It’s familiar in a way, reminiscent of old hunts, moment spent shoring up details for those who didn’t know the names for whatever horrors they’d stood witness for. They weren’t supposed to, that hadn’t been their world, and as much as she doesn’t allow herself to dwell, there’s a flicker of nostalgia for those moments. Before the world had been fractured.
It doesn’t last, little point in it now, and the description he gives puts a smile on her lips. Accurate enough to be amused by it. She might’ve said shark, but it was all the same. The monsters themselves might’ve been worth taking seriously, but they were terrifying enough on their own.
“Basically. Not an affair I want to picture.”
The faint smile remains when he details how he killed it, a nod of her head in approval because effectiveness was all she cared about. That urge to press on him carrying a gun was rooted in that simpler urge, to know that he or anyone like him would be capable enough of handling themselves if another one of those tall men slipped from the shadows. She knew first hand how quick they were, how bloody the outcome could be if someone wasn’t just as fast.
“Most things aren’t.” It’s said with an answering humor, but it was true enough. There were plenty of beasts in the world that it would serve as a surefire execution when other options were exhausted.
“Most of them are rooted in some kind of truth. Maybe not alligators in the sewers, but there are enough other monsters to make up for it. Most people just weren’t in a position to recognize them for what they are until it’s right in front of them.”
For the briefest moment it makes her second guess all those secrets, that question rearing itself in the back of her mind that maybe this never would’ve happened if everyone had known what the risks were. If monsters were a fact of existence instead of those shadows kept down in the corners of the world, if people had known that demons were a very real and very dangerous fact of existence.
It isn’t doubt that lasts long, running contrary to what she’d been raised to believe, what no small part of her still believed. There were hunters to keep those things at bay. So the rest of humanity didn’t have to live in fear, a chance to live those normal, quieter lives.
None of it matters now, not when it’s all waiting in front of them, this time in the shape of something trapped inside a vehicle. Her boots planted firmly against the asphalt as she glances at him, a question she doesn’t have a solid answer to.
“Open it and we’ll find out.”
She isn’t sure, not yet, but it was the safest assumption. ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst’ had been a guiding line worth following long before this moment, and she’d rather be armed and ready if it’s a monster trying to claw its way out of the car. And the red swaths it leaves painted against the window don’t leave that much room for optimism.
She doesn’t realize what he’s doing at first, the crackle of sparks flickering in the corner of her vision. Glitter floating in the air before they’re both fading from view. It’s startling, and she can’t help the way her muscles tense when the spell settles over her.
An expression she realizes quickly he can’t see, and if there’s a level of pragmatism to it, there’s also a sliver of concern that she can’t see him anymore. All the same, he’s counting down, and the swifter it’s dispatched the sooner it’s no cause for concern anymore.
He hits one, the door opens, and her finger tightens on the trigger.
For a moment there’s almost hope, the figure falling half out of the car the second the door’s open. Fingers dragging over concrete, hair obscuring their features. She sucks in a breath and waits for it,t he moment that head lifts, and it scatters those faint pieces of optimism. Eyes long dead and milky white, searching the space she’s still standing in. Lips parting and revealing jagged teeth, crushed together and broken in a once human jaw.
She doesn’t wait for more than that, fingers relaxing on the shotgun to trade it for the handgun at her hip. Solely to minimize the blast, so Jae doesn’t get hit by fracturing skull and brain matter.
She points the barrel at the revenant’s head and pulls the trigger twice.
the illusion fades as soon as he’s sure nothing else wants to follow the first thing out of the car. seemed like one and one only. a solo creeper. something grim and... no longer human. and he honestly tries not to let his mind drift to who they might have been, how long they might have existed in that terrible wretched state. wonders if there was any sentience - cognisance left in a brain ( now spread in chunky lumps and thin smears across the cracked asphalt ) which was housed in nothing but animalistic feral instinct... or if there was simply nothing left of that person at all. he really hopes it’s the latter.
he’s leaning far back against the cool metal of the car. away from the open door bullets and the splatter. though there still is a lump or two rather close to the toe of his sneaker. though with visibility restored, he rather hopes that’s the end of it. ( well, not ‘the end’ - he does imagine that this will go on for some time, but at least in the immediate - maybe it’s over.... )
granted - ‘ew’ - isn’t exactly his usual over verbose, nor eloquent self. but it seems apt.
“i wonder what ‘truth’ that was rooted in.”
it’s a half mumbled question to himself. alligators in sewers aside ( and in this instance, maybe preferable - at least they were just creatures. big jawed, snapping creatures, but they still fell into the realm of ‘normality’ in what had come before ) ... what fable or fairytale, what grimm story might have been spun out of the existence of such a sorry, tormented thing.
reality manages to settle in his brain rather sharply, ears still ringing slightly from the gunshots ( or maybe that was just the rattle of his own heartbeat thundering there with a juicy little adrenalin boost ), but he’s shuffling around the now corpse, little crablike sidesteps until he’s next to zoe once more - the crowbar-slash-magic wand ( fuck potter and his hornbeam unicorn hair bullshit - crowbars were better any damn day ) dangling from his fingers.
it hadn’t touched either of them. hadn’t attacked them. had rather just fallen there, the sorry thing, probably starving, slow... however, it wasn’t just about cuts or bruises. there were so many things that could make someone ‘not-okay’ that had nothing to do with physical harm. and as it is, the sight is a gory one, nasty. flies already buzzing around the warm exposed ‘meat’. one he still hasn’t gotten used to. for all of the hundreds of bodies he’s passed since the world wobbled of it’s axis of ‘normal’, there’s something so irrevocably striking about - the dead - that tends to leave more of a jarring impression. he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it. and he thinks that maybe anyone who says they are used to it - is probably a liar. so that question, that note of concern is for her. the zoe behind the gun.
‘Most people just weren’t in a position to recognize them for what they are until it’s right in front of them’
she’d just said that, and maybe this is just a rather poignant example of it. no, they wouldn’t recognise it. wouldn’t know that there was evil in their midst. because, for the most part -- it looked just like them. it walked like them, talked like them, moved like them. even these things - left behind, the twisted remnants of an attack jae had been remarkably lucky to not succumb to - had been... just like them. even when it is right in front of them... it still... pretty much... is them. they were just, the unlucky ones. sure, sure... he’s dismissing the fangy vamps and the slenderman-piranha hybrids and the actual hell risen demons in this line of thinking. but most of the rest - they had been people at one point... maybe even the nastier things had been too - he’s not super hot on monster origin stories.
he doesn’t mention the gun. doesn’t compute that ‘sans zoe’ he might have been making more of an effort to club the thing over the head with his little crowbar. a rather more grisly and up close meeting than he might have preferred. it still doesn’t mean he wants one.
she hadn’t hesitated. once she was sure the thing was a ‘thing’ and not a ‘someone’. he might have. taking life... any life... was still a tricky concept. if it was a them or us situation then, yes, he’s always going to be on the side of ‘us’. but still...
“guess we should get a shift on, huh?”
he’s already edging away...
“how long have you been doing... this... that... y’know the whole... hunter thing?”
to have that zero hesitation. to make those choices in a split second, where others would flounder and possibly fail for their pause.
“i mean - it’s impressive... i guess it’s still hard to wrap the grey matter around the concept that people were doing this ‘before’. that those... things... were here... have been here... for a long time.”
