[ COAT ]: sender removes their jacket and drapes it around the shoulders of the trembling receiver. (from nik)
There is blood on the beige carpet of the hotel room floor, brain matter poorly cleaned up. She swears she can still smell the gunpowder in the air, can still hear the last words falling from Vissa’s lips, can even taste the salt of his tears even if she had not come close enough to it. Daiyu Volkova has just lost the last of her siblings. Her father has shot him, even if the death sentence had been handed down by the teeth of a runner. Her father cleaned his hands off his only son and left the room and Daiyu cannot move, because she thinks that if she does, she’ll cut her path through the hotel until she can do what he had done: hold a gun against her father’s head and pull the trigger right after delivering a last verbal blow. Let her be the true sole survivor from her direct family, let her kill her father as she had killed her mother, let it end. But she remains where she stands. She’s trembling. She’s grown used to these sights, to blood stains and brain matter, but this is Vissa’s blood. She’s trembling and she wishes she could cry like her brother had, like Lily might, but all she can do is tremble. There might be people flitting in and out of the room, she’s not sure: she saw someone try and work on the stain for a moment before withering under her hard gaze and moving away. But there’s one presence deserving of her attention. Nik is the only one who gets close and when he does, she feels the weight of his leather jacket. Daiyu looks away, looks at him. It’s in her eyes, that question of what now? but she does not speak it. She just pulls the leather closely around herself and inhales. She wants to cry, but she can’t. But she at least looks away. She clutches the leather and looks at Nik. He gestures at the door and she nods and as he leads, she follows without the anger that will soon follow and come to haunt them.