🕒 When: Early April (???) 📍 Where: Just outside WRZR radio station 👥 With Whom: @vengeancedemon &@brassandrot 🔹 Summary: A scavenger and a scavenged end up on a scavenger hunt when a clurichaun steals their belongings.
Maybe he’d kill the siren. It was a thought that had been bouncing around in his head since Thanksgiving, since he’d seen the shifter in Rosemary’s living room wearing nice clothes and smiling and looking like he’d never torn someone’s heart from their chest while they begged and pleaded with him not to.
It had been hard for Emilio to feel solid since, no matter how he tried to combat it. He called Owen over for a quick fuck, and he hated himself. He slept with people he could actually stand to look at, and he hated himself for that, too. He drank. He fought. He fell back on all his usual habits, and not a single one of them made his hands stop shaking.
So maybe he’d kill the siren. Maybe he’d rip the monster’s heart out with his hands, and maybe it would make him feel better.
Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. If he killed the siren, he wouldn’t feel any better. Worse still, Rosemary — who didn’t deserve to feel as desolate as Emilio sometimes felt — would be upset about it. He didn’t know how much she knew about the siren’s extracurricular activities, didn’t know if she knew Emilio had once suffered because of them, but he knew she liked him. He’d seen the way she’d looked at him during that dinner; the stolen glances, the shy looks. There was something there. Emilio didn’t think he was worth ruining it.
But he knew he needed to do something. He knew he couldn’t keep on like this, with trembling hands and a weight hanging heavy over his shoulders. So maybe he couldn’t kill the siren, but maybe beating the shit out of him could help something. Maybe it’d at least make him feel less powerless, less like he was still laying in that bed with his chest ripped open.
He’d done some digging, after. The siren’s name was Ishan. He remembered it now, remembered the introduction at the bar when he’d been a little too drunk and eager to get his pants off to really care about names. He’d found his account online — the friendly messages with Owen that made his skin crawl, the handsome look of the profile picture — and from there, it was easy enough to find where he worked. A radio station, where he covered the night shift. Emilio stood outside of it now, smoking a cigarette and leaning against the wall. His hands shook, still. He told himself they wouldn’t anymore when he was finished here. It didn’t sound true, even to him.
—
“Nah, I already have plans for New Year's Eve, but thanks for the invitation. We'll do it one weekend,” his conversations with his colleague on the morning show never lasted longer than the commercial break, about five minutes, between 4:00 and 4:05. It was a rare but always satisfying opportunity to chat with someone he already liked a lot.
He was also a musician, and in his spare time, he dabbled in theatre and podcasting about literary news. Ishan wondered where he found all the time and energy. Writing his show took up a lot of his time, despite his ability to improvise, and he liked to devote his free time to his music and going out.
Searching his pockets for his lighter, the siren stopped just before the exit to check his phone. No messages. What did he expect? A message from his brother was the honest response.
In reality, he didn’t expect anything. He knew that he wouldn’t be hearing ever again from his brother or his parents. They’d made him leave their colony, and his brother had shown Ishan just how much he resented him for his life choices.
The smell of tobacco was already present as he stepped outside. It was quite strange, because the street was (as was to be expected) completely deserted at this time of night. So, of course, he glanced to the side. What he saw there made his blood run cold.
Since Thanksgiving, he had been wondering if he would ever see Emilio again. Rosemary knew what Ishan had done to him, but the way the dead man had looked at him had given him a strong premonition. A grim and oppressive one.
“I’m surprised I didn't see you sooner,” he commented. He brought his cigarette to his lips, and paused before he lit it.
—
In a perfect world, monsters would always look like monsters. The sharp talons and the feathers the siren had sported when he’d ripped Emilio’s chest open would have been a permanent feature; Emilio himself would have always had razor-sharp claws and teeth too big to fit properly in his mouth. Neither of them would look human on the street now, and while it might have been a fate Emilio would have hated for himself, he’d have thought it worth it so long as it meant the siren looked every bit like the monster he was.
Of course, the world they lived in was not a perfect one. Of course, in this world, the siren looked like a man, and so did Emilio. He hated it. He hated watching the monster light a cigarette, hated the way his hair fell into his eyes just a little, hated the fact that he still looked handsome under the dim light of the streetlamp. He hated, too, that there was no heart to pound nervously in his chest; he hated knowing that even if the organ had not been consumed, there would be no movement from it. There was little about all of this that he didn’t hate; he wished he hadn’t come.
“I guess if you don’t want the people you brutalize showing up at your office, you should probably kill them when you’re finished,” he said flatly, taking a long drag from his cigarette. The smoke burned his throat, and his chest felt tight. He remembered Talia, when he’d told her how he’d felt at Rosemary’s dinner. That sounds kind of like a panic attack, maybe. He could feel the same thing creeping up on him now.
He tried to combat it with another drag from the cigarette, which at least forced him to take a deep inhale. He blew out the smoke with a trembling breath, hating the way his hand shook a little. “I think I came here to kill you,” he said conversationally, as if he was making a comment about the weather. “I think you’d deserve it if I did.” He didn’t say, I think I probably deserved what you did to me, too, even if he was thinking it. Wyatt insisted he hadn’t deserved the talons in his chest, and while Emilio had agreed to placate him, he wasn’t sure that it was the truth. Even now, he was thinking of the woman in Owen’s apartment, or of the surge. Even now, he wasn’t sure what he deserved and what he didn’t.
—
“I guess I should do that,” Ishan looked at Emilio then, who looked the exact same he did the first time he’d seen him, at the bar, and the second time he’d seen him, at Rosemary’s Thanksgiving dinner. Unkempt hair, hardened traits that shouldn’t have belonged to a face so young, that same disheveled look that Ishan couldn’t deny having been drawn to, rough hands, toned muscles and all. But the spell cast then had expired at the same time Ishan decided to detach the man’s heart from his chest.
He did not budge. If Emilio was suggesting that the siren should finish the job, it seemed like Ishan had no intention to do as he was told. It wasn’t that he was against the idea. Life was a fleeting thing that was sacralized by humans to this ridiculous point : they didn’t accept that they could die of anything but old age. How silly. All other humanoid species had to live in fear of dying sooner than later because some hunter crossed their paths and didn’t ask their opinion on old age deaths.
“Because I spared your life?” He understood why Emilio wanted his revenge on him, but frankly, hadn’t Ishan been unbelievably kind to him? He could have killed him, but what for ? He only wanted his heart, and for better or for worse, that had not been the end of the undead man. “That’s not very kind of you,” he sat down on the front steps, taking a drag from the cigarette, letting out the smoke smoothly. His hand was perfectly still as he tapped off the ash to the floor. “But if that’s what you must do…” He wouldn’t let him, of course, but who was he to claim he’d win that fight?
—
The laugh that slipped through the fury’s lips was sharper than any of the knives hidden across his body, sharper than the talons that had dug into his chest the first night he’d met Ishan. There was no humor to it, nothing that seemed to imply any sort of genuine amusement. It was a bitter, angry thing, something that someone would be hard pressed to call a laugh at all even if there was really no other word for it.
“Is this what you think you did?” Emilio spat out the question like a curse, like something that tasted bitter on his tongue. “You think you spared me? That you did me some great favor by leaving me by — by leaving me conscious?” Not alive. He could not describe himself as alive, though he couldn’t have used that word for himself before Ishan took his heart, either. What the siren had done was not unforgivable because of the physical pain it had caused, though that, too, had been something that felt impossible to survive. No, the worst part of what Ishan had done to him was how thoroughly it served to remind Emilio of what he was. He was not alive, even if he was not sure he was dead. He was not alive, and he knew it because his chest was empty. “You dug around inside my chest and pulled out my fucking heart. You did this while I begged you to stop. You think yourself better because I am still here?”
His chest was heaving, despite the uselessness of each unnecessary breath. He was angry. He was devastated. He was, as he always was, something stuck in between the two. It was worse, he thought, that Ishan wasn’t. It was worse that he was casual, that he seemed unbothered at all. This was what had driven him to some level of madness during Rosemary’s dinner party, too; not Ishan’s presence alone, but the apathy in that presence. As if Emilio was nothing at all, as if he was not a person but a piece of furniture. “That’s what I want to do,” he said, though he didn’t know if it was true. He didn’t know what was true anymore, didn’t know how to tell. And he hated that, too.
—
Would rolling his eyes have gotten him stabbed? Ishan didn’t stop to think about it. As the other laughed in a way that reminded Ishan of battery acid or nails on a chalkboard, he forced himself not to, because… that man was just being dramatic about all this. He was alive, he could go on with his life and do whatever he pleased. Hell, he’d live probably a lot longer than Ishan would, because out of the two, one was more mortal than the other. So what was all this whiny bullshit for?
But phlegm went a long way, and so he tried his best to hide how irritated he might have been, the jadedness being a tolerable enough alternative. It would have to do, because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to feel here. Sadness? Compassion? Was he supposed to care?
“I did no such thing, you’re right,” he stated. It was true. When he dug his talons there, he didn’t know that the other would survive it. He hadn’t thought about that at all. His death or survival had never been part of the equation, and he was not going to pretend that it was. “I wanted your heart. It’s your own damn fault that you survived that,” because what kind of creature could possibly survive without a heart? Ishan couldn’t, and he couldn’t think of many creatures that could. Tapping the ash to the floor, he looked up at Emilio who looked the image of a thunder storm. Weirdly hypnotic, undeniably furious and properly melancholic.
“You want me dead, I want to eat dead hearts. We both want things,” now was this, wanting things, what made him alive more than beating hearts or dietary habits? All things that lived wanted things, some very primitive, and some more elaborate. “Like I said, if that’s what you want. I’m here.” He chose this instant to look Emilio in the eyes. There was not a trace of anger on Ishan’s face then, but something like defiance. A challenge. He had never killed someone if not to feed. Would it feel different?
—
“My own damn fault?” Emilio’s voice was tight. He felt as though something was standing on top of his chest, as if he was locked inside a vice that was slowly crushing his ribcage. Even if the feeling were a more tangible thing — even if the vice existed in reality, even if he could hear his ribs cracking — it would not have made a difference. This monster tore his heart from his chest, and he was still here. He was still standing, still conscious, still existing. Not alive, not dead. He had proof of it, of the in-betweenness with which he continued. It was not a proof he had wanted, but when had that ever mattered? Emilio had not often gotten what he wanted.
Perhaps that was due, in part, to the fact that he rarely really knew what he wanted. He wanted to rip this siren’s head from his body, but he didn’t want that just as much. He had wanted to kill Max, but she was gone now and he still felt empty. Did he want to kill Ishan, or did he just want his hands to stop shaking? Even Emilio wasn’t sure. All he really knew was the same thing he always knew — that he was angry. “It is not my fault that you think you have some right to take pieces of people just because you want them. It is not my fault that you believe you deserve things that do not belong to you.” His chest was heaving, which was stupid. He did not need the air he was sucking into his dead lungs, but he wanted it, anyway. He wanted the illusion of the life he’d lost.
He had a knife in his hand before he knew he’d reached for it. He pushed forward with it, uncertain as to what he was going to do. Would he kill Ishan, despite knowing it wasn’t really what would help him? Would he betray Rosemary, who he was pretty sure was his friend, just to do something that wouldn’t even benefit him in the end?
There was no answer. Instead, something small and fast bounced between them. The knife was gone from Emilio’s hand — he looked over to see it instead in the hand of a small creature. In its other hand, it held an unfamiliar wallet that he assumed belonged to Ishan. The creature waved, then disappeared, leaving a scrap of paper behind it. Emilio, still drowning in furious confusion, turned to shoot Ishan a dark, angry look. “What the fuck was that?”
—
The repetition of his own words earned Emilio a look. Ishan stared at him for a moment. Silent. Determined. The air too seemed to have stilled. How quiet everything was. If he had focused, maybe he could have even heard the incandescent end of his cigarette burning.
But Emilio spoke again, and the siren’s jaw clenched as he faced the complete disregard of his nature, his traditions, his morals. “And who made you judge or coroner ?” Nevermind that the word meant two things in England and in Maine. “Who are you to decide what we deserve or don't ? …what we should eat ? Or not eat ?” He had not raised his voice, but every word he said dripped with the thick weight of contempt, a feeling that only grew as the other produced a knife and moved toward him.
Alright.
He crushed the remainder of his cigarette under his heel, ready to resort to his more natural form to crush Emilio next. Friend of Rosemary's or not, he had absolutely no interest in getting stabbed tonight. Unfortunately, he had no interest in getting mugged either. His pocket definitely felt a lot lighter. “Oh that was not another friend of yours ?” Though the tone was obviously mocking, Ishan couldn't conceal much of his own feelings.
Picking up the paper on the floor, Ishan turned it around, and upside down, then up toward the nearest lamppost. “Huh. That’s a map. Anything looks familiar to you?” Because Ishan personally had never gotten lost in his whole life, but he also had never been one for maps and gps. It was a bird thing, or so he was told.
___
“Who am I?” His voice was loud and angry and the most convincing mask he knew how to wear. With a loud voice, you could pretend to be something bigger than you were. You could convince the world that you were something more than a frightened child, could pretend the quivering in your hands was put there by rage instead of fear. It was a crutch Emilio leaned on, sometimes, a show he knew by heart. He could choreograph it blindfolded; he’d memorized the lines years ago. “I am the man whose heart you ripped from his fucking chest! You can’t stand there accusing me of playing judge when you tore me open and pulled pieces from inside of me! You can’t pretend this is some silly moral debate!”
When he’d come here, he’d thought he might kill the siren. He’d known it wouldn’t make him feel any better, known it wouldn’t regrow the heart in his chest or coax it into pumping blood in a way it hadn’t for months even before it was stolen away, but he’d thought he might do it, anyway. And yet, there was no decision being made as he stepped forward with his knife in his hand; there was no conscious thought behind it at all. There was rage, or there was nothing. That was all Emilio had anymore. Rage, or nothing.
He didn’t know if the knife might have ended up in the siren’s chest or not. He didn’t know if he would have slit Ishan’s throat, or broken his nose, or stabbed him until he was something bloody and unrecognizable. It felt like losing something, the fact that he wouldn’t get to find out now. “I have other knives,” he bit out furiously at Ishan’s statement, though the moment for using them had passed. This thing, whatever it might have been, had done the only thing that could ever stave off Emilio’s penchant towards violence: it had given him a puzzle.
He snatched the map from Ishan’s hands with a fiery glare, trying to pretend that getting close enough to do so didn’t make his throat seize up. “It’s the town,” he said, taking a few steps away from Ishan, needing that distance. “It has an X downtown.”
—
The siren refused to flinch, just like he had refused to show Wyatt any fright. He was a siren, made superior by nature, and those who soared through heavens did not fear men. Alive or dead.
“Heart or not heart, to me, you’ve always been a hollow shell,” so what difference did that fucking make? That man was stuck reliving the past and he desperately refused to move on. Ishan had simply given him another element to relive forever and ever. Nothing more. So no, he would not apologize, no matter what Wyatt or anyone else might want. He wouldn’t apologize because he had every right to do what he had done and he wouldn’t apologize because he would spare Emilio the embarrassment of being pitied by both his friends and his enemies.
“I’m happy for you,” he drily responded. No rage. Not even anger. Just contempt. Of course, he would be carrying multiple knives. Surely that had done a lot of good to him, the dead man, with no heart. Ishan hoped, for the dead man’s sake, that he would one day be able to put one and one together. But he once again said nothing of the sort, and crossed his arms over his chest as if to indicate that he was empty handed and in no position to pose a threat.
The mere mention of downtown was enough to set him in motion, because let’s face it, he didn’t precisely want to stay around Emilio either, and if this was where the little bugger had fucked off with Ishan’s wallet, then this was where Ishan was going.
—
The worst part of all of this, Emilio thought, was the fact that the siren was probably closer to right about him than any of the other people in his life. His friends, so blinded by love or pity or whatever else they clung to to make his ghost feel more tangible, could not see Emilio clearly. They wanted him to be whole, wanted him to be the same person he had been before his death. He was a person, they’d say, not a corpse. Those who knew him both before and after his heart stopped beating loved him the same now as they had then, and they shouldn’t have. To do so felt too close to pretending nothing had happened at all, as if some part of him had not been fundamentally changed in the process.
Some days, he was worried that a time would come when they would look at him and see the hollow shell Ishan described. Other days, he was twice as terrified that they wouldn’t, that they would continue to forgive him and love him and treat him just the same as they had when he was a living thing. Both options were terrible. Both options made the vice squeezing his ribs tighter. “And what are you?” He snapped, the rage boiling over. “What is it you think you are?” He didn’t need Ishan to respond. He already knew the answer. He’d seen it in the siren’s bedroom, felt it when those talons sunk into his chest. In Ishan’s mind, Ishan was a person and Emilio was not. Nothing done to him meant anything; nothing he did meant anything, either.
It would have been easier if Ishan was angry, too. It would have been best if he was afraid, of course, if he was some reflection of what Emilio had been in his bedroom when he’d begged and pleaded to be allowed to keep at least one part of himself, at least one small thing that allowed him to pretend he was still something more than a corpse. But he got none of that. He got no guilt, no shame, no fear or fury. If anything, the siren seemed bored. Like he’d already checked out of the conversation, like he was already planning out the rest of his night.
And then, Ishan was taking off as if Emilio was nothing at all, more interested in finding his wallet than he was in continuing the conversation. With some quiet, petty determination, Emilio figured he could find the wallet first. He could not make Ishan feel anything for what he’d done; he didn’t know if he could kill him, either. But he could at least take the asshole’s wallet.
Emilio shoved past the siren, forcing himself to walk at a speed that made his bad leg ache. The limb would be in poor shape later, but he didn’t give a shit now. He had other things on his mind.
—
“Me?” There was what he had been raised to believe, and there was what he chose to believe. The venn diagram of those things looked almost like a circle, if you put aside what had caused his banishment from his own colony. This was how he had lost what was meant to be his own, one day, and Ishan had not taken too kindly to being denied his birth right all for details. All because his palate lacked the refinery that his parents were so ridiculously priding themselves with.
But for all he detested them for pushing him away, sirens were nothing without their colonies, and he missed them every day that passed.
“...” Devourer of Hollow Hearts, his mother had called him. He could hardly pride himself with a title that had rung his downfall, but it was the name she had chosen for him, a far cry from the terms of endearment she had once uttered with warmth and pride only a mother could muster. Fuck. “Doesn't fucking matter. It won't give you your heart back,” the scorned siren spat out. It was not anything Emilio had even done, but this would soon be two years since he had last seen his parents and the anniversary would be harsh on him.
His fist clenched on his side and he took a deep breath. Right. His wallet. He ought to focus on that. Not this fool who lived stuck in the past, wishing for the impossible and asking for answers Ishan didn't have.
“Are you fucking serious ?” Fucking good for Emilio that Ishan wasn't in the mood to stride and participate in whatever the fuck this was. “We're there. Now fucking what?” the siren looked around, and perched on the window sill was the little bugger from earlier. His jaw clenched at the sight. But before he could do anything, lunge forward or say a thing, they vanished again, dropping rocks to the floor. And… well Ishan knew that shape. The fucking Greater Dog constellation.
—
He wasn’t sure what he wanted here. Part of him yearned for Ishan to admit that he was a monster, and that plucking the heart from Emilio’s chest had been a monstrous thing to do. Maybe part of him wanted an apology, some sort of groveling regret where the siren was sorry for what he’d done. But a larger part of him knew it wouldn’t change anything. A monster knowing it was a monster and admitting it didn’t stop the things it did from being monstrous. An apology — even one filled with genuine regret — wouldn’t keep Emilio’s chest from being empty. Loathe as he was to admit it, the siren was right. Even if he answered Emilio’s question, it would not give the fury back his heart.
But he’d hoped for something all the same. Some sign that it at least meant something to someone other than himself. He could help Rosemary pull Owen back from the dead, but she still looked at the man who’d plucked his heart from his chest like he’d used the same talons to hang the stars in the sky, and Owen would still engage in friendly conversation with him on public forums. Wyatt had offered to kill the siren, but Emilio was sure it was an offer that no longer stood now that Rosemary had used her ability to raise Owen from the dead. There were people more important than Emilio; there were people whose pain meant more. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be.
He could not reclaim the heart Ishan had destroyed, and he knew that. He didn’t think he could kill the guy without consequence, either. But he could steal his fucking wallet, if he caught this fucking fae before Ishan did. He didn’t think it would change anything, but it might at least make him feel less nauseous for a moment or two.
He spotted the creature from a distance, perched up somewhere where Emilio couldn’t hope to reach it. Luckily, it vanished before Ishan could fly up to find it, dropping the next clue instead. Emilio shoved past Ishan to look at the rocks on the ground. It was only through conversing with Diana — and the short burst of curious research that followed — that he recognized the constellation.
Maybe the clue meant looking up, finding the constellation in the sky, and then looking towards what was underneath it. Or… maybe it was something simpler than that. There was a dog park nearby, one that Emilio had taken Perro to more than once. He gave Ishan a shove — more to be petty than to slow him down, given the fact that his bad leg would make him easy to catch up with even if Ishan did have to get up first — and took off in the direction of the park, only half sure he was right.
—
“Yeah, yeah. Be a fucking wanker if it makes you feel better.” Ha! Well that was a funny perspective. This guy ever being happy about anything. Imagine that. Ishan groaned and stuck his hands into his pockets, following Emilio, even if that was definitely not the direction of the constellation tonight. Whatever. Not his problem. Sure enough, it’d be nice to get his wallet back, since he had his ID and his driving licence in there, but if everything failed, he still had his passport home. It was not a dramatic loss. If anything, he was more upset about losing less official documents. A picture of his family that was tucked in there, with his bank notes, and a post it note where Rosemary had scribbled on a drawing of a bird. He had sprayed the paper with her perfume, it had not left his side in months.
They arrived near a dog park, and Ishan was already feeling impatient to get this over with. Neither he or Emilio deserve to go through whatever this was. Scavenger hunts? Were they 8 years old? Was anyone actually entertained by these antics? This was dreadful. Clues. And more clues. All to lead them back to square one. If Ishan was going to hell one day (he was in favor of reincarnation, thank God), it would be a place where mandatory team building activities walked hand in hand with escape rooms and scavenger hunts. A close second torture would be those bachelor parties where they made the groom and bride dress up in ridiculous outfits. If people made you dress like an inflated dinosaur or baby, they weren’t your friends, they were your nemesis.
“Do you see this bell end anywhere?” Hands on his hips, the radio host took a look around, searching for birds he could ask for help, but it was the dead of night, and good luck finding an owl around here. Birds had taste, and a place where dogs roamed free barking and shitting? That was most likely a hard pass for them as much as it was for Ishan.
Was he in a pissy mood? Yes. Notably so.
—-
He wished Ishan wouldn’t talk to him as if the drama between them was some petty thing. Sure, it was probably a bit childish for Emilio to shove the siren and not share his thought process for the scavenger hunt with him, but hadn’t Ishan earned worse? Shouldn’t he be glad Emilio was only shoving him rather than ripping his throat out or shoving a knife between his ribs or carving him open to remove his fucking heart? He wanted to reply that, no, pushing Ishan to the ground didn’t make him feel better, but only because nothing would. He wanted to say that it was hard to imagine feeling better around someone who had pinned you down and torn your chest open, wanted to ask Ishan how he would feel if faced with someone who dissected you and pulled an organ from your chest while you were conscious and aware and begging them to stop.
But Ishan couldn’t walk any length in Emilio’s shoes, and they both knew it. If he had gone through what Emilio had — been pinned down and split open and had parts of him cut out while he screamed and begged — he wouldn’t have survived it. He’d have bled out onto the sheets, been offered the relief of death to give end to the suffering. The fact that Emilio hadn’t, the fact that he was still here to be angry and traumatized… Wasn’t it just proof as to what a monster he was? Someone tore his heart from his chest, and he was able to be furious about it months later. Did the fact that he was still here negate it, in a way? Soften it? He didn’t think so. He thought Ishan probably disagreed.
Unsurprisingly, his shove did little to actually slow Ishan down. The siren caught up with him at the dog park, evidently deciding to follow Emilio rather than go on his own hunt. It was a little surprising, given the siren’s arrogance; Emilio had half expected him to take off in search of the actual constellation. Maybe his laziness was bigger than his arrogance; maybe he just wanted to continue torturing Emilio a little more. “Why the fuck would I tell you if I did?” He snapped, eyes scanning the treeline. And then — there. A flash of color in the trees. Emilio moved towards it, outwardly ignoring Ishan while inwardly being hyperaware of his presence. He’d catch the stupid fucking fae. He’d get their shit back. And then he’d leave, and Ishan could fuck off about it. It felt like a good plan to him.
—
“I don’t know? Why wouldn’t you tell me?” Ishan turned over to take a look at his pants, maculated with dust and sighed at the sight. Black was such a great color to wear, and he couldn’t think of anything he could pull off better than that, aside perhaps from Emilio’s heart off of his chest. Oopsie. There he was being an absolute riot. In an ideal world, he would have had his own sitcom and people would have appreciated him for his commitment to the bit. Because it would have been so easy to pretend that he liked normal, plain, boring, human hearts, but no, Ishan was the only one who saw undead hearts as they were, and this in spite of their owners being much more aggressive, resistant or vindictive.
This was ridiculous. They didn’t even need hearts. Not like he did. Humans died if he took their hearts, and here they were wishing he hunted those hearts instead of theirs? Talk about being a selfish arsehole.
He shook his head at that. What a tragedy.
“Oh yeah, it would be a shame to tell me about the thing that you definitely cannot ever reach because your bound to the fucking grass, you useless empty muppet.” Well that one was gratuitous for certain, but for how long was he to accommodate the weeping soggy little man ?
He didn’t spare him a glance as his fingers began to themselves, shrinking while feathers pierced through his skin, as his feet contorted beneath the siren, the skin growing thick and rough, nor when the flutter of his feathers against the air broke the silence of the night. All that mattered was that the fucking little prick that had his wallet didn’t see that one coming, and that he victoriously had him in his talons before Emilio could start screaming in agony or god knows it was that he would do next, in his quest of showing Ishan how bad he had it now that he was still alive, with no consequences whatsoever to having lost a useless organ.
In his bitterness, he’d have almost forgotten about why he was lunging at the tree, talons outstretched, with only the moonlight to guide him on his quest, with a little leprechaun-looking-fuck as his target. Clutched in sharp claws, theittle man held out the stolen objects, and although Ishan considered for a moment that he was really gonna get stabbed by Emilio’s knife anyway, the creature dropped them both to the ground before it once again vanished, the siren hoped, for the last time tonight.
—
Because you ripped my fucking heart out of my chest, Emilio wanted to snap. Because you held me down while I screamed and begged and you tore me open and took pieces out of me just so you could have a goddamn snack. But what good would it do to say it? They both knew what Ishan had done. They both knew that Emilio had been terrified and angry and hurting throughout, both knew how small it made him feel. It might have been easier if he’d thought Ishan was somehow unaware of it, if he’d believed the siren genuinely didn’t understand the sort of pain Emilio must have felt, but hadn’t Ishan proven the opposite? Hadn’t he displayed, time and time again, that his issue was not a lack of understanding but instead a lack of caring? He knew exactly what he’d done. He just didn’t give a shit. And if Emilio brought it up now, if he shoved it into the siren’s face, it wouldn’t change that. He would probably only scoff or roll his eyes or make some fucking comment about Emilio being dramatic, and then what? It would not make him feel any better. Nothing really could.
And so, Emilio did instead what he’d gotten so good at doing over the years and said nothing at all. He glowered and he glared and he stoked the fire in his chest into something big and raging and it didn’t do much to keep him warm or fill the empty space there, but at least it gave him something to do.
He couldn’t maintain his stony silence when Ishan started name calling, though. Emilio could handle being called stupid; useless was a more stinging thing, but he could stomach it if he tried well enough. Empty, though… Coming from the very person who’d hollowed him out and made him that way, being called empty felt like a physical blow. “Go fuck yourself,” he snapped, hands clenching tightly into fists at his side. He wanted to say more than that, wanted to throw back an insult that wouldn’t hurt Ishan a quarter of as much as he’d hurt Emilio, but before he could do so, something shifted. More specifically, Ishan shifted.
Feathers pushed through skin, bones reformed into something new, wings burst free from hiding and, for a moment, Emilio was back on the bed. He was watching Ishan shift above him, was feeling those talons in his chest, was begging hoarsely for some sort of reprieve he would never be offered. He had no heart in his chest, but it felt like it leapt into his throat, anyway. Panic turned the world to television static, to the point that he was hardly aware of what was happening. Ishan flew, and Emilio’s gaze did not follow him.
Something dropped to the ground; two things, thudding side by side. The part of Emilio’s brain that remembered he was on a mission here — which was much smaller than the part of his brain busy panicking — surged his body forward as if on autopilot. He scooped up the knife and the wallet, only marginally aware that he was moving at all. And then, still without thought, he turned on his heel and ran as quickly as his bad leg would let him. Not fast by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly not graceful, but he didn’t care about any of that. All his mind had left to tell him was that he needed to get away. He needed to get away from the monster before it did any more damage.
—
Ishan’s gaze followed the object as it fell to the ground, as far as his eyes allowed it at night, at least. If in the daylight, the siren would have been able to spot a prey from a mile away, but in the dim glow of the moon, his eyes were of absolutely no use to him. The stupid little creature had vanished in his talons.
Ishan’s gaze followed the object until it hit the ground, as far as his eyes could see in the darkness, at least. In broad daylight, the siren could have spotted prey from a kilometer away, but in the faint moonlight, his eyes were of no use to him. The stupid little creature had vanished between his claws without a sound, and it seemed to him that Emilio had taken advantage of the distance that now separated them to flee like a thief.
The siren couldn’t have put it better. He landed gracefully, his wings allowing him to cover the ten meters separating him from the ground in no time, and though he waited to regain his ten fingers before searching the ground for the wallet he’d finally managed to retrieve, he raked through the blades of grass once, twice; then on the third try, he looked up toward the other end of the dog park, where he imagined Emilio had fled, the coward that he was, carrying a piece of leather of no importance whatsoever, save for the items it contained. And as he accounted for what the wallet held, a distinct rage welled up inside him.
Ishan would let him have the money if he wanted it. He had plenty of it, and didn’t care for it. The ID papers were just an administrative formality... His anger stemmed from a different place. A house in the distance. Four people seated at a table. A white wrought-iron table. The table is set, covered with a thick tablecloth. It’s brunch on the morning of his parents’ 30th wedding anniversary. His mother is beaming. His father looks at her tenderly. Ishan seems to be laughing at a story his brother is telling him. He hurriedly grabbed that photo as he left his hometown, along with another from his years with the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra. And then last month, he added one of Rosemary, taken one morning while they were having breakfast on the patio of his beachfront villa, and then scraps of annotated sheet music. That Emilio could even set his eyes on pieces of him made his stomach churn and feel this urge to go after him and tear his stealing hands right off of his arms. But not tonight, when he couldn’t see a thing and knew full well he wouldn’t be able to control his anger. Because if Emilio had no way of knowing how much the siren cared for these photos, these fragments of the past that he’d no longer visit in person, he knew what he was doing when he chose to take the wallet away.
