
So, was this so fucking crazy? Was this any crazier, than the shit they've gone through already?
She didn't know what to think. A hand went over her tired features, where still a fragment of broken sympathy lingered. "I think you're broken, and thinking this is gonna fix….something. But it ain't gonna."
It wasn’t a case of putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. He isn’t trying to fix anything, just — “We’ll find him a better life.”
Maybe not in Texas.
"Where? With us? Moving from motel to motel, or what? Head back to Port Leiry, where I lost my fucking hand and you lost your life?"
Because that was all they could offer. Temporary shelter. Death breathing down his neck. There was no warmth they could give him. No home. No dad, no mom. Just the scraps left of two people, who've desperately put their broken parts together and somehow made a whole.
Anika is right. Of course she’s right. What were they but a dead thing, and something living on the edge of it? Reid only had to look in the mirror, where burns heal anew, to be reminded that he’s not someone the kid ever needs to know.
“If not us, then someone else. In the next place, where we—” Try again? Fuck. He’s delusional, with hands in his hair, rubbing the scalp raw. It speaks for all those fragments of humanity that finally erupt and spill down his chest, choking every dead organ he’s got.
In her head, she'd ran out of places they could hide. How many times did they have to witness that dream getting shattered? The dream of having their own place. Where they'd feel safe.
Safety was an illusion. A star so high up in the sky. An unreachable fucking thing.
"You gonna put an ad— I got a kid, anyone wants it?, every place we go?"
Eyes that grow harder, ringed with a plead, “Can we not do this today?” A pathetic delay. But his feet drag him towards her, push hair back from her face. Because he needs that moment where she’s real, again.
Her nose found his, when she leaned closer, brushing pointy tips together. Eyes closed, she stood quiet for a moment. Let the sounds of a frustrated child wrestling a blanket wash over her.
𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑶𝑻𝑯𝑬𝑹 𝑳𝑰𝑵𝑬 . ( a collection of texting prompts . receiver of the meme is implied to be the sender of the text . )
∗ o1﹕ a text sent late at night .
∗ o2﹕ a text asking for advice .
∗ o3﹕ a text sent out of worry .
∗ o4﹕ a text sent out of excitement .
∗ o5﹕ a text sent out of anger .
∗ o6﹕ a text containing a picture .
∗ o7﹕ a text to get back in touch .
∗ o8﹕ a text saying goodbye .
∗ o9﹕ a text containing a confession .
∗ 1o﹕ a cheesy text .
∗ 11﹕ a text sent from across the room .
∗ 12﹕ a text that wasn’t meant for the receiver .
∗ 13﹕ an intoxicated text .
∗ 14﹕ a text sent while half asleep .
∗ 14﹕ a text that was never sent .
∗ 15﹕ a text containing advice .
∗ 16﹕ a flirtatious text .
∗ 17﹕ a text during a breakdown / panic attack .
∗ 18﹕ a threatening text .
∗ 19﹕ a suggestive text .
∗ 2o﹕ a text containing an apology .
∗ 21﹕ a text to a group chat .
∗ 22﹕ a text regarding [ character name ] .
∗ 23﹕ a text containing a pick - up line .
∗ 24﹕ an angry text .
∗ 25﹕ an urgent text .
∗ 26﹕ an affectionate text .
∗ 27﹕ a text after first meeting .
∗ 28﹕ an embarrassing text .
∗ 29﹕ a supportive text .
∗ 3o﹕ a random text .
Dephne and Luna Merritt used their magic to catch the intruder. One lifted his arms into the air with nothing but will, wrists straining against invisible force, while the other wrenched the weapons from his hands with a flick of her fingers.
The absence of a heartbeat was easy to sense. It set him apart, something dead moving like the living.
Invisible limbs, stronger than his own are impossible to fight against. A violent wrench in one direction, the shattering of bones in a hand, and a fracture of a forearm as it is twisted — slates topple, Reid’s footing slips, and the jerk of a power he has no way to fight has him tumbling off the porch roof. His back hits the lawn with a dull thud. A pained grunt kicked out of dead lungs.
Dewy grass soaks his clothes, threatening to devour him into the earth. Fingers that aren’t broken work on those misshapen ivory — and pull at an arm that feels separate from his body.
He rolls onto his knees as furious eyes stare back at the ranch house.
The Merritt sisters came from a coven that bathed in blood, that fed on it. On the kind with a certain taste. The rare kind that hummed with power.
The boy they’d taken earlier had proven valuable. They’d been draining him for days, savouring every drop.
They didn’t spare a glance for the two bodies on the floor. Dephne only sneered, calling them idiots for getting themselves caught in their own mess. Luna moved fast, crossing the blood-slick floor to scoop up the boy still curled beside Anika. He was so small she could lift him with one arm, his head lolling against her shoulder.
“Go,” Dephne snapped. “Get him out.”
Luna didn’t wait. She stumbled down the stairs, the child’s limp arm dragging behind her.
Outside, Hannah was already on the porch. She couldn't hide behind the truck any longer, when she’d heard the chaos already. Reid’s barely off the ground, booted feet stabbing into the dirt as he rearranges broken bones, and bloodied hands. When the door burst open, the two women locked eyes — one clutching a child, the other not realizing yet that she’d already lost hers.
"Where— where are you going with that boy?" A shaky sound. "You— you took my kid. Where is she? Where is my Bethany?" She lunged forward, hands gripping the witch's arms , shaking her so hard the boy nearly slipped from her hold.
“Shit.” A mutter, as Reid moves towards Hannah. He looks around for something else to put through those fucking witches.
At the door, a shadowy figure caught the Merritt sisters attention— a fleeting moment of casting a feverish gaze elsewhere, was enough to have Hannah Tate reach for a sharp thing. The edge hurried into the witch. She'd never hurt another being in her life. And now she was holding a bloodied hand around a knife, puncturing the witches heart, like something she'd seen in a horror movie.
Frightened, she turned to look at Reid, with hands still clasped around the weapon, feeling the weight of the witch grow heavier. The boy hung from her grasp, as she fell to her knees. Hannah dropped the knife and reached for the boy, instead.
Reid didn’t know Hannah had it in her. But he should never have doubted a terrified mother, desperate to find her child. He only pauses for a moment on the porch to grasp the gravity of what she’d just done — staring at her wide-eyed shock, unrecognising of the death — the life, she’d just taken. He thinks he could have just witnessed one of the tragic stories of one-day hunter; it’s how it starts for them; the first kill. The opening of a door she cannot shut behind her —
Hannah has opened the door for Reid entirely, a man possessed by the sudden urgency to dart forwards. There’s no magic stopping him at the threshold., now
He leaves Hannah with a young, fragile boy in her arms. Better her, than him.
Anika’s still in the attic, waiting. Bleeding out — and he won't let her.
On his knees, beside a woman in a pool of blood. Reid’s hands don’t know where to start or which wounds to apply pressure to first. Half a dozen bones are broken and swollen with bruising. Inflammation in wrists against metal chains, and arms painted with navy, and violet — she’s not healing. Blood clots the smaller wounds, but they’re not bettering; a sculpture of flesh left incomplete; abandoned partway through carving. A chest stutters its only sign of life, but barely.
He snaps the chain wrapped around a wrist, pulls her head onto his lap.
She’ll hate him if this goes wrong, but she’ll be alive. She’ll live, she’ll live — they’ve been here before — she’s never been on the edge of the steep drop like this where death has its cloaked laid over her — not since —
“I’ve got you, my love.” A hushed sound of assurance before teeth piece a palm, and a hand is pressed against paling lips. Forceful, unforgiving — angry that anyone would do this and expect to live beyond today. He watches carefully, eyes flickering briefly to the other side of the attic, to see a ghost-pale Bethany laying in the corner. Stiff, glassy eyed, and long gone.
He tears his sights away — a faint disappointment weaves into his heart, but it won’t change his feelings about the one in his grasp. The one he’s burning the shroud of death from; he's tossing the ashes in the reapers face. It is twisted of him to be relieved it’s Anika still breathing when there’s others that weren’t so lucky.
02:30 14th October 2025.
Anika fought her way back from the edge. The air burned as it filled her lungs. It took her a moment to realize the warmth spilling through her wasn't her own. It was his — hot and intrusive, mending what should've stayed broken.
Her lips moved against his palm, unsure if she was trying to drink or push him away. Her body didn't care. It took what it was given.
The pain dulled and her heartbeat steadied.
Reid did not cease. Pressed his skin against the blunt of her teeth, to keep the wound open.
Eyes opened slowly, letting blurry light seep in, the vague outline of him above her. When she blinked, her vision cleared enough to recognise the shadow on his face — fury, restraint, sadness, concern.
A hand came up to latch weakly onto his wrist, slowly pulling the bleeding wound away from her mouth. A harsh wet sound tore from her throat. She caught and gasped for air, as her body fought to remember how to breathe on its own.
He doesn’t want to let up. Even when her strength pries him back — doubt creeps in and says she might still slip away from him if he stops too soon. Hair brushed away from her face, he supports her sitting up against him, so air might be easier to take in gulps. Her wounds knit together, stemming the flow of blood, and as gently as he can, Reid reaches to help reset fingers, and an arm.
She felt each crack — the way pain sneaked up on her again, and twisted into agony.
“Deep breath, Anika.” Soft-spoken warning as his wrist flicks sharply. Snap. He holds her tight afterwards, where the pain is brief; his blood continues to seal ivory anew, solidifying limbs in their correct sockets.
Eyes rolled back, white flashing as another bolt of pain ripped through her. A strangled scream tore out of her throat. Slowly, relief unfurled in waves, loosening the tight knot inside her chest and she became aware of him again. Hands that held her firmly, yet with impossible gentleness. He rocked her back and forth in small, steady motions, as though coaxing her back into the world, guiding her soul into her skin with every slow stroke of his palm along her spine.
He was a lighthouse, and his touch was the flicker pulling her out of the dark.
Her face pressed into his chest, where hot tears soaked through the thick fabric as she clung to him, still trembling with aftershocks, soft sobs breaking between leftover growls that faded slowly into silence.
There’s nothing he can say that makes any of this easier. No words of comfort to offer that could stem the flow of despair. She soaks his shirt with it, and the sight brings a rage bubbling to the surface like no other. Every ounce of kindness flees the body, and is replaced with a possessive, obsessive need to keep this woman in his arms where nothing could touch her. How will he ever trust the world again? How will he dare let her walk out the door without him now? Each time he lets himself believe he could not become more like them, he does — proves himself wrong at every pitiful avenue.
He should put a bullet in every monster he ever sees from now on. Hesitation has cost him too much. Reid should never dare have given them a chance — it seems simple to go back to how it was before. Shoot to kill. Make no friendlies.
He’d only died once. They’d been tortured more in death than he ever had in life, dusting creatures who do nothing but maim.
There was tumbling up the stairs. The frantic and uneven steps of Hannah Tate, who almost tripped on the growing pile of bodies onto the second floor, where the only ones still breathing were Anika and a kid who, in a shattering moment, she'd wish he wore her daughter's face. His small body was still cradled in her arms. A mother's instinct acting long before her mind caught up. He was crying and she'd hushed him, the same way she had soothed her own children.
Then she let him go, gently. Hannah dropped to her knees beside the tensed bodies of her neighbors. "Here—I, I— don't know who this poor child is. Do— do you? I—I.." Her words dissolved into shaky fragments. Glassy eyes couldn't tear away from the little frozen frame at the far end of the room. Blonde pigtails with two pink hairties. One had a plastic blueberry.
Hannah's face drained. She knew what that meant.
If grief had a tangible weight, the ranch house would be collapsing. Caving in on itself to hide the tragedy that had made a home within it.
It’s bad. Oklahoma is bad. Quail Creek is the worst.
A steering wheel creaks over the rumble of an engine. Dead hands squeeze the cracked leather tight, even colder eyes stare through a dusty windshield where mud is spitting up at the edges.
It had become a pattern, settling somewhere for a few days, then leaving. It felt like a curse. They fought, then fucked, sometimes fucked, then fought and what came after was always the same silence.
Bethany Tate’s body rests in a decrepit attic, in an abandoned ranch — miles out of the cultist county. Her mother, Hannah, compelled to faux strength for the sake of her other, living children who still need her. She’s waiting for a ride, alone, somewhere in the rear view, from some distant relative — and the out of county cops.
There’s no sheriff, anymore.
The glacial gaze shifts between the road, and to Anika on his right. Bathed in red, wounds slicked over with new flesh. Alive. Heart pounding in a chest no longer broken.
A toddler is crying in the seats between them. Belted in, and far too small to know they’d go straight through the glass if the brakes get hit.
“You gonna make it stop?”
It was the first thing she’d said since they’d climbed back into the borrowed truck. She’d agreed to a stupid plan. A stupid fucking plan that involved shoving a goddamn child into the backseat and driving off into nowhere.
She didn’t know where they were going, Reid probably didn’t either, but it sure as hell wasn’t home.
Reid is familiar with playing ignorant in the cab of a truck. Mastered silence, when he needs to think before he speaks. They’d done it all the way from Denver to Salina. Now he’s doing it through another city — it’s a careful choice, considering it worked so well for them last time.
They need to get back to the house, pack a bag and figure out what comes next, because there’s a messy, unruly trail spilling out behind them. Hannah Tate is barely the threat amongst the rest of it. Witches with unknown ties, cutting up and mangling children — and Sheriff’s — are a lot more pressing. Reid doesn't think that’s the end of whatever cult they’d got in the way of, either. Staying would mean they’d have to hunt the rest of them.
It wouldn’t sound so awful if it were only his neck at stake. But it’s not.
Anika’s easily insensitive when calling a scared and traumatised boy, an it — and he's only just got her back from the brink of an abyss of her own. The reminder is stained in his palm, like watercolour on a wet canvas, spreading smears. He can't drive, and console a boy who looks more skeletal than child whilst she acts like it’s a stray they’ve plucked off the highway. It’s a fucking child and she knows that. He tries to even his tone, “Hey, little man, what’s your name?”
The kid blinked, looking out the window, still wearing a wet pyjama. He was blue eyed, and tall for his age, which Anika assumed was around three. With a mess of unkept hair, dirty blonde.
If they knew his name, maybe they could find his parents.
But nothing escaped pale lips.
"He's fucking mute or something." She said. But they both knew, kid was still a toddler. For Anika, he classified as a fucking baby. Babies didn't talk, did they? They just screamed and cried and smelled like shit.
“He’s scared.” Reid answers, like it's obvious. Least he knows Anika isn't suffering side effects, and her mind is still hers because it’s as brutal as ever.
The boy reeked and it filled up the cab. There had been nothing to change him into, and he doubted either of them wanted that task, either. But the damp soaking the seats ruffled a sensitive nose as Reid shifts uncomfortably. He briefly glances back to the kid parked next to him, and then across to capture Anika. His eyes soon settle back on the road. “You miss mom and dad?” An assumption, directed at a crying child.
Just needs a nod, so they know he understands.
They’ll find the boy’s home. Somehow. Must be some picture slapped on the news, or the paper that traces him back. If they looked online, someone has to have reported missing children — same kind that wash up in creeks, bloated and maimed.
Tears fell down the boys cheek. He had no name and no parents. They were both dead, slaughtered by the witches, the night they came to take him away from his bed. There was nobody looking for him. He belonged to no one.
"How's he supposed to answer you? It's a small kid. What's he? Like fucking three?" Irritation seeped into her voice. Eyes going from the kid to Reid. He was still so motionless, and so tired, from all the sobbing, his head had leaned over his shoulders in an unnatural and painful angle, and his lids were slowly fluttering shut.
Reid bites down on his tongue. The boy knows what he's asking. Anika isn’t giving him enough credit. Exhausted, maybe. But not entirely unaware. There’s too much he wants to say — to query, about how Anika ended up in an attic, or why Hannah Tate lost a child tonight, but none of it matters. Whether he knows or not, it changes very little.
A boot suddenly hits the brakes, and an arm flies out to steady the boy from flying forwards into the dashboard.
The truck mounts the road, where Reid’s pulled over in his agitation. He turns to face Anika, and her fucking —
“What is wrong with you?” Genuine. Needless. Irritable in the grand scheme of lightheadedness.
One palm shot out to stop herself from slamming onto the dashboard. "What's fucking wrong with you?" Louder. Because he was acting like a crazy person.
She’s probably got more of his blood inside her, than he does himself right now. “He knows what I’m saying — and what you are.” Language, included. Reid feels as tired as the kid looks. “We’ll figure him out when we get back to the house, alright? Just make sure he doesn't fall off the seat, Anika. Please. Just hold him if you have to.” He's not asking much.
She wasn't holding the damn kid. Eyes, that were wide with shock and anger, left Reid's and fell on a pair of tear stained cheeks, and chopped, pale lips. His fingers were tiny, she'd noticed. Dark beneath the nails — mud or blood, or something fucking disgusting. Her arms crossed over her chest, in silent protest, refusing to do what she was told.
His upper lip gleamed with fresh snot, and his voice was hoarse from the crying, when he said: "I'm hungry."
Reid doesn’t even know which turning to take when he takes a left at the junction. There's finally another truck on the road, shooting past them like there’s nothing wrong on the inside of it. Absently — since Anika’s checked out: “Yeah. Hold on, we’ve got pumpkin pie at the house, you like pie?” What kid doesn’t? There's enough of it, and leftover barbecue that they can offer him.
The lights are off at the station. Yet the door’s open — the clatter of blinds mark his presence as Reid pushes through the door, Hannah following behind. Swollen cheeks, tear stained and reddened. She grasps the edges of his jacket, as if it would protect her, and Bethany if she willed it enough.
Two steps in, and Reid knows something is off. A silence, and a lull that drags his feet to the sheriff’s desk. Drip, drip, drip —
He looks up, to see the oozing red splattered into the ceiling, looks down to the corner of a twisted ankle visible on the floor behind the desk. Swallowing, he takes slow steps around to see the misshapen limbs, like broken twigs, jutting out in every direction. Instead of bark, its flesh, and instead of sap, its blood. Pooling fresh at his feet; a face frozen in fear, and agony — eyes wide, and glazed staring into nothingness.
A chunk of skin is carved out of the forehead — thick lines forming an unusual, intentional symbol.
There’s nothing he can do to stop Hannah seeing the mess for herself.
All he can do is brace for the scream.
It doesn’t stop him from moving to the other side of the office, side stepping the disarray with a new urgency. The blood permeates the small office, but he knows Anika’s come here.
And he knows she didn’t do this.
If the Sheriff deserved it, she’d have done it with a bullet. This is something he’d imagine of McCormick’s artistry. But he doesn't get to take the fucking picture.
Hannah’s wails are deafening and Reid’s hands on the doorframe leading out of the room tell he’s got more than cries clouding his mind. Something familiar that wets his tongue; makes his mouth hunger for what it knows. A map he could follow every river and vein; he has known its bends beneath his lips, and understood its desire beneath his bite; Anika’s blood thinly stains the linoleum in an uneven river. A fear he denies is choking him when he imagines her hurt — yet he’s staring at the breadcrumbs of the aftermath. He hates to think that she hasn't stumbled her way through the office, on her own perdition. The crassly stained path is unbroken, as it leads all the way through to the cells.
Shows him to an open one; it’s empty.
And the blood trail stops.
In the attic, beside Bethany's corpse, was another body. Another kid chained, like she was. Three, maybe four. His chin was shiny with drool, and a dark wet spot spread across the crotch of his snoopy pajama bottoms. He was still warm — breathing, alive. Kid let out a small, involuntary whimper, and Anika forced her dry mouth open: "Hey, kid, you okay?"
How long had he been locked in here?
Her gaze darted to the door. She'd been here before, listening for footsteps outside a cage, the jingle of keys, the scrape of a tray with something only resembling food. The world dipped and rose — skull still throbbing, where the wound was knitting itself shut.
Kid only shivered, curled up on a ball, mute.
For a second, she thought they'd cut out his tongue. But who'd do that to a fucking kid? Who the fuck, was murdering all those damn kids?
Reid tries her phone again. Twisting around to hear Hannah’s delusional muttering to herself, and a derailing mind that doesn’t help his own.
I never should have let you come alone, Booker. That’s his mistake — he wanted to believe she could handle herself; he’d believed that Quail Creek only had its ordinarily awful share of crimes. But now he’s got his hand in his girlfriend’s blood on the ground, feeling its warmth between the pads of his fingers.
He can’t stand Hannah Tate’s wailing any longer, and he’s there in the next moment, hand on her chin, urging her to look at him — watery eyes, quivering lip and a fear that consumes a mother deep into her core.
“Stop screaming, Hannah.” She does, like he’s snapped her neck to quiet. He can’t ask her to forgo the fear — that feels wrong, in the scheme of fucked up mind games. They might need her afraid, somewhere along the line. Fear keeps people alive. “And do everything I say. You understand?”
A nod. Good.
They’re walking out the sheriff’s office — they leave behind the remains of a dead man; whatever officers are on his payroll, they’re not doing shit do them tonight.
Reid’s got a taste for blood; the map he’s got is incomplete, but he has the means of following its path, and revealing the route from memory. He's not sure Anika’s ever going to like knowing that he can trace her, because he’s had enough of her blood to distinguish it from the next. But he's glad for it, when worry starts to creep out of his humanity box, and drive him forwards, Hannah in tow.
Hannah can’t see his features from behind him but if she caught a glance of the monster prowling ahead, it wouldn’t be pretty; a dark set of eyes that memorise every crack in the sidewalk, and assume every bricked building is a threat. The city chapel, quiet — it stirs a brief, unwanted memory of a club lighting up the stained windows. There's a seamstress with a foggy window, lights on in the back; a shadow of something hunched and elderly working somewhere out of sight.
Somewhere, a theory of madness begins knitting itself together. Bethany is missing — a child washes up in the creek, the Sheriff tasked with finding them is dead.
Not just dead, shredded; bent out of sorts.
There's symbols Reid doesn’t know what they mean, and he’s lost every fucking witch he knows to some cursed existence — at least the ones who he might have considered ever calling to bitterly recount those markings to.
Now Anika isn’t picking up, and a path of her blood shows up at the crime scene of a dead cop.
God they're so fucking unlucky.
He's beginning to think they really never should have left Oregon.
Pursuing a memory, where his teeth know the soft of flesh, and his tongue knows the warmth of blood has his concentration steadying. An innate need to chase the source, to find the root of it so he might gorge —
He has to slow down. Eyes fly frantically, and accusingly to every dead, lights-off building, as he tracks blood like a beast with a bone.
01:00. 14th October 2025.
Bethany Tate had been gone from her mother for barely a day. But Willsberg's boy had been missing for three. His babysitter's body hung limp from the bathroom door, purple around a neck that was tilted at an unnatural angle. No one had come looking for her. No one had come looking for the boy, either.
John Willsberg was still out of town, about to call home on a phone that would only ever ring.
And Hannah Tate, she'd already stopped crying. Her sobs had dried into silence. Like every other parent before her, who'd tried to make noise in a town that didn't want to listen.
The boy had watched as Bethany flopped on her back, growling and spraying bloody foam from between blabbering lips. Her eyes wild with horror. He'd tried to hug her. It was why the shirt of his snoopy pajama had blotches of blood.
They didn’t need to inject her with anything. All a witch in possession of dark magic had to do was lift a finger. That’s what Anika thought they were, from the carvings still raw on the kid’s limbs. Beneath where a rainbow sock had ended, a rune had been etched into the skin.
"We weren't supposed to kill that kid."
"I know. But she couldn't take it. It happens. Relax."
Anika listened to the voices outside the door, talking about murdering fucking children, like they were discussing the weather. She'd been casual about killing once too. Still was, in the right kind of way. Killing fuckers — not kids.
"What about the hunter? What do we do with her, huh?"
"I haven't tried her blood yet."
More hushed whispers.
They knew. Of course, they did. Magic laced the ink on her neck. They could sense it off of her.
The gun in her waistband was gone. And with one hand chained, and the other missing, Anika figured her odds were shit.
The door swung open, and two men stepped in; same bastards that had rearranged all the bones inside Sheriff Torres. Their eyes roamed over her, as though she was prey.
"I swear, if you fucking tou—"
Venomous words, from a mouth silenced with the simple lift of a hand. Then— a sick crack of bone. She screamed.
"Let's try this again." He said, crouching down beside her.
Rough fingers grabbed her chin, forcing her gaze on a pair of black, bottomless eyes. "I've got a couple of questions for you. You'll answer when I tell you to."
Anika spat at him, and missed by an inch. A low, humorless laugh slipped from his mouth and then pain struck her again. It tore through her body, twisting her insides as though someone had reached in and wrung her organs dry. Blood boiling beneath her skin.
Teeth bared, she tried to swallow the sound clawing up her throat, but the scream ripped out anyway.
Doubt creeps in — and it’s a death sentence. If he lets the skeletal hands rip stripes out of his heart, then there will be no reason to ever play the dangerous game of humanity switches. It’s over. There’s nothing but Oklahoma City making the papers, for Quail Creek would be rife with a new massacre. Reid would be slain in the same breath — and if not, then by hunters descending on the county or by the sunlight that always comes.
Theres no greater enemy, than one’s own mind fallen from the tracks.
He's at the edge of town, and Hannah’s lagging behind — uttering something he doesn’t want to hear about exhaustion that he can't feel, because his strength is fuelled by something other.
Anika’s blood is thicker in this neighbourhood, where shabby ranches stretch for acres, unowned and rotting. Wild cattle that looks malnourished lingers in the distance, fenced in by rusted wire.
Hannah grabs at his arm, and Reid turns at the suddenness of it, eyes dipping to say something impulsive. It’s fear, he realises. Comfort he won’t give her, because he’d trade her life for Anika’s in a heartbeat — and that wasn’t always who he was; that’s the broken switch he can't turn one way or the other. He’d trade Spiderman’s too, if that was what it cost. A monster, through and through. Righteousness died the moment he crawled out of a basement, screaming.
Halstead would have once been torn to pieces to make a decision like that — he’d have traded himself, for both. Saved the innocent, in a decision that would force his hand. He’d have fought against that immoral choice. Now, he'd throw every life that isn’t hers to the wolves.
He wouldn’t even watch them chew. That’s who he’s become in the wake of the death of his morality, and the pieces of a more mortal man.
Outside one of the houses, a truck is parked down the side — a tarp loosely tied to the bed of it. It reeks of rot, and ammonia. Reid has bloodhounded his way to the edge of nothing; Hannah’s only grown more terrified, unsure how he’s even guided them there. She can’t scream, and she’ll listen to everything he says.
He’s listening beyond the beat of a panicked mothers palpitating heart. The pulsing of blood, and the temptation that has been unfed for the last forty minutes as he follows the path of the sweetest kind, left like breadcrumbs.
A low whisper, urgent: “You’re going to hide now. If you can find a way to take the truck, get it running.” If by some miracle, she can. Reid would have liked to have painted the walls with those who have put a hand on what’s his by the time she’s done. Maybe find Bethany, too, before she ends up bloated in a foul, piss-ridden creek. He urges her towards the driveway and the blue truck, “Go, Hannah.”
Then he’s stalking towards the door of a home in which he can hear the beats of the dying; those who would soon rather wish to have never disturbed a couple making home in Quail Creek.
He encounters a problem at the door — it's not so abandoned, he realises. He pushes a hand on the threshold and finds he can’t pass through.
The angry yell is cut short in his throat when he opts for banging a fist on the wooden frame beside it. They can invite him in, or he’ll kill whoever is inside by means of sharp objects until there’s no living owner left. Anika’s blood is stronger, fresher; he knows she’s here and he won't give terror a home to live in his chest.
From inside, Reid can hear more than one heart racing within. She’s not alone. And he’s here now.
02:00. 14th October 2025.
A sharp blade bit into the skin of her forearm, tearing up her sleeve. Anika bit back — teeth sinking deep into Toby's wrist.
"She fucking bit me." He yelped, jerking away, a strangled sound of disbelief and pain.
In a flash, Trevor tore the knife out of his partner's grasp. "Idiot."
His backhand cracked against Anika's cheek, splitting her lip. Blood flooded her mouth, as her head snapped to one side.
"Should've gagged her first." Toby muttered, clutching his bleeding hand.
Then they held her down. Pinned her with his full weight, pressing her body into the cold floor, as she thrashed, trying to escape another recurring nightmare, while the other grabbed her wrist and slammed it flat. The knife found her skin again. Pain radiated out like heat from an open flame. He wasn't cutting to kill. He was writing something. Each stroke was a symbol, an ugly mark that glowed faintly as her blood welled up to fill it.
Her screams rattled the attic walls. The small boy to her right stirred, if it could even be called sleep. He had drifted in and out of a daze, too weak to cry anymore. Hunger hollowed out his belly and thirst had turned his tongue to sandpaper.
Downstairs, heads snapped toward the sound.
"We should get the kid and go." A woman muttered, pacing the narrow hallway. She was dressed in black, a strange sigil tattooed along her wrist, something that shimmered faintly when she moved. "It's him she wants, isn't it? We're wasting time."
"Not yet." said another witch, seated lazily on a lone chair by the stairs, as if guarding something. "She wants proof the hunter's blood can hold the spell. We finish this, then we bring the boy."
Reid stands on the porch. Chest as still as the day he died — emptied of air. There had been a time where he had been relieved for lack of invitation to a home; said it was a mercy to be kept away from those who could not protect themselves.
But he can hear them. Like thunder striking a waterfall. Hearts beating, mouths moving to show tongue and teeth. Twisting sick words into sicker weapons, and beating a woman who deserves no more torture.
Bite harder next time, Booker.
Reid tastes blood like a song in the air now; impossible to comprehend as a man, but it has a rhythm and a spark like any note struck. Instead of his ears, it teases his lips with that spice of magic. Whatever spell they intend to cast, he plans to get in the way of it. They can’t have Anika for whatever dark thing they have going on. Reid wants to know how many ways he needs tell a city he wants no part of its shadowy corners — but he can’t seem step out of them, either.
They're upstairs, he knows that much as he takes steps back, back — away from the house until he’s on the lawn, staring up at the attic window. Closed. But he can get up there and see what they’ve done; let them know that they’ve got more company than they bargained for.
It’s the old way — the classic tale of climbing pipes, and throwing stones at windows. Skating across roof tiles until he can see what’s on the other side of the dirty, grimey window. He might not be able to get inside, but he can shatter the glass with a rock, if they want to play hide and seek. He just needs to let Booker know that he’s there and he’s coming for her.
He remembers when she’d told him on the sidewalk in Denver that he would be the reason she’d end up in another basement.
That cuts him open; a stake to a heart that yearns to be ash at the sight of her in the attic.
Red rivers ran down her wrists — from cuts that no longer healed. That mark on the back of her neck had lost its magic. It was rotten witches work — what had once been done, could be undone, with the same ease.
The plan was to drain her slowly, drop by drop, watch the color fade from her cheeks, the light dim in her eyes. At least they've stopped hovering over her like a pair of vultures. Now they stood by the window, muttering in low tunes: "What if someone's looking for her?" Toby asked, tracing the crescent bite mark on his hand, still oozing blood where her teeth had sunk in. "There's gotta be more of her out there. Hunters don’t move alone."
"Then they'll find a body."
The window beside them shattered. Toby ducked, while Trevor stayed still, eyes darting toward the jagged frame. A shape moved in the darkness, faster than the magic beginning to coil around his fingertips.
Someone had followed her here. Good, he thought, let them all come where they'd meet their end.
Something sharp and jagged pierces through the opening of the attic. A roof tile launched like a shuriken, frisbeeing between the gaps in a broken window until it slices through the base of a throat. A choking gasp that stops it dead; chipped slate buried in the dip of a cavity.
Then another, flicked from a deft wrist with a monstrous force to jut into a skull ducked too low.
Reid can’t see if there are other witches who have slinked away, but the crumpling bodies are too easy of deaths for them; too quick an end when he sees the state of the crumbling attic. A spasming corpse eventually stills at the foot of where Anika lays. Another on its front, spurting blood from a scalp full of slate. She’s slick with red, rivering down her arms, bones that look displaced. A smaller, sunken body curled beside her. He thinks he can see a child, deathly pale in the back, too.
The last thing Toby and Trevor saw were a pair of eyes — dark, red and angry.
The same eyes the witches downstairs would meet when they climb the steps, stepping over the remains of those who’d dared to dip their fingers in the wrong woman’s blood.
Sheriff Miles Torres hadn't called in a search party. He didn't care about little girls in pigtails who'd gone missing from their homes, or their mothers worrying themselves sick. There was a stack of money promised, with his name written on it, waiting to be delivered when the job was done.
And the job was simple — keep the people of Quail Creek at bay. Keep them quiet and fed. So far, he'd done an outstanding job. The mayor shook his hand once a month. The papers called him the man who 'kept peace where others found trouble.'
But there was a dip between his brows tonight, and a stream sweat cut down the side of his face. He assumed, after their talk, that she'd pay him a visit soon. Hannah Tate, the mother of the missing girl, who he'd known since she was in diapers.
He paced behind his desk, waiting for the phone to ring with more instructions.
The blinds on the front door rattled against the small window when it swung open. The hinges let out a soft groan. He figured it must be her coming to ask where the group of volunteers he'd promised to send out was. Christ, he just hoped she hadn't started going door to door, stirring up panic. It would've been a smart thing to do, but Hannah Tate had never been a smart woman.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Then a shadow — stretching across the floor. A long dark shape against the pale light from the lamp. She took another step, close enough that he could smell the paint still stuck to her clothes.
He didn't wait for her to speak. He wondered instead, how much he'd get if he delivered the mother too. If she was worth, as much as the kid. Hand gripped the edge of a 2012 Sheriff Service Award. And it came down, in one clean arc. The sharp corner of the plaque dug into the side of her head with a crack that made his stomach lurch.
Anika dropped to her knees with a gasp.
From where he stood behind the door, he watched her body hit the floor. And froze. That wasn't Hannah Tate. Her hair spilled across her face, but the parts he could see, told him enough. He'd hit the wrong woman. The realization struck him like cold water. Panic flared behind his calm. Sheriff Torres hadn't had to dispose of a body since the war, and he'd sworn he never would again. But as he stared down at the motionless form, he heard the terrible sound of his plan starting to fall apart.
22:30. 13th October 2025.
There is nothing he can say to Hannah Tate that would make this better. Not a damn word. Her anxieties, and her fears manifested in shaky pants, and wobbly legs as they walked the length of the creek. Reid has chewed on his words seven different ways, and found that all he had were promises he can’t keep or lies she’d loathe him for later.
A flashlight guides them one muddy step at a time. Boots sliding down the bank. Carefully looking for imprints of shoes, or some tell that a child had been down here, running and exploring and doing whatever curious children do.
Reid hasn’t even asked which of the Tate’s is missing. “Does Spider-Man like it here?” He asks, cutting through the silence in a way he wishes he didn't have to. He wonders if Anika would know what to say, or if blunt and honest suits.
The dark gives little away of its intentions, and the rush of a rocky creek spilling down to their right was a symphony that could have easily doubled as a funeral march.
Rocks cracked under their feet. Mildew and blossoms crunched — Fall had left, and Winter crawled in, cooling the nights.
It’s no place for a child. Reid knows that much.
Hannah’s foot catches in the sludge, and Reid’s quick to turn and catch her before she squeals, and collapses into the water. Tears accompany the sobs, crippling fear consumes a worried woman. Reid pulls her gently out of where her foot has been soaked in the creek.
“Hey — hey—” A low whisper, as he attempts to bring the mother back to calm. Trembling fingers that grab at his forearms, nails digging into his skin as she heaves. Reid’s mouth twists, unable to find anything to say besides — “Hannah.” a beat, “We’ll keep looking.”
A nod — frantic, as shivering. He expects it’s cold for her, and Reid unzips his jacket and shrugs it off. He doesn’t ask her permission when he wraps it over Hannah’s shoulders. Frightened hands grab at it, wrapping it closer as he slowly continues walking down the path of the creek. Eyes focus, scanning every upturned rock, and stomped blade of grass. Come on, kid, where the hell did you go?
A gush of water rumbles over a rapid and forks around a large black mass up ahead. The object sways where it’s snagged on a rock — something plastic; a dam that’s manmade, and at first, Reid thinks there’s a trash bag someone has fly tipped into the creek.
And then his lip twitches when he gets closer, a stench of something like sulphur — a rotted eggish fermentation that has his hand coming to his mouth in distaste. His stomach begins to sink, and he turns back to Hannah, her eyes darting around urgently in the surrounding areas.
It could be nothing.
“Hang back there, okay?” He says, stepping into the water, and letting the cold whip at his ankles. As he crouches, careful fingers pull at the trashbag — tufts of something sticky and hair-like protrude from the opening. Reid closes his eyes, teeth sharpening against his tongue. Don’t be this. A silent will, as he pulls at the trapped bag until it bursts.
He can hear Hannah behind him — and something violent erupts from his throat as he turns around. “Hannah — just stay there.”
When he rips an opening in the bag, and more than rot, and decay exhale from the trash — Reid knows. And his heart squeezes. Head falling in disappointment. This is cruel — the cruelest torture. Why this? They’re on their front, curled in amongst bloodied rope, bloated — blue tinged flesh swollen in the neck. Reid doesn’t want to, but he slowly dislodges the wrapping, so he can turn the body over.
It’s a boy — not Spider-Man.
There’s blood; aged and browning staining the corpse. Shapes Reid doesn’t know or recognise are scarred and carved into a forehead. Skin peeled, and long taut, and stiff. Is that witch shit?
Reid’s no fucking expert, but he’s seen runes — and languages he doesn’t want to mess with. There’s enough etched into his mind; impossible to forget.
He lets go of the trashbag and sits back on the bank with a defeated sigh. Halstead is staring at the face of someone’s child, as he wonders what to say to Hannah — begging for an answer behind him. He doesn’t know what the fuck someone has done to a child. Or why.
“It's not — it’s not her.” He says, quietly. Swallowing, as he shakes his head. “Hannah, get the fucking sheriff on that phone, now.”
“You stay right there.” Sheriff Torres grunted, taking heavy breaths, as he let go of the limp foot in his grip. It hit the concrete with a dull thud. He’d dragged her all the way through the station and into the basement cell no one used anymore. The gash on her head had left a trail behind them, thin streaks of red leading to where she now lay.
He crouched, watching for a flicker of movement. It was an ugly wound, still bleeding steadily, but she was breathing.
Anika had complicated things for him.
The front door upstairs opened. Two men dressed head to toe in black, long cloaks trailing behind them, walked into the station.
That would be the call he’d been expecting.
They’d tried the phone four times already, while he’d been too busy hauling an unconscious woman through his own station and trying to clean up the proof that he had, without a doubt, fucked up.
When they reached the open door of the basement and started down the creaky steps, they found him locking the cell. "We've heard the mother's been going around." The taller one said.
Torres swallowed: "She's panicking, but I've got it all under control."
The two men exchanged looks — a cold, and wordless understanding between them. The instructions had been simple: Keep everyone calm. Assure them you're doing everything in your power to find the kid.
That was the deal. No noise. No suspicion.
But there was too much of that now. An unconscious woman lay in a cell, head split open and her name sure as hell wasn't Hannah Tate. "Bad job, Sheriff." It was the tall one, again. Torres never bothered to remember their names. He'd told himself they didn't matter.
She mattered. The woman who'd made him an accomplice. She'd smiled her bright, professional smile and offered him more, than he'd ever dreamed of holding in two hands.
The tall one, Tony, that was it, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. The keys slipped from Torres’s hand, clattering across the concrete.
"I'm afraid this isn't gonna work out for us." Tony said.
It was a death sentence, and Torres knew it.
Soft pleads grew louder, until the words tripped over themselves in panic. Smoke curled around deadly fingertips, as his hand lifted in a graceful motion, like a conductor leading an orchestra. A death march. There was a crack tearing through the basement. Bones snapping like dry branches. Legs and arms that didn't look like legs and arms anymore.
Torres screamed in agony.
Until there was screaming no more.
23:15. 13th October 2025.
After the fourth attempt — Reid knows he will hear that ringer in his nightmares. He’d known by the third, someone’s priorities were fucked. Hannah’s trembling hands dial the sheriff’s office over, and over. By normal accounts, three people could have died in the silence, and lack of emergency response.
By Reid’s account, he could have killed dozens.
And not one person would have lifted a finger to act in the meantime. Fucking Sheriff. Towns and small cities with county’s that don’t have enough resources. This reminds him of every time he’d hunted out of state; been the brotherhood’s cavalry, because there aren’t enough hunters in the world to stop shit like this.
Reid doesn’t even know what this is.
And he’s not a coroner, he doesn’t know how long that body’s been caught up in the creek, rotting away a child’s face until it would be skull, and gristle. They still don’t know where Bethany is and it’s only getting darker; he’s aware of the odds on missing children after dark.
Reid calls Anika; he doesn’t care if he’s interrupting.
Waits. Eyes lingering on the tangled body, trapped between rocks.
No answer.
He checks his signal; three bars. Maybe Quail Creek isn’t formidable for its service and she’s out of range. If the police are anything to go by — a radio tower seems too difficult an ask.
On the edge of town, Anika woke on cold concrete. A bruise bloomed purple and black across her cheek, from being slammed down hard. Every bone and muscle screamed in protest, like broken things trapped within a cage.
They'd moved her like luggage — dragged, hauled, battered.
Heavy chains bolted into the floor and looped up to rings sunk into the walls. It reminded her of a basement she was left to rot in, not too long ago. Panic crawled up her throat, and squeezed. Anika felt like she couldn't breathe — yanking at the metal links again and again until her wrist burned and her skin split red.
The air reeked of rot and ammonia, the sour stench of meat gone bad, tangled with the animal stick of piss. When she lifted her head, the room tilted funny. Her vision tunneling in and out.
To her right, a small body lay twisted awkwardly on the floor, back toward Anika. Rainbow socks on shoeless feet. She reached, just far enough to touch her shoulder, and turned her halfway over. Bethany Tate's face was blue. Eyes — open and glassy.
Her stomach dropped. Nausea hit her like a punch in the face. She pressed her forehead to the concrete and let a sound land there that wasn’t a sob but something angrier.
With Reid, Hannah’s sobbing again.
Fuck. Reid turns, addresses her, with that affirmation that promises authority he doesn’t have: “Hey — listen to me, we’re going to the Sheriff. I’ll make him —” Reid’s yet to know exactly what. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.” They should have a search party out by now, and he can’t hear anything besides them, the creek and a hare bounding between the trees.
It had been a week since the Daniels-Millers took residence in Mr. and Mrs. Rudd’s house, threw out most of their crap and called it theirs.
They’d painted over the living room walls (Anika’s idea), deciding yellow just wasn’t their color. “Maybe something darker,” she’d said. Agreement came easy when the choices were boring and safe. Whether to hang a punching bag in the bedroom. Whether the curtains were too thin. Reid hated the idea of heavy curtains, but it was a necessity. Blinds were cheaper, but they reminded her too much of the motels they’d wasted what felt like years in. Money wasn’t an issue anymore, so why not buy the better kind? The kind that kept the light out completely.
Anika had already built herself a routine. On nights when he was out, she’d grab dinner at the Black Bear Diner. Takeout, always. She didn’t like lingering among neighbors hungrier for conversation than food. She’d bring it home in a plastic box and eat in front of the canvas, staring at the blankness. Mind empty.
The longer she looked, the easier it became to see it, to feel it taking shape. An image forming like a whisper, calling her to bring it to life, like a resurrection spell.
She was no witch, but she'd started to think — she was a good painter.
One night, hours after trading her fork for a paintbrush, she almost didn’t hear the obnoxious sound of the doorbell (the one she still wasn’t used to calling hers) over the electric wail of a guitar solo in her headphones. It sounded like someone was drilling a finger straight through the damn button.
The paintbrush was replaced by a gun. She always kept it close, at all times. Another thing she and Reid agreed on: there was no such thing as paranoia. Only idiots who didn’t keep their gun within reach. They might’ve found their comfort here, but comfort didn’t mean safety. And safety didn’t mean letting her guard down.
Conveniently, the easel faced the kitchen window, so she could peek around the edge of the canvas and keep an eye on the street. Most of the houses still had their lights on, all but a couple down the block. There was Bill, hauling his trash out to the curb. Anika craned her head, trying to catch the face by her front door, but couldn’t.
Goddamn it.
At the door, Anika slipped the gun into the back of her jeans and swung it open, not expecting to see Hannah’s face, all scrunched with worry. The single mother stood on the porch, cracking her knuckles, her frantic eyes darting over the cold steadiness of Anika’s gaze.
“Gosh, I’m so—so, so sorry to bother you, but I didn’t know where else to go. I went to the sheriff already, and he told me to wait—he said he was, um, getting a search group ready for tonight—but it’s already late, and I’m frightened—”
If Anika hadn’t stopped her, she could’ve kept going.
“Hannah, slow down. What happened? You went to the sheriff?”
“Bethany— I… I just went to the store for her favorite cocoa puffs. She said we ran out, so I went to grab another box, and when I came back, she was gone. I—I called my ex-husband, I thought maybe she’d called him, asked him to pick her up—maybe she wanted to stay with him but didn’t know how to tell me, you know? She’s five, she—”
Her voice cracked with nerves, almost as loudly as her knuckles. Fingers shaking badly, like a drug addict in abstinence. Anika reached out and rested a steadying hand on her shoulder.
“Okay, okay. Come inside. You can tell me everything.”
They sat down and talked about where her three other children were, at their grandmothers house. Bethany had been feeling sick, so Hannah decided to keep her home. Her leg bounced up and down. Fingers and eyes glued to phone screen, waiting for the damn sheriff to call.
"Drink your tea and we'll go, yeah?" A proposition.
"But the sheriff—"
"Fuck the sheriff."
20:40. 13th October 2025.
What Reid had noticed about Quail Creek, was that it was a town that enjoys being homebound by a certain hour; there’s no trouble after dark. House lights on, cars parked on drives — he’s the only thing that disturbs the dark. It makes the already foul act of his need, even harder. He can’t enter homes without invitation, and he has none.
He always wanders towards the bar, no less than every few days — any less, and Anika notices changes in him, any more and it’s no longer need, but want.
He’s decided already, in the quiet of Quail Creek’s early bedtime, that Dr. Sawyer deserves an awakening. Reid glances up and down the street, pivoting to cut a path up to the doctors house. Hands stuffed in jacket pockets, and an awareness that there’s some habits he shouldn’t revisit.
Dr. Sawyer comes to the door in a slinky robe — H.S. embroidered at the breast too, and a crystal glass of scotch in hand. A breathless voice trills from somewhere in the house, she’s calling for Howard as he greets Reid — who is frowning, at the peculiar visitation. “Mr. Daniels.”
Reid doesn't think he’ll ever get used to that.
“Dr. Sawyer.” He flashes a smile from under the porch light. “I was wondering if I could come inside — talk to you about something.”
Other than telling the doc he’s a sleezebag, Reid doesn’t have anything to actually say to the doctor. He just hopes that the twenty five year old girlfriend stays in her lane, too. This doesn’t need to be any messier. The doctor eyes him warily. Evidently, Reid’s interrupted whatever doctors and their daughter-aged girlfriends do in the evenings.
“Sure, Reid. Come in.”
That’s all it takes — and Reid strolls across the threshold.
Dr. Sawyer is passed out on his snakeskin couch. Some other, unknown creature wrapped around his lampshade. It’s about as tasteful as his blood had been; pumped full of acidic vitamins, and laced with blow that Reid had only realised a minute into the whole ordeal. Now he feels a little bit wired, which hadn’t been his intention.
Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, he can hear the doctors girlfriend, traipsing from their bedroom, towards the living room.
Reid doesn't have an explanation for the snoozing man, or his appearance. And he quickly makes route towards the door right as she wanders to the entrance of the lounge.
Shit.
“Oh — hey.” She startles, as Reid moves aside with a painfully pleasant smile, because he realises she’s also in a pinkish robe.
Hers is undone.
“Howard?” She asks — stepping into the room to note the sleeping doctor. Worried eyes widen, and she whirls on Reid — robe flapping, Reid’s eyes dart to the side. Not in guilt, but he needs to catch her gaze and nothing else, before she screams fucking murder or something other.
“He fell asleep.” Believable?
“Again?” She sighs — suddenly, huffing with some kind of disappointment. “He takes his sleeping pills at the worst times, I’ve got us all set up in —”
“Yeah—” he can't remember her name, actually. But she doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Maybe he can save the compulsion, if he just leaves now. She pulls out a box of cigarettes, and doesn’t hesitate with lighting one in the house — blowing smoke towards Reid, as he inches towards the front door.
She eyes him, up and down, as if finally realising he’s in Dr. Sawyers house. Casual, as if she’s asking him if he wants coffee: “You wanna join?”
Reid shakes his head, and gets his hand on the latch. “I’m good. Girlfriends waiting.”
“You can call her too.”
He doesn't feel like the predator any longer.
And by the time he gets out the door with a doctor’s girlfriend waving goodbye to him, he feels like he can’t scratch off the itch.
He’s scratched one — and that’s the only one that Anika can’t have. The rest, are already hers.
21:15. 13th October 2025.
No bar. Just home. A key fumbling with the door as he steps inside.
The lights are off.
It's deathly quiet.
Anika?
He checks his phone, in case he’s missed something.
"I don't even know where else to look. I've checked the backyard, the street, her friend Rose's house two doors down, no one's seen her— I don't —"
Anika cut in gently, zipping her jacket all the way up. "You said she's five, right? Where does she goes when she wants to be alone?" she asked, not knowing shit about kids. Guesses like shots in the dark.
There’s no missed messages from Anika. So Reid drops her one: ‘You went out? Everything okay?’ He hopes that doesn’t sound accusatory; he just didn't know she had plans. ‘You know where I am, if you need anything baby.’ He adds, sends.
Hannah blinked at her. "She—she has a playhouse in the yard, but I checked there already. Sometimes she hides in the laundry room or behind the couch, when she's scared. But she wasn't—"
"Kids go back to what feels familiar when they're scared." Anika said, ripping through the shadows with her flashlight, when her boyfriends name popped up; dark bold letters. 'Hannah lost her kid.' — a text sent back.
Reid pauses in the house, a hand hovering on the lightswitch as he reads the message.
‘What do you mean, she’s lost her kid?’
Reid’s just been outside, there’s nobody out in the street, running the lengths looking for any missing children. ‘I’ll help. Tell me where you are.’
"You think she's hiding?" Hannah asked, "You don't think someone—" she couldn't even finish her thought, before bursting into tears.
"I don't think anything." A pair of green hues met Hannah's teary ones, then slipped down to her phone.
We're by Hannah's house — a text sent.
The light in the house never comes on. Reid pockets his keys and makes his way to Hannah’s.
‘I’m on my way.’
Reid’s senses stay on alert for anything that might be wandering the night alone, scared. Lost. He doesn’t know how Anika is involved, or why Quail Creek hasn’t got a search party, scouring every lane and alleyway in the city already.
It gives him the impression he’s misunderstood what lost meant.
They were just about to head to the creek trail. Hannah had told her it was where Bethany liked to throw rocks. It wasn't much of a lead, and Anika dreaded finding the little girl facedown in the stream. But they had to start somewhere — garages and alleyways weren't going to give them anything.
There’s no amber alert on his phone — he’d have heard it. Reid walks quickly, crossing the street until he can see beams of light frantically being dragged back and forth. “Anika?” Reid calls, ducking underneath a low hanging branch from the oak beside Hannah’s place in the hope they might have found the child.
When Reid called her name, Anika's neck nearly snapped.
"Hey—" She had her hand on Hannah's shoulder, who was still shaking like a leaf. "We're here."
Hannah has a flashlight pointed at the ground — illuminating dewed grass, and muddied footprints. Anika’s gaze quickly finds Reid’s in the dark, whilst he asks, “You alright?” Evidently not, but questioning eyes scour their surroundings before falling back on the women again. “Any luck?”
Hannah looks as though she’s faced off with a dozen ghosts, and Anika’s told them to get fucked a few times over. There’s no child with them, and he can’t hear any noise besides the three of them.
Anika gave him a pointed look — What does it look like, Reid?
He wonders why they haven’t called the cops yet.
If Booker’s face is anything to go by, Reid already has the answers to his questions. A severe, solemn sort of unease that doesn't usually twist her features. She cares. Without saying it, he pulls out his phone — prepares to dial 911.
Mossy gaze captured the phone, then a hand came down on it — "Sheriff knows, but he's dragging his damn feet." There was no use calling the police. He was the fucking police. That old piece of shit. Her eyes snapped to Hannah, who had her arms wrapped around herself, like she was afraid she might fall apart.
Glacial gaze lifts to the hand — and then to meet hers. They’ve called the cops. Quail Creek’s a sheriff’s county. Right. He lowers the phone, nodding in understanding.
Anika didn't want to waste another moment. "You wanna go with her to the creek trail? I'll check what's taking that fucker so long." The gun sat heavy against her spine.
She already knows he doesn’t like that idea. But Hannah can’t go alone, and better Anika with the cops, than him.
Better Anika not trawling the dark either.
Kid’s missing. "Yeah, okay.” He doesn’t like it, but they don’t have spare minutes to argue about it either. Leaning down, he steals a kiss. “Be safe.”
The plates with crackers and corndogs were empty. Plates piled up on a wobbly pyramid in the sink. Left to soak, she'd said. But Reid already expected that. He'd had years of experience living with Anika. He'd know her eyes wouldn't even catch the muddy footsteps all over the hardwood floor, or the red stain on the carpet in the living room. She picked up after herself, enough so they wouldn't suffocate in trash.
One strap down, and no shoes on, she was picking up someone's forgotten wallet. Anika felt the need to make sure, her boyfriend wouldn't think she'd snatched it from the neighbours. "Look what I got— " She held it between two fingers. "Oh, don't look at me like that. I didn't steal it."
Paul Smith was a kindergarten teacher. It'd be a waste to even consider it.
Reid has paper towels under his shoes, as he slides across the kitchen floor, soaking up spillages. He’s amazed that nobody’s slipped and broken their neck tonight. There’s bottles worth of beer stickying the floor.
He doesn’t look up straight away when Anika calls over — busy making sure that dirt traipsed in across floorboards were not stomped into the wood.
“What?” A murmur, as eyes eventually peek up from the ground to see a leather wallet. He’s glad to learn she hasn’t stolen it. “Good.” A smile, as he chucks the dirty towels into the trash. “Did you enjoy your first cook out — I’ve popped your barbecue cherry, huh?” He can't say he thought it went badly; everyone appeared to have a good time, and Anika talked to almost everybody.
He thinks the smile had stopped being fake, after a while too.
She threw the wallet, with all credit cards still inside, on the couch and started piling empty glasses on top of each other, a glass tower getting higher and higher — "You have, and it really wasn't that bad. Your cooking was real something, baby."
Anika managed to steal a burger or two earlier, stuff her mouth while left on her own for two minutes.
“Yeah? I mean you were my taster all night.” Reid wouldn’t have been been able to tell. It'd been all her, trusting her to tell him if something was too salty, or sweet — or spicy. “Should have known you liked your meats.” He teases, as he begins to tackle the mess of the countertops.
"We can do that more often, if you like it." A beat, "Just us."
Just them sounded nice.
She felt like she had to dodge questions, as if they were bullets, all night. Their living room had turned into a minefield. Are you guys married? Boom. Have any kids? Boom. If you don't mind me asking, is that from an accident? Boom. Boom. Boom.
The only one that didn't seem interested in their life was Hannah.
"People were fine, yeah? I liked the kid and her mom."
“Hannah?” Reid asks — because how can they forget her. “The mom who nearly saw us with our pants down?”
Mother to Spider-Man.
Reid likes her too.
"It wasn't like you had your hand down my pants. Come on, it was just a kiss." She said, with a roll of her eyes.
Thank fuck for that. What the hell would she think when Reid had his mouth on Anika’s throat — or teeth snatching her lip.
At the crass remark, Reid’s eyes drifted to the ceiling. “Yeah, she didn’t look like she wanted to file any complaints about us, which I think could have happened, had it been anyone else.” Though, he’s not sure how valid they would be since they’re in their own home. Eyes drop back down to capture hers,“Maybe we should keep her onside.”
Anika agreed with him — they could keep her close, if only because she was a single mother, raising her kids alone. She couldn't believe it was crossing her mind, but they've done it once, taken care of Kacey when no one else could. Would she do it again? Maybe. "Yeah?" Their eyes met and she stilled with the leaning tower of glass Pisa still in her hand, "You're good with them, you know? The kids, like Kacey." Anika was afraid, if they left again, they'd be leaving more than just Mr. And Mrs. Rudds house.
“Yeah.” He didn’t know what to expect from Anika, or whether she’d say it wasn't their business. Or their problem. Liking someone didn’t always mean she wanted to know more of them.
Reid stops emptying half eaten salads into the trash, and tossing plastic cutlery in behind. It doesn’t matter what he says here, it doesn’t change anything. “I wanted them.” He says, but it’s more solemn than wistful. A swallow that hurts more than a dagger to the throat, “Kids, I mean.” A brood, because he’d been raised that way; a thing of legacy. But it hadn’t turned out like that; he’d thought he would have had more time. Living in this limbo, witnessing parents get to be great — having a taste of it, on Sunday mornings, and during evening barbecues. It feels stupid airing it to a woman who knows as well as he does, it’s a lost dream. And then she mentions Kacey. A defensiveness crawling up his spine,“You were good with her too, Anika.” In different ways, but she was. She found a way to be. He knows Clark’s blown up his phone, checking in — but Reid hasn't known what to say for a while now. A chapter he can’t go back to without putting the man and his daughter in danger.
That’s all Reid is now — a danger.
She'd expected to hear it, yet surprise still coloured her features, maybe because it was the kind of honesty she never thought he'd say out loud. It felt like digging back up a corpse.
Anika thought he'd make a fucking great father. Better than hers had ever been. Her father didn't deserve to have any kids, but there she was — a product of a match made in hell.
If Reid was human, and having kids was still a possibility, and somehow, he chose to have them with her — Anika was pretty sure that her kid would call their fucked up pairing that too. A match made in hell.
She glanced briefly at him, "Why didn't you have any?"
Why didn't he have any?
Because he didn’t expect to die.
He blinks, and the back of a scarred hand wipes the underneath of his eyes, as he stuffs the last of the tin trays in a black trash bag, and turns his back to Anika so he can attempt to look at the tower of ceramic in the sink.
Hands brace either side of the basin, as he grounds himself; this is something he’s already mourned, long ago. He doesn't need to do it again. He doesn't need to do it with a woman, who hates the idea of it, anyway.
If he could go back, he’d do it all differently. Maybe he would have asked a rancher for something he’s never asked — or he’d have asked an old flame, Lila, to be the mother of Halstead’s.
If he had a clock that told him he’d get ripped from the living by a monster, in his thirties, then he’d have done it different. Silence doesn't suit them so nicely here.
It was a stupid mistake, she'd realized, asking him that. Her eyes found him a few times, as she walked about the room, busying her hand with whatever she could find.
"I'd make a shit mother, I think." As if that was supposed to make him feel any better. "Don't say I won't, 'cause that's not as much about me, as it's about— genes, you know? Passing down the shittiness."
Glasses clatter in the sink, and she's closer now. They didn't have to talk with the couch between them.
"So it's a good thing."
His hands continue to idle with the tap, soap flooding the bowl as he soaks the sauce-stained mess they’d allowed to overflow. It keeps his hands busy, now.
Stops a mind from spiralling too far. He doesn't think Anika would make a shitty mother, and he thinks genes don’t play so heavy a part in it — his parents were people he viewed as great, so was Anika’s dad. Mentors. Fathers. It hadn’t stayed that way when he’d died. He understands that too. He’d understood them, until his sisters suffered for his failure.
And then he’d understood nothing.
So it’s a good thing.
A plate shatters in his hands — a sharp edge of ceramic slices into his palm, and he drops the broken pieces onto the counter. Hand clenched into a fist as it presses into the marbled sideboard. “Please don't do that.” It’s quiet, because it’s not the first time he’s had this conversation — he’s had it a dozen times in his head. He’s had blood hazed fantasies, when she’s in his mouth about the impossible.
And she’s so happy to give that up, for him — because he can't give her that.
"Do what?" She was half stunned, asking just because her mind hadn't yet wrapped around the dangers of their conversation, and rushing to his side to pick up the pieces and look at a hand already healing.
Before she could ask if he was alright, Reid was already speaking.
“I’d have had them with you.” If there was a world, or a timeline that allowed it, he would have. Reid knows that if he hadn’t died that night, he’d probably never have met Anika Booker, because by then he’d have tried to build himself a Halstead family of hunters.
God, he’s fucking delusional.
Fingers that ghosted the cut on his palm ceased all movement. She didn't know if saying what she was about to, was going to make him feel better or worse.
“And you know I can’t do that with you.” Reid adds as he reaches for a towel. He wipes the blood from his palm, and the counter. She’s already beside him, batting moth-like wings to check he’s alright. It’s an odd feeling, opening the box he’d closed tightly after all his monstrosities: “I will never not feel guilty for taking away the potential that you might — want… that.” She could wake up some day, after seeing kids like Kacey, or Spiderman, and realise everything she is, ends with her. Reid doesn’t get to have her, or pieces of her for longer than that.
And he doesn't think she’d ever tell him differently.
"I don't want kids, Reid." A quiet confession. "Never wanted that for myself."
It didn't matter if he was dead or alive.
"I thought I'd get away with it, 'cause I was the youngest in my family, thought my sisters would have a couple, and nobody's gonna care if I do, but then they died, and it was just me, and I thought that kid would be fucking miserable." That wasn't the only reason. There were too many to count. A lot more, then she was willing to admit. "I think being born a Booker fucking sucks, and I didn't want that for anyone else but me."
Maybe being born a Halstead would be a lot better.
If they've only met earlier, she could've changed her mind. All of it him, of course, because who he was — was contagious, like a disease. His kindness, care and patience, something she'd never seen in her own father, but saw in Reid, whenever he was with Kacey.
He doesn't feel relief — there’s nothing that sinks beneath his skin and tells him that this makes it all easier. It hurts, to hear her speak about her family like she’s the cursed one. Anika never wanting kids only works in this version of them. Reid thinks his outlook might be skewed — had he been born with something wrong in his genetics, or if some science had deemed him incapable, maybe it would hurt less; it’ll always hurt, but those things would be out of his control.
This had been his doing — he knows he could have stopped this, if he hadn’t slipped that night.
If Anika hadn't been a Booker though, maybe she'd never have come to Port Leiry, and she’d never have sat at a vampires table in a shitty fucking bar.
He doesn't want her being anyone else.
Reid drops the rag back to the side, and turns to look at her. “Would you ever tell me if you did?” He begins to pick up the broken pieces of plate, and toss them. She eyed him — long and hard.
"You think I'd wake up one day and want kids?" A scoff.
Who would she have them with, beside him?
He doesn’t need to continue this conversation, because it burns the lock of the box harbouring the depths of his humanity. Inside, is all that despair he can’t let bring him to his knees. “Kacey adored you, kids don't warm up to people quickly like that for no reason.”
Anika slapped her words to his: "Kacey only liked me, because she loved you. You were so great with her, Reid. I could see the fear in her eyes, every time you left her in the room with me. I didn't know how to talk to her. We just drew shit with markers." In silence, like some fucking freaks. Who did that with their child?
That wasn’t true. Anika sees fear, because that’s easier to recognise than trust.
There hadn't been cookies involved either. It'd been willing curiosity. Reid leans against the counter, hands clasp the edge behind him. “You liked Hannah.” Not just the single mom down the street, but her daughter too — with three others she’d never met. Anika’s saying something that she doesn’t want to voice. Quieter, with that fear of misunderstanding: “We don’t have to be our parents you know.”
Reid would have been a different kind of father, if he’d had the chance.
And he imagines Anika would have been one too, if she ever gave herself a single ounce of credit.
He'd cut her right through the gut. Anika felt her gaze slippped away, finding the splashes of blood in the sink.
"What if I'm worse?" A hard swallow.
What if the evil her father had become, was only a fragment of the evil, she carried in her blood?
They were discussing this, as if it was in the stars for them. Marriage. Kids.
It wasn’t.
Reid shakes his head, refusing to accept that Anika paints herself some demon because of her namesake. “You’re not.” Matter of fact. She’ll never believe him. What did it matter what kind of parents they would be? They’ll never get that — he will never be a father. If she gets to be a mother, it won’t be with him.
"How are you so sure?"
He'd seen her in ways she couldn't see herself. He's loved her, when she thought there was nothing worth loving.
“Because you know what you don’t want to be. You can’t see it, but you care — you did about Kacey, even if you think you don’t, or can’t or whatever you think.” They know they don’t want to be monsters about it.
She'd never agree with him — but she liked to think it was nice, to have someone believe you could do better. Luckily, she'd never find out — if she was suited for this or not.
Clark's daughter had been brief — hours at a time, not forever, not a permanent fixture. Reid knows that it isn’t all games, and toys or reading stories.
There’s tears, and fears — and sleepless nights, and worries and missing shit.
They know all those already, without a child there with them. Anika would’ve kept him grounded, and he’d like to have thought he could remind her that every fear or failure she has, is needless. He’s there to catch her.
Hand rinsed in the water in the sink, watery red fountaining over the dirtied plates, and trays. Sides wiped down of mess of ceramic, and droplets. He returns to washing the tower in the sink. “I don’t know what else to tell you.” He’s a vampire — she isn’t. There’s nothing more except pain to be found in the game of what if.
"You don't gotta say anything." Her head found his shoulder. She watched him distract himself with mundane, stupid things. Because he didn't want to focus on the pain. "Sorry that I— uh, brought up the whole thing." A quiet sound.
“It’s fine.” Maybe it wasn’t, and maybe he’s colder than he means to be. Apologetic, he tips his head towards hers, where her warmth blooms at his cheek. “People talk about kids, Booker, in their future plans. It's —” normal. “— but, well, yeah you know.” A wince, because she doesn’t need to say anything either. It’s a wound he'll heal from, like everything else. Another monstrous thing he’ll lock away, so he doesn’t have to feel it so violently.
"Yeah, it wasn't a big deal, I just—" Every word sounded quieter than the next; a rarity in itself, for Anika. "I don't know how to tell people shit, because it's none of their fucking business." She wasn't asking Hannah, why she had four of those demons, when she could've had none.
That makes him smile. A glance thrown her way — with the corner of his mouth upturned in this ‘I know’ expression.
He starts stacking the clean plates on the dryer. Scrubbing the next — one after another, cups and glasses, stacked in rows along a drying towel. “It’s late. You wanna get into bed, it’s been a long night, I'll be there after this.”
Anika wasn't sure if he wanted to be alone, or just away from her.
"Okay, yeah—" Head lifted a little to brush lips against his cheek. "You sure you're alright?"
He leans against her mouth, soft, inviting.
“Yeah.” He means — no, but it’s nothing he can fix. A wet hand reaches for her chin, so he can pull her in to peck the corner of her mouth. “Being dead just fucking sucks.” It reminds him that he can never ask Anika to make that sacrifice; he can never expect her to do that for him, or embrace his selfishness to even know he’s thought about it.
He expects she’ll remember he said that, too.
Hand falling away, he continues lessening the mess in the sink, “Go get comfy for me, I’ll meet you there, okay?”
She wanted to heal him — with a kiss, or a touch, or a word — but she wasn't good at any of that. Not like she wanted to be. It didn't stop her from reclaiming his mouth and kissing him, long and hard; arms snaking around him, to pull him away from the stupid dishes.
Between soft kisses, she managed to say: "Leave them to soak or whatever."
Anika was guiding him away, away, away, where nothing else mattered but them. "I love you, Halstead."
A look that said: You know that, right?
She doesn’t have to do much to convince him. Spidering arms, and heart aching words. The dishes that are left to sink beneath the water and the soap. “Mhm.” Murmured against a wayward mouth, as feet step forward until she’s up against the counter, “I know.” He does. He wants to believe he does. Even if he's half a man — half a thing, stealing a woman from all she might want.
Tangled in the sheets is a forever he doesn’t mind enduring — as long as it’s with her head on his chest, and a warm hand at his collar. It’s them locked in comforts, and then everything else outside that bedroom door harshly knocking; a world they know is darker than most will ever understand.
He’d watch her sleep, attempting to figure out the moment when a dream becomes a nightmare. A shift where he’d like to stir her senses so she knows she isn’t alone. She never has to be, because he knows how cruel a mind can be. When his is alone, it plays a game that simulates what tomorrow might be like. His part is always easy; he’s stagnant, unchanging, the same need that he will never be free of, desperate to be sated. It’s hers that he plays the guessing game with. If she might wake up and crave pancakes, slathered in syrup — a hankering for red berries, and banana. Or if she might wake up, soaked between the legs nudging him to take care of her before they even get to breakfast. He’s not often right. And his mind goes further than a morning, it surpasses an afternoon. It jumps years, where it’s still them; she’s older, beautiful; she knows he’s devoted to her like a lovesick dog — he’ll confess that, someday, too. When she needs to know it, so he might need to hear her laugh. He pictures them in this house, now — no, somewhere similar, because the Rudd’s credit will run out, and they’ll have to make an income some legal way. Probably. He’ll spend every other weekend with Tyler at the bar, watching the game — whilst Anika invites Hannah over, to paint.
She lives, while he rots —
Reid swallows, closes his eyes so he can play the next game of futures.
She wakes up, some years from now. Reid’s not there. He’s on the couch. Staring at the ceiling, because they’ve had that argument again — not children, never impossibilities. Not that he’s at the bar, or she’s in every other house but theirs in the daytime.
It’s the one where he asks her what her forever looks like — and he can't pretend any longer. No, it’s not you aging, Booker. No, I still love you — I always will. No, it's nothing you’ve done, it’s not you — it’s me, it’s always going to be me—
It’s when he says that stupid thing, he wishes he’d never said.
New game. They're happy. But only when it’s in her dreams. Because she’s right. They don’t get barbecues, or Clark’s and Kacey’s. Daisy’s and stupid bartenders that get under his skin, but are ultimately harmless. They get Killian’s, and Francesca’s — hell, they’ll even tolerate Dr. Sawyer of all people, at the cost of normality. The tomorrow looks like they’ll finish erasing the night of Quail Creek in their home, so they can start thinking about the next. They’ll eventually have to face the reality of the questions — and weave lies deeper and deeper, until Daniels and Miller are just suspicious names on the street that parents don’t like their children getting too close to. Because they don’t make sense.
Reid instead thinks about the next five minutes; a more digestible game. They lay in bed, and nothing is wrong. His mind isn’t destroying them, over and over — and she isn’t doubting everything they’ve said tonight.
Do you think I can give you enough, Anika?
She gives him more than he'll ever deserve. And he hopes she knows that. Somewhere between the hand that massages into the knots of her back, and the other that settles at her nape, teasing the spot with his thumb.
Fingers danced across his face, as she watched him — still, except for the slow bob of his throat when he swallows. She wanted to ask what he’s been thinking about. Maybe that conversation earlier had been a wounded horse, limping and desperate for mercy. She should’ve put it down. A clean shot between the eyes.
It used to make her sick, the thought of belonging to anyone, of giving everything, body and soul to someone she trusted. It had felt impossible, until him.
Fingertips ghosted over his nose, his chin, the scar above his eye, then tapped his forehead gently. "What's going on in there?" Anika wasn't afraid to ask, but she did fear his answer.
She'd stirred from her sleep a while ago. "You look like that statue — naked guy with his fist under his chin. You know the one."
He knows which one. The thinking man. There were probably more exciting things going on in that marble statue’s mind, than there was in Reid’s. “Hm?” He murmurs, so he can flout the idea that maybe if he hasn’t heard her entirely. Maybe she’ll let it go. Voicing his fears doesn’t make him brave — just foolish, and selfish in new ways. It burdens a woman who cannot do anything to ease his thoughts. He has to bury them, in sixty foot graves, so they might never stand a chance to crawl back to the surface.
She’s going to leave him behind, when she grows older — whilst the world keeps turning, and their neighbours, and their kids open the next chapters. Reid won’t. Reid will be the suspicious man haunting the walls, outliving everything around him. He’s not afraid of her living; he hates that she’ll leave him, when she does finish living. That’s how it will always be; Anika; his sisters — the neighbours, their offspring. And then Reid, watching them have everything he lost.
He needs to stop his mind. Denver, Salina — Wichita; they’ve planted seeds of ivy, and poison in his brain, and let rotted weeds begin to infect every thought.
Something else then, as his gaze wanders her face. Soft, apologetic: “Did I wake you?”
She watched him, with her eyes soft and her smile softer.
A slow shake of her head: "No, my love." She'd taken something he'd made hers. Thumb brushed under his eye, to trace the thin lines there, wipe away the exhaustion that was creeping beneath — not a sign of humanity, but one of a troublesome mind.
She knew what that felt like. Mind buzzing like a hive. Pain like honey, swelling and dripping through every crevice it could find.
"I sleep a lot better with you. But I know when something's wrong." Just like he did, when their eyes met and her world was falling apart. He knew — in a heartbeat.
He’s glad to know — if nothing else that those nightmares don't come for her so ruthlessly when he's there, guarding her from the daggers of their assault. He’s never heard her say, my love — and it’s delicate, from a mouth that isn't always so famous for that. “Nothing gets past you.” A smile, bleeding sorrow, because secrets always breed distrust. The risk of her knowing what trail of red is painting futures for them, is one he’s going to have to carry; he can't tell her, so he has to find another way.
No longer rubbing her shoulders, he instead traces shapes by her collar. Sinks back into the bed, and the headrest whilst she explores every feature on his. He’s feeling that tiredness again, where he’s let needs fall to the wayside for a little too long.
But it’s an excuse he could have used, if he wanted to. “I’m thinking about tomorrow.”
Her head lifted a little, to look at him better, to find his eyes. "What's tomorrow?" she asked, wondering if there was something she missed. If he'd told her there was something he wanted to do — a place he wanted to see. Hand fell on the left side of his chest, tracing a pattern there, while brows knit together.
That’s the part he's struggling with, too. “I don't know.”
"It's Wednesday." And then, even softer, she added: "Ain't nothing scary about a Wednesday, baby."
He kisses the top of her head for that, and she nuzzled closer. Smiling against her hair. Sometimes, simplicity and ignorance can be blissful. Reid wishes they could stay in this moment, where nothing can get them.
Cold feet rubbed together. And she shivered, pulling the blanket over her shoulders. Then her hand slipped beneath the covers, snaking around him tight enough to crush ribs. "You know what sounds absolutely amazing right now? Pancakes. In bed." She smiled — the kind of grin that meant, she wouldn't be the one making breakfast in bed. It would be him.
“Is that right?” He teases, brow lifting — images of those pancakes, soaked in butter, and covered in fresh fruits. He’d dollop cream on it too, if there was any in the fridge. “You—” he begins, flipping them over, a wider grin, “— stay right there, princess.”
"Yes, sir." she said, stealing a kiss from his lips.
