bite the hand that needs you. @ohwynne - Tumblr Blog

Oct 25, 2024

TIMING: a few weeks after home late. LOCATION: axis investigations. PARTIES: @ohwynne & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: shortly after emilio joins the failed human sacrifice club, wynne and emilio talk. CONTENT WARNINGS: child death (mentions of past events), sibling death (mentions of past events), suicidal ideation, domestic abuse (mentions of past events, cult and hunter variety)

He’d been spending more time in his office lately. Or… it might have been more accurate to say he’d been spending less time in the house, had been avoiding the too-comfortable couch and Teddy’s attempts to lure him into much needed sleep and the way his heart seemed to pound even knowing that he was safe. It was better to keep his mind busy, to throw himself into whatever case was on his desk and hope it was complicated enough to combat the heaviness of his eyelids or the trembling of his hands.

He should have been over this by now. Emilio knew that. The slices Aesil had carved across his arms and legs had faded into stark white scars against his skin, but his mind kept traveling back to that basement. He still felt the ropes holding him in place, still smelled the stench of his own blood soaking into the floor. He closed his eyes, and the room was shaking. All he could think about was the world that existed in the confines of his mind, the one where Lil and Erin hadn’t shown up with the priest when they did, the one where a goddamn demon was unleashed on the town with his blood paving the way.

The pencil he’d forgotten he was holding snapped, and Emilio sighed as he tossed it aside. Not the first one he’d broken. He picked up a pen instead, the plastic creaking when his initial grip was still just a little too tight. He forced it to loosen, clenching his jaw tightly. He wasn’t even sure what he’d been doing; the notes on the page in front of him were even more unintelligible than his usual scrawl. It was a relief when a knock sounded at the door. He could use a far better distraction.

“Yeah,” he called, tilting his head towards the door. There were really only a couple of people it could have been, and none were ones Emilio wanted to actively avoid. The door opened a crack, and he nodded. “Wynne. Everything’s okay?”

—

Wynne was weary and heavy lidded, though that was nothing new. It was tiring to be alive — to survive. To still breathe in spite of, or because of what they had left behind them. An estate with human sacrifice, a barn with vampires, a farm on fire: they were growing, these life threatening places. And then there was the heaviness of summer that could sometimes be alleviated with airconditioning (an invention they were very fond of) or the cold waves of the sea. But most days it just made them feel sluggish and slow.

Maybe it was the time of year, but it seemed Emilio too was retreating. Wynne knew they were people with rich inner worlds, but not in the way a schoolteacher might praise. Rather in a way where their minds created nightmares from memory or future dread. He didn’t tell them about the things he saw at his job and sometimes they didn’t ask, as it was hard to push someone like the slayer.

But sometimes their intuition wasn’t entirely off. And though it could be argued that Emilio was always bothered by something, due to the persistent nature of grief, they still pushed a little. This time, by opening the door of his office.

They came bearing coffee, freshly made. It was one of the skills they had retained from their time at the coffeeshop. It was a little sad, the way he immediately wanted to know if everything was okay. Maybe they still smelled vaguely of horses and fire. “Everything is okay. I come bearing caffeine.” Wynne placed the mugs on his desk and sat down, uninvited. “Is everything okay here? Doing … work?”

—

He used to think he was good at covering up the things that went on inside his head. When he was young, when parts of him never quite finished grieving his brother the way he knew he was expected to or when he woke up in the middle of the night with a sheen of cold sweat covering every inch of him and the memory of whatever violence his nightmares had replayed for him still clinging to his aching lungs, no one ever asked him about it. Foolishly, he’d assumed that meant no one noticed. He’d been so sure of the effectiveness of the paper thin mask of stoicism he stretched over his face, so certain that he was some great, unreadable thing. But he’d been wrong about that. He knew it now. He’d never been unreadable; he’d just lacked in people who cared enough to flip the page past the cover.

That wasn’t the case in Wicked’s Rest. Here, Emilio had many people looking to uncover what was going on inside his head. Teddy often picked him apart with ease, pointed out things he’d been so sure were hidden as if they were hanging at the very surface, only half-covered by the depths. Xóchitl often showed up at his door bearing drinks and distractions despite the fact that he had no idea how to even go about asking for such things. Jade knew how to change the subject on a dime without drawing attention to the shift. Nora brought him cases when he needed them, wordless and without expecting anything from him in return.

And Wynne, proving themself as one such observer now, showed up with coffee and a concerned look despite the weariness clinging to their own shoulders.

Emilio offered them a smile, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes. Looking at them now, those new scars on his arms and legs itched, and he couldn’t help but think about how closely they had come to a near-identical experience. Without his healing factor, Emilio wasn’t sure he would have survived the encounter. By the time he’d made it home, he’d lost a good deal of blood. Had Teddy not insisted on stitching him up, even his slayer healing might not have saved him. Had it been Wynne, had their family gotten the chance to do to them what they’d wanted to do… Emilio didn’t let himself finish the thought, though cutting it off at the knee did little to ease the sense of nausea that came with it.

He distracted himself by reaching for the coffee, letting the mug warm his hand. “Thank you,” he said, taking a sip. It wasn’t a phrase he used often — Rhett had tried to remove it from his vocabulary early on, and he’d mostly succeeded — but Wynne deserved to hear it, and there was no risk in saying it to them. Even if they were capable of using it against him, he knew they wouldn’t.

He shifted his weight, looking down at the papers on the desk. In truth, he wasn’t even sure what case he was looking at. Setting the coffee down, he tried to concentrate. It was an impossible thing. “Everything is good. Just… looking at a case.” It wasn’t a very convincing lie; Emilio wasn’t much of a liar, especially not to the people he loved. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. “You sure you’re all right? You seem…” He trailed off, searching for the right word. He wasn’t sure there was one. “Tired.”

—

It was strange to realize that they were similar to Emilio. He was so strong, so sturdy and vicious, and yet Wynne had grown aware of the parallel lines drawn between them. There was something about the place he dwelled from, that family that was now dead and gone that had burrowed into his mind and forever altered his way of thinking, that they could recognize There was the struggle that came with being alive when part of you was convinced you should be dead. There was this, now: the saying you're just tired when there was more to it.

They were both always tired, Wynne was sure of that. Maybe that had to do with the weight of surviving something you shouldn't have. With the heaviness of having outran it. Or maybe it was just this town, with the endless stream of confusion and suffering. Sometimes they thought Emilio should find a different job, one that didn't have to do with looking for missing people. They wouldn't be able to handle it, all that pain and suffering from his clients. Not even those who were just trying to find out if their partners were cheating or not. Maybe his brow would be a little less furrowed if he did something else, though they weren't really sure what kind of job might work for him. Certainly not the customer-facing ones they'd had.

As Emilio reached for his mug of coffee the thought dissipated. They watched his arm retract, watched him raise the mug to his lips and stared at the new, harsh pink lines of stitched up wounds. They knew scars. They knew, too, that the slayer across from them healed expeditiously, which was no comfort at all. It meant that it had been worse, not too long ago.

They swallowed thickly, smiling at his words of thanks. “You're welcome,” they said, shifting in their chair a little. This too, seemed like something they had in common: restless movement. Wynne tried not to look at the scars too much. “Oh, yes. What is the case about?” They weren't very interested, in all fairness — missing people and the like were not something they wanted to think nor talk about right now. They shrugged at Emilio's question. “I … am, I suppose. The weather doesn't help. But at least the sea is cold.”

The coffee had been meant as a bridge and now they should use it, walk over it and confront Emilio. This too, was hard. This too, they had in common: they weren't very direct, even when they wanted to help. As if the words got lost. As if they had never been given the right language. “What happened? To your arms.”

—

He’d thought about them, when he was tied to that chair. It had been hard not to, given the circumstances. There had been a man standing in front of him — a demon, he knew now, though he’d only figured that out during their conversation — telling him that he was a part of something bigger. You should feel honored, they’d said, and Emilio had found it impossible not to let his mind drift to Wynne.

He’d wondered if their family had told them similar things from childhood, wondered how many times they’d been told that their death was a thing they should celebrate. In his case, Aesil hadn’t been aiming to make things less frightening. On the contrary — they’d made it clear that they wanted Emilio to be afraid. Had it been different for Wynne, hearing their death spoken of like an honor from the very people who should have wanted to prevent it? Did it hurt more when the hand holding the knife belonged to someone you loved instead of a guy you’d pissed off one too many times?

(He didn’t let himself think of his mother, of his uncle’s words in the dim light of his Worm Row apartment. You were going to leave. Did you really think she would let you? There was a difference between what his mother had planned and what Wynne’s had, what Teddy’s had. He still believed that. He still needed to believe that.)

The case file on the table might as well have been written in Greek for all that he’d registered the words on it. He looked to it when Wynne asked, glancing to the photo he’d fastened to the front with a paperclip. “Missing person, probably. Or cheating husband. Usually one of those. Haven’t had a chance to look into it much yet.” It was a lie, and one they could easily call him out on; he’d been in the office for hours now, just sitting. But maybe Wynne wouldn’t push. “The sea,” he agreed, glancing to the window. He didn’t care for the water much.

The mug of coffee warmed his hands, though the summer air outside could hardly be called cool. Part of him had felt cold since that basement, somehow; he didn’t think it was a wholly physical thing, but he didn’t know how to rid himself of it. He didn’t know how to do a lot of things now, it seemed; didn’t know how to cope with Wynne looking at him like they were, didn’t know how to register that his sleeve had ridden up when he’d reached for the mug, didn’t know how to keep himself from faltering when they spoke again.

“Nothing important,” he replied, the smallest hitch in his voice. What would they say, if he told them? Teddy had blamed themself for it, been so sure that they should have known. Would Wynne feel the same? Would that old survivor’s guilt rear its head again, tell them it should have been them in that basement instead of him? He wouldn’t have wanted it that way. He’d have sat in a thousand chairs in a million basements, would have bled out until the end of time to keep them from that position. It wasn’t a thing he knew how to put to words. “You know how it is. Pissed somebody off, they had a knife. Not a big deal.” It shouldn’t have been, in any case. It shouldn’t make his hands shake, still, shouldn’t have left him waking up in a cold sweat on the few occasions when he actually tried to sleep. It was humiliating, feeling the way he felt. It was shameful, still being afraid.

—

The people they loved did dangerous things. It was a fact Wynne was trying to accept still, an undeniable fact that weighed heavy on their chest. Emilio was a hunter as well as a private detective. Ariadne had to feed off sleeping people and scare them, which some of them might react poorly to. Teddy was spontaneous in a way where they'd run headfirst into any trouble. Van made holes with demons appear. And they, too, were not above avoiding danger — though they certainly wished they were.

Emilio was going to be hurt. Again and again and again. The one thing they could hope for was that he'd keep coming back in one piece, that they would not have to sit in the kitchen with him again to try and take care of his wounds so he wouldn't use duct tape. But they would, every time, if they had to — even though they were pretty sure Emilio was more hesitant to ask for help since that time they'd gotten their fingers red with his blood.

Maybe it was done to shield them, but of what? They saw the aftermath anyway. They sensed it and if they didn't, they could see the fresh scars on his skin. It left their fantasy to guess what had happened, whether it had been a vampire or zombie or just a human, mad at Emilio for exposing their affair or something else.

Wynne swallowed, shrugging, “I guess it can wait.” That was in regard to the case in front of Emilio, though they realized as they said it that if it was a missing person, maybe it couldn't wait. It was best left unsaid, though, as to make Emilio feel more responsible about things he wasn't responsible for seemed like bad praxis. The weight he'd put on his shoulders was already heavy enough.

They took a long sip of their own coffee, feeling the warmth of the hot drink pass through them as they tried not to have their own breath hitch when Emilio's did. They knew he wasn't entirely without fear now, but even so: this was Emilio. When things were bad enough to affect him, they knew it was serious. Especially when it came to something that had harmed him. He usually just disregarded that. Slapped some ill advised duct tape on it and called it a day.

Sometimes it was very frustrating to care about the man.

But this time he wasn't as brusque. Disregarding, yes, but not as convincingly. Wynne put down their mug and saw how Emilio's hand tremored. He was beating around a bush. A bush that affected him. “It doesn't look like someone just … went at you. It looks more ...” They didn't really want to say it, but it lodged in their throat. There were two instances where carvings were done with such purpose. Either in the kitchen, when preparing meat, or when there was a need for blood to flow with intent. “What happened? Please don't lie.”

—

I guess it can wait. He stared at the folder on the desk and he wondered if it was true. He should at least open it to remind himself what kind of a case it was, should at least see who he was letting down before he did it, but everything felt heavy. He thought he needed something, but he wasn’t sure what. A drink, maybe, or a cigarette. He made no move to retrieve either.

Was it easier, focusing his attention on the closed file? He couldn’t bring himself to look at Wynne, still. He worried if he did, he’d see them in that basement instead, or on the altar back in their community, or under Zane’s barn with blood at their throat, or in a town in Ireland he’d never seen in person. Wasn’t it all the same? You could make an altar of anything. You could bleed someone dry anywhere, could cut their wrists and spill red onto the floor. Sacrifices were made in basements, in factories, in living rooms. Sacrifices were made even when there was no one asking for them, when the blood went nowhere at all and accomplished nothing. Hadn’t he known that all his life? Hadn’t his father been martyred to a cause he’d scarcely understood before he’d committed his face to memory?

He wished he were better at this. He wished he were what his mother had wanted him to be — a stone face that never shifted, hands that didn’t shake. The man she wished she’d raised wouldn’t be staring at an unopened file and trying not to notice the way his skin still felt tacky with blood he’d washed off weeks ago. But Emilio had never been what he was supposed to be. He still heard the chaos of the Good Keep, echoing long after the fight was over. He was still standing in a living room he’d left behind years ago, still aching with wounds that should have healed.

He’d known they wouldn’t buy the story, but he’d hoped they might not ask about it. It was a cowardly thing to hope for, he thought. Asking someone else to believe a lie you weren’t telling particularly well was a terrible thing to hope for. It wasn’t fair to put that on someone else, wasn’t right to ask for it. But Emilio wasn’t particularly good at being fair, or doing what was right. There was a part of him so rooted in cowardice that he often thought it might be all there was.

Wynne was braver. Wynne asked questions they might not have wanted the answer to, and Wynne asked him not to lie. And, like with Teddy, Emilio didn’t know how to lie to them when they asked him not to. There were few truths he wouldn’t share at their simple request, few horror stories he’d omit if they wanted to hear them. He wrung his hands together uncertainly, stared at the picture on top of the file. Wynne wanted the truth, and Emilio wasn’t good at not giving Wynne what they wanted.

(He heard Juliana’s voice in the back of his mind, a ghost or a memory. You know if you give a kid everything they want, you’ll spoil them rotten, right? You have to say ‘no’ sometimes, Milio. He’d been bad at it then; he guessed he still was.)

“It was my fault, I think,” he admitted quietly. “It was — there was a guy. Ran into him on a case a few months back, thought he was acting strange. Made a note of it, yeah. Ran into him later, at a market, and he was different. Thought I’d fuck with him a little, see if I could figure him out. But… guess a demon got to him. Possessed him, whatever. Didn’t like me poking around. Needed a sacrifice, figured they could kill two birds with one stone.” He tried to keep his voice flat, made an effort to keep to the facts. There was a demon. They needed a sacrifice. Emilio was there. It didn’t have to be any deeper than that, didn’t have to be anything more. Letting himself feel it wouldn’t help anyone now, would it?

He shifted his weight, turning his wrists so the scars rested flat against the table out of sight. “Demon’s gone now, though. Guy’s sister showed up, brought a priest. Got rid of them, and I got home in one piece. Nothing to worry about now.” So why was his heart still pounding?

—

They were a pessimist. They shouldn't be, as it wasn't how they were taught to be: the Protherians preferred to think of themselves as balanced, neither swaying towards optimism or pessimism but existing somewhere in between. Wynne should know better than to always think of the worst, to imagine roadblocks that would never be there, to come up with the cruelest and strangest scenarios when something was unknown to them.

But perhaps they had never been given a chance to exist in that middle space. Knowing that life has an expiration date from a young age might have taken that from them. How can a child learn to be anything but a pessimist when their impending death colored every aspect of their life? And even now, with their sacrifice having been evaded, there was plenty of proof that the world demanded pessimism. That no matter how much you clung to that idea of balance, there was still the weight of all the bad things pressing down harder than all the good.

So they expected something bad when Emilio opened his mouth. The carvings were too purposeful for this to be a small thing and most importantly, every shadow they saw was a monster. Most of the time they were wrong: most of the time those shadows were just shadows. But sometimes they were monsters.

Like now. Emilio spoke used three words that made a chill run through Wynne's body. Demon, sacrifice, kill.

Of course, Emilio was still alive. He had not become a sacrifice, had somehow evaded the spilling of his blood for a higher purpose that was most likely some selfish farce. He carried the scars of it, the proof that he was alive — just like they carried those marks on their neck. Evidence of surviving, rather than evidence of living. Evidence of having fought something and having won, only because someone had happened to show up.

Who were they? Who was this demon? How many of them were in this town, where their access to Wynne's loved ones, and even themself, was apparently this easy? They were quiet for a moment, their legs buzzing with anxiety that spread upwards to their stomach, making them feel queasy. They wondered how gone the demon truly was, whether it was dead or just banished somewhere where it could return to strike down. They wondered if it had known their own demon. They wondered why Emilio had these habits of messing with the wrong kinds of people and whether there was part of him that enjoyed it, running into danger.

Maybe. Though they didn't think he liked running out of it.

“How is that ...” They shook their head. “How's any of that your fault?” Provoking a demon was not smart, certainly, but he hadn't known, had he? If he did, he wouldn't do such a thing, right? Except, Emilio did always provoke Gabagool quite a lot. Wynne didn't think the catdog-like demon would ever try to sacrifice the slayer (and he would certainly not succeed), but there was a precedence. They shifted in their seat. No — even if Emilio had been reckless, he had not and would never deserve such a thing. He couldn't have known.

They felt a physical shiver run down their spine. “I– It is hard not to worry. And you … ” They blinked slowly. Emilio did dangerous things. He might one day die because of it. They wanted to ask him to be more careful but they could not find the words, especially not with the slayer blaming himself. “I'm sorry. It's … demons, they shouldn't. Not you. No one, but not you especially.” Not him, not Teddy, not they themself. “You could have told me. You know that, right? It is true what they say, that it helps to talk. It makes it feel less ...” They gestured around their chest, their hand tightening into a fist around their heart, constricting. “Tight, here. And it makes it feel less sharp, in your mind. Do you want to … talk about what happened? You listen to me. So.” A shrug. “I also listen to you.”

—

Lying wasn’t something he’d ever really enjoyed doing. His mother had been so utterly against it, had made it seem a terrible thing. The worst thing you can do is lie to me, she’d say, locking the door to the shed behind him. After all, what use was there for dishonesty in a weapon? What could be done with it? He’d been honest for most of his life, had gotten by with lies of omission until he held his daughter in his hands and realized that the world was a little more complicated than he’d initially thought it was.

Dishonesty was a necessary part of parenthood, wasn’t it? You lied to your kids for all kinds of reasons. You did it to keep them safe, sometimes — you told them the car wouldn’t start for someone not old enough to drive it, invented sentience and assigned it to objects that were too dangerous for them to play with. You did it to keep the peace — you told them the whole world went to bed when they did, turned out the lights in the living room and sat in silence until your wife’s sharp hearing allowed her to confirm that the tiny breaths behind the door had evened out and settled down. You did it to make them happy — you told them the insects running around outside had names and were their friends, because they didn’t have any other ones.

You learned to lie to other people, too. You told your mother you were going to put a knife in your daughter’s hand in a month or two, when she was bigger. You told your wife you didn’t know where the kid’s shoes had gone as if you hadn’t already packed them away in a suitcase. You told your brother you’d see him the next time he came into town even though you planned to be long gone by then. Emilio had never been good at lying until he had to be, until parenthood forced the habit down his throat and begged him to choke on it.

Maybe he’d forgotten it when fatherhood slipped through his fingers and left stains on his palms. He watched Wynne’s face shift, watched their expression distort, and he wished he could lie to them the way he used to lie to Flora. He wished he could tell them silly things and expect them to believe him, like when he’d invented a world where the bug he’d accidentally stepped on had slipped out of its body and gone into the dirt to find a better one and Flora had laughed instead of crying. But Wynne was too old and had seen too much to believe pretty lies and fantastical inventions. They knew what it felt like to sit and listen to someone tell you your death was a good thing, a necessary one. Emilio wouldn’t lie to them; he didn’t remember how to. He’d gone back to not enjoying it the moment the lies he’d spun had formed a noose that caught his daughter’s throat.

He pressed his tongue against his teeth, applying enough pressure to fill his mouth with a faint, coppery taste. They asked how it was his fault, and some part of him wanted to laugh. It’s my fault because everything is, he wanted to say. It’s my fault because I should have stopped it. I’m supposed to be better than this. And wasn’t he? He was a fighter, and he’d done such little fighting in that basement. He’d been knocked out with a single blow, been tied too tightly to escape. Wouldn’t someone else have done a better job? Edgar would have gotten out of those ropes before Erin and Lil arrived. Victor would have avoided the blow to the head that rendered him unconscious. Rosa would have killed Caleb the first time she saw him in that graveyard. Emilio was the least equipped to do the things that were expected of him, so why was he the one left alive? Why was he here while his siblings all rotted somewhere beneath the earth?

He wondered if they would have known how to talk to Wynne better than he did now. He remembered Victor being kind, even if those memories were fuzzy now. (Victor, he often thought, had really been the best of them.) Rosa had usually known what to say to Jaime, even if her tone was often harsher than the ones he’d used for Flora. Edgar had been smart, the only one of them who ever really did much with research. Would Wynne find it easier if one of them were here now?

It was impossible to say. Everything felt impossible, in this moment, with Wynne’s question still hanging. How is any of that your fault? How could he answer without saying too much? “I should have… I should have seen it coming,” he replied. “I should have known better.” This wasn’t like Wynne, who had been raised to believe it was their duty to bleed out on an altar and saw enough to leave before it happened. It wasn’t like Teddy, either, who had been too young to save themself until Levi did it for them. Emilio was a grown man, a hunter. He should have known better. He should have done more.

But he hadn’t. He’d been useless in that basement, and he felt just as useless here. Wynne was worried about him, and he desperately wanted to tell them they didn’t have to be. But how could he convince them it was true with the scars pink and fresh on his arms and legs? How could he tell them not to worry when his hands still shook? They worried about him, and they shouldn’t have. They worried about him, and he wasn’t a man worth worrying about. But he couldn’t stop them from feeling it, just like he couldn’t stop Teddy from doing the same.

(He should have been a better liar.)

“I didn’t tell you because…” He paused. “You shouldn’t have to worry. I’m not — I should be better at this.” His hands shouldn’t shake. His chest shouldn’t feel tight. Wasn’t he born for this? He wasn’t supposed to die tied to a chair in someone else’s basement, but he was still supposed to die bloody. Why did coming so close to it make him tremble when it was little more than an expected result? If this was how he felt with near misses now, how would he feel when it was time for the real thing?

(He thought he probably wanted to die, but he didn’t think he wanted to die scared.)

He shook his head, inhaling sharply and letting it out in a shaky exhale. “I’m fine,” he said, and he was a bad liar. It sounded like bullshit, even to him. “I’m fine,” he repeated, just as false. “I don’t — It’s not worth talking about. It happened. The demon’s gone, and I’m still here. I don’t even think about it now.”

The lie to Flora about the dead bug had been more convincing than this.

—

Maybe this was the prize of surviving something you shouldn't have: to always feel like you should have known better. It was how Wynne felt much of the time, whenever misfortune hit their path. They should have known better than to let Nora run wild in Ireland. They should have known better than to leave their brother behind. They should always know better, because they had come close to death before and now they should understand when it came for them.

They couldn't begin to understand the survivor's guilt that both they and Emilio carried, but as the other spoke they were insightful enough to grasp that it was bleeding through now. Wynne wanted to take away the self-blaming that echoed through the room but they didn't know how to. And so Emilio's proclamation of his shortcomings circled their mind on an aggressive loop.

It was easy to idolize the slayer. They had done so for quite a long time, seeing nothing but an invulnerable man, another elder to look up to for guidance and even protection. But Emilio wasn't like the elders at home. He showed cracks in the surface. He didn't keep them at an arm's length for nefarious reasons. He was messy with the love and protection he offered, but sincere. Wynne knew now that he was not perfect. That he drank too much, that his stubbornness might be fatal one day, that he had tendencies towards idolizing martyrdom that were similar to their own. That he was immobilized by grief sometimes in a way that scared them for their own future.

They understood by now that Emilio was often wrong. Mostly when it came to himself and the way he imagined himself relating to the rest of the world and its inhabitants. He was strict in the way the elders used to be, but not towards them (never towards them) but always to himself.

It was a sad thing to witness. The way he clung onto his lies of finehood like a guilty child trying to convince a parent that they hadn't eaten any of the cookies despite the crumbs sticking to their mouth. Wynne didn't want to witness it, but they would continue to. That was love, wasn't it?

“You shouldn't.” It was a meek protest, but it was one nonetheless. “Have known. Or be better at this. Or be fine. There is nothing … I think you should have or could have or … you know.” They were quiet for a moment, searching for the right words as if there was any simple verbal solution for the problems they were faced with. They fell short, just as Emilio felt he had. “No one wrote any rules that say you have to do or be some kind of way about this.”

It was a lie. People had written rules like that. Parents and teachers and elders. But Wynne was trying to ignore those rules these days. They hoped Emilio could too.

“We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But it's … fine if you're not fine.” He did not seem fine. “And I worry about you regardless, so you don't have to fight against that.” They could be stubborn, too. “I'm sorry this happened to you.”

—

Helplessness wasn’t as new a feeling as Emilio liked to pretend it was. There was a part of him that liked to claim that he’d never been helpless until he stumbled into his living room to a fight already finished. Before that, he used to think, his life had been the way it was supposed to be. He’d been in control, been in charge, been the person calling the shots. Moments of helplessness were few and far between, and that was why they rattled him so. He stumbled over them because they were rare, because he didn’t have to face them often. It was hard to know what to do in a situation you faced so rarely, wasn’t it?

Deep down, though, he knew that this was just as much a lie as the ones he used to tell Flora, or the ones he was trying to sell to Wynne, now. Helplessness wasn’t as rare a thing as he liked to think it was. It hadn’t been born with his daughter’s death, hadn’t crawled away from her too-small body and wrapped itself around his ankles. On some level, he knew he’d been born with it like an invisible twin, a thing that lived in his shadow and followed him everywhere he went.

He was helpless in that shed with the door locked behind him, even if his mother had given him a stake to wield against the monsters locked in with him. He was helpless when the door opened, even if he was still breathing. He was helpless in his bedroom, with his newborn daughter writhing in his arms and his wife exhausted on the bed, helpless when his mother began planning his daughter’s bloody future before he’d even had a chance to give her a name. The thing that made the helplessness he felt tied to that chair in Caleb’s basement so jarring was the fact that it wasn’t an unfamiliar thing. It wasn’t something he’d only felt when cradling Flora’s corpse or reading Wynne’s messages from Ireland. It was a thing that had grown up alongside him, a thing that had been with him all along. And he hated that. He hated knowing it, hated being reminded.

He knew Wynne understood it, of course. Wynne had never had any control of their life until they’d taken it for themself, had been helpless until they chose not to be. He respected them for it, admired them. Wynne had done what he couldn’t, had accomplished what he’d set out to do and never achieved. In so many ways, Wynne had succeeded where Emilio failed. They’d gotten out, albeit not unscathed. They’d escaped, albeit not without consequences. It was hard to think of Wynne as helpless; it was hard to think of himself as anything but.

“I’m supposed to be,” he replied, quiet but stubborn as ever. “I’m supposed to be better.” He wasn’t supposed to wind up tied to a chair in a stranger’s basement, bleeding onto the floor. He wasn’t supposed to need saving. He wasn’t supposed to stumble into the living room when the fight was already finished. He wasn’t supposed to outlive his daughter. He wasn’t supposed to be whatever it was he’d become, and he didn’t know how to be anything different.

There were no written rules, but weren’t there unwritten ones? Hadn’t his mother had a thousand that he’d never been good at following? Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he broke this one, too. Maybe this was what he was best at — disappointing people, even long after they were gone. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. For forcing Wynne to pick up his pieces, or for breaking to begin with? For reminding them of things he knew they’d rather forget, or from not protecting them from the countless reminders that had come before this one? For all of it, maybe. He was sorry for all of it. He was sorry he wasn’t better at whatever it was he was trying to be here, sorry he’d been no good for Flora and no good for Wynne, either.

(Wynne was sorry, too, and somehow, he felt the need to add that to his list of apologies. He was sorry that they were sorry, an endless circle. They’d be chasing their tails for the rest of their lives, he thought.)

They told him it was okay not to be fine, and he wanted to insist again that he was, but stopped short. He wasn’t good at lying; maybe he never had been. Maybe Flora, four years old and smarter than she’d had any right to be, had only been humoring him with the dead bug and the bedtime rules.

He swallowed, nodding his head. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. I’m sorry.” For everything, for all of it. And for lying, too.

#down with my demons.#emilio.#threads.

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