#aisdrabble

[ofviolentdeath]

Dear dad, papa, Hawk, and Milay,

I need you guys to know how much I love you. Things are a mess and I don’t know what’s going to happen. Teddy’s not exactly who I thought he was and I don’t know if ending things is going to go over well. This is in case it doesn’t.

Dad, please try. I know it’s not easy for you, but it’s okay to be soft at home. It’s okay to let your guard down around people that love you. You spend too much time being strong and, sometimes, we just need a little softness.

Papa, please don’t give up. You know how to be strong, I know, but please remember that you can make it through. And don’t give up on dad. I know it’s hard, but I know he cares more than he lets on. 

Hawk, please please please forgive me. I love you so much and I should have told you everything sooner. But don’t get involved in this. I don’t want you to get hurt or worse. Dad and papa and Milay are going to need you. You’re my best friend and I am so grateful to have had the time I got with you. 

Milay, oh honey. I love you so much. I know you probably won’t remember me but that’s okay. You’re still so little but you’re going to be amazing. You’re going to do great and I am so sorry you never got to really know me. But I am so glad I got be a part of your life at all.

I love you all so much. Please take care of one another. We’ll meet again, I know we will. 

Love always,

Your Kitten Aislynn

@pettythieveswithpotential

[ofviolentdeath]

@pettythieveswithpotential Feel free to yell at me because I know, I know, I’m RUDE.

Her hand hovered in front of the door, a million memories flooding her as she stood there. There was a time she didn’t have it knock, a time when she had the keys and could just walk right in. This used to be her home, and a part of her still ached over losing it. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t the same girl, wasn’t even the same species she had been. It didn’t matter that she had Jack and Katina for parents now. August was always going to be her dad. 

Swallowing hard, Layla knocked twice, lower lips already quivering as she waited, trying to keep herself from running. Coming home after so long was hard enough, but it pained her deeply to know that only one of her dads would ever get to have this moment. Chase should have gotten the same chance. 

August frowned as he neared the door, the scent strange enough to make his nose wrinkle. It was rare for anyone to show up there, even more so for it to be someone less than human. Still, he opened the door slowly, not expecting to see a ghost from his past standing there. 

“H-hi,” she mumbled, fingers tugging at a strand of her dark hair as she tried to meet his gaze without flinching. 

His knees gave out and he didn’t bother to try standing. She looked so fucking much like his kitten, sounded like her, but the scent was too different, too much like the boy that had taken his baby from him and it was fucking with his head. 

Hearing him whine broke something in the girl and she moved forward before hitting her knees hard, unable to keep from breaking down. 

“I’m so sorry, daddy, I’m so, so sorry,” she wept, wanting to cling to him like she had her entire first life. 

What resolve August had shattered at her words and he was scrambling forward, wrapping around the girl and hugging her as tightly as he could. He knew reincarnations happened, but he had never expected anyone to give him back his Aislynn. 

He couldn’t bring himself to speak over the swell of emotions, but he could, at the very least, give her this.

“I won’t go away again, I promise. I promise,” she choked out, burying her face against his chest. She had needed this more than she realized. 

[ofviolentdeath]

♫ Layla

The Saltwater Room--Owl City

The dreams had started a few years ago and, for the first couple of months, Layla hadn’t understood. The girl in them had her middle name for a first and the resemblance was a little creepy. Her mother had smiled sweetly when she asked about it, explained that it had been a past life but not to do anything until she had the full story. 

“How will I know when I have the full story?”

“You’ll know,” Katina had told her before going back to tidying up. 

It hadn’t been the answer she had wanted. 

The hardest part was looking at Teddy. The first months of dreams had filled her with so much longing, but he had been sort of avoiding her. It wasn’t until the dreams changed to nightmares did she understand why. 

It had broken her heart. 

The second wave hadn’t been much better. A different girl, the same face, more pain.

But third hadn’t been his fault. That much had been made obvious. She had been just as afraid of him, but she had been afraid of men in general. Not without reason. 

That one had made her hate herself a little despite it all. She had made Teddy cry and it was something Layla had never wanted to do.

It wasn’t until the last one did she really understand. Angie had loved him, all of him, and he had still lost her. They had still taken her away when he had been good to her. 

She understood why, with Angie at least, but gods, it had hurt to watch. Those dreams had gone for a couple of years, longer than the rest, until illness faded the girl. It wasn’t until the dreams became her own memories did she understand what her mother meant.

It was overwhelming, to say the least, to have so many years of memories that didn’t belong solely to her. It had taken her months to come to terms with it all, but when she did, there was only one thing left to do and there was no way she wasn’t going to. 

Not when she had had a crush on him before the dreams had even started.

Quietly, she came up behind him and snaked her arms around his waist, forehead resting between his shoulder blades. 

“I remember everything and I am so sorry I left you again. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

[ofviolentdeath]

30 Days of Drabbles::Aislynn

Her dads were getting worried. It wasn’t like her to get sick, but Aislynn hadn’t been able to hold anything down for over a week. When it hit day nine, August had packed her a bag and dragged her across the country to see Cord. There was no one else the snow leopard trusted with her and it was a little annoying.

Cord had done the usual blood opted to speak to her in private. If she didn’t want her dads to know, she wasn’t going to tell them. It was Aislynn’s life and confidentiality was something the demon took seriously.

“Well, the blood work shows your pregnant,” she started, sitting down in the chair closest to the exam table. “You’ve got options, I didn’t tell your dad, so it’s all up to you.”

Aislynn nodded, wrapping her arms around herself and wishing Teddy had been able to come with her. She had no idea how she was going to tell Teddy about it, but he needed to know. It was his baby too and it wouldn’t feel right to her to make a choice without his input. Sure, she understood that it was her body, but she loved him and didn’t want to hurt him. 

Besides, she wasn’t sure she could take any option that didn’t include her being in the baby’s life.

“Are you and the father together?” Cord asked gently. It wouldn’t be too hard for her to call the father if Aislynn wanted, despite not knowing who he was.

Another nod. “His name’s Teddy...” she mumbled, a faint smile ghosting her lips for a moment. “My dads are going to freak out.”

Cord patted her on the knee, trying to be reassuring. “Can’t be that bad, can it?”

“One’s trigger happy.”

The demon winced. She had forgotten that August had the weirdest taste in any shifter she had ever met. “Do you really think your other dad’s going to shoot him?”

“Have you met him?”

“Fair point. If you want, you can stay here for a bit, I can talk to your dads, any way you wanna go with this,” she offered, wanting to take as much stress off of Aislynn as possible.

The lynx shook her head. “I should be the one to tell them. I mean, if I can’t be adult enough to do that, how can I be adult enough to take care of a baby?”

“You just make sure to take it easy. You don’t need any stress adding to things, okay?”

She nodded and smiled again, trying to put on a brave face before facing the proverbial music.

[ofviolentdeath]

30 Days of Drabbles::Mikayla

Quick note, Mikayla is part of a plotline that we played out through chat. She’s one of the reincarnations of Aislynn. It’s also not a very good read. Like, at all. 

She had bolted from the boy pretty quickly, leaving him to his tears without much of a glance back. To be honest, learning that at least one of the two girls she had been having nightmares over was real was just a little too much. It made Mik wonder if the pregnancy had been real too, if he had killed her knowing she was pregnant or if he had found out after. Either way, she had been far too afraid to ask that one. If he had been unstable enough to kill a girl he claimed to have loved, what would he have done to her? She was just a stranger with the same face.

It never once crossed her mind that reincarnation was actually a thing. 

For days, she had tried to put the entire thing out of her head, but the dreams kept coming. The boy killing someone else, her finding out and freaking out, him not letting her go. It was a loop and it was making it harder to sleep. 

The only perk to it was that Mikayla was isolating herself, staying away from her dad more than usual, so the bruises had faded to just faint reminders. 

“She’s sick,” her mother had told him repeatedly. She had put on headphones to drown out the sounds of them of fighting as she hid like a child again.

The music was so loud that she didn’t even really notice the sound of gunshots over it. 

She never heard the door open or saw her father’s shadow on her wall before everything went black.

[ofviolentdeath]

30 Days of Drabbles::August and Aislynn

It wasn’t the scent of blood and death that had August glancing around before slipping into the house. Honestly, the smell of flesh already beginning to rot made him want to run in the opposite direction. But there was a baby crying and he couldn’t leave it. Not when he could smell shifter beneath the gore. 

The woman had been shot execution style, her dark hair stiff with dried blood. The stench was enough to make him gag, but seeing that little girl lying next to her mother’s cold body was too much. She was screaming her lungs out and no one had bothered to come for her. No one had bothered to come for either of them. 

Quietly, he scooped the baby up and carried her from the room. He was gentle as he rocked her, trying to soothe her tears, but he knew she had to be starving and uncomfortable. 

It hadn’t been hard to find the diapers or clean clothes, all of the stuff for the child was neatly arranged in a bright pink room. It had been years since he had tended to a baby, but he managed well enough with getting her cleaned and changed before making her a bottle. 

While she ate, August looked around the room, the name Aislynn was spelled out in little wooden blocks glued to the wall. It must have been her name. 

He doubted there were any legal papers on the child. His kind wasn’t fond of paper trails or human doctors for a reason. Once she was asleep and settled, He rooted around the house for things to take. A car seat to carry her in, a duffle bag filled with clothes and diapers, formula, and a handful of things that belonged to her mother. He could never replace what the child had lost,  but he could, at the very least give her a good life. 

Once the baby was safe, he could make arrangements, get the right papers forged, give the child’s mother a proper burial. But for now, all he cared about was making sure the baby was safe.