Chapter 14: Castles Crumbling
Freya POV, 1350 words
kinda all over the place because this is a filler chapter, shit's going down next chapter ;)
heads up that there's kinda graphic descriptions of injuries throughout, especially concerning blood, tldr if you need it at the bottom :)
also heavy talk of insecurities/self-worth issues
By the time the rain stopped, we were down on the beach, the stars shining in the sky as if twelve lives hadn’t just been destroyed. I stood a few feet away from the others, their distrust in me breaking my heart into a thousand little pieces.
Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the pain from my wounds was making it hard to stand up straight. I had a bullet still lodged in my left shoulder, my right hand was sprained, if not broken from how hard I had landed on it while trying to save Enoch and I had easily a dozen deep cuts from the glass. Blood was slowly seeping onto my dress, staining the green a reddish-brown.
“I’m sorry, Jake,” Fiona said, “What do we do now?”
Jacob looked lost, leadership obviously not being something he was used to. “I-is there any sign of Miss Peregrine and that Wight?”
“Gone. They must have had a boat.” I shook my head, the motion sending more blood out of my shoulder and I clamped my most definitely broken hand over it.
“We need to go after them,” Jacob said, stating the obvious. “We know he’s taking her to Blackpool.”
“But Blackpool is miles away! The next ferry doesn’t go for hours. We’ll never make it in time,” said Millard.
“Not unless we go by boat too.”
I snorted, “Where the fuck are we gonna find a boat?”
Turns out there was a boat. Mind, it was easily 200 metres underwater, but there was a boat. Slowly, we swam down, Emma blowing air bubbles for us to be able to breathe. Every stroke of my arms sent agony flaring up my shoulder and down my back, the bullet had done more damage than I thought.
While Emma worked on filling the rest of the boat up with air once one room was sufficiently dry enough for us to breathe, the rest of us slowly moved room by room through the ship, finding enough bedrooms for each peculiar to have two, the engine room and a room full of skeletons.
Before long, we all ended up in the bridge. The angle that the ship had taken to get out of the water resulting in most of us falling against a wall. Once we were out of the sea, Enoch came and stood beside me as we all looked out at the island. There was no guarantee we would ever come back, let alone live past tomorrow.
I did my best to avoid everyone, including Enoch, for the next few hours. The betrayal in their eyes was too much for me to handle, especially while we rushed to Blackpool.
It was like every single good thing I had done in the last nearly seventy years had been erased in a matter of an hour. Every night spent drinking in the village with Olive and Emma meant nothing. Every time I took care of Wyn and Claire meant nothing. Every afternoon I soothed Fiona when she lost control because of Hugh, they meant nothing.
If I had to see my family look at me like I was a monster one more time…
In a way, they were confirming all the fears I’d had since I was thirteen. No one could ever fully accept that someone they loved could kill them and anyone else in seconds if their control slipped for only a moment.
I will always be on my own. I will never have anyone for long.
Maybe it was a gift of sorts to have seventy years of being loved, even if I had to hide such a big portion of myself to get it.
My spiral of self-pity was interrupted as I turned down the hallway that led to the room I’d claimed for the night. It was a good few hallways away from both where the younger and older wards were sleeping. Enoch was leaning on the wall next to the door.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, everything’s fine,” I said, trying to push past him to open the door.
“Sure, that’s why there’s blood all over you.”
I half-turned to him, “I can fix it.” I didn’t like being shitty to him but it would keep him safe and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t my top priority.
He raised an eyebrow, he knew damn well I was bullshitting, “You can fix a bullet wound with one hand?”
I sighed in defeat and let him follow me in. While he found a first aid kit in the bathroom, I pulled off my dress and my cami underneath, leaving me in a soft bralette and bloomers.
I had just sat on the bed when Enoch turned around with bandages and tweezers in hand. At the sight of me, his jaw dropped slightly, “I didn’t realize it was so bad, I would’ve annoyed you into letting me help earlier if I knew.”
To be fair, I was looked a mess. I had rebraided my hair after getting to the ship but the water had wreaked havoc on my curls and had left them in a mat of tangles. My shoulder had stopped bleeding, but there was still blood crusted from my collarbone to my bicep. There wasn’t too much blood from the glass but that was only because they were still embedded in my skin.
“Where do you want to start?” he said, sitting down gently next to me.
“Bullet. Probably not good for it to stay in there long.” He nodded and I twisted so that he could see where it entered.
He unscrewed a bottle of whiskey and poured some on a cloth. “This is going to hurt like hell but we can’t risk infection, not right now.” Enoch wiped the cloth over my bloodstained skin and I hissed through my teeth at the sting. To say it hurt would’ve been the understatement of the century. It felt like it was burning through my raw skin.
After what felt like far too long, he had me lie on my back so that he could find the bullet. The tweezers were freezing as he dug through the muscle and flesh of my arm. There was a slight tugging feeling before the bullet was out.
“Here’s the little fucker,” he said, dropping it into my waiting hand. It was only a few minutes longer before I was stitched and bandaged up.
“Yeah,” I sighed, knowing that this was going to be a long process. Thankfully, it had been mostly big shards of glass that got stuck, the majority of the small pieces bouncing off me.
After another twenty minutes he asked “Is there anything else?”
“I might have, possibly, definitely broken my hand when I was trying to grab the hollow,” I said, scrunching my face up as I waited for his reaction.
Noch blinked twice, “What?”
I held up my hand. Two of my finger were at an unnatural angle and you could just barely see where one of my bones poked into my skin slightly. It was a miracle I could move my hand at all right now.
“Oh shit. That-that is definitely broken. I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Me neither. Maybe we could bandage it? So that it doesn’t get worse?”
“Alright, we can do that.” He gently wrapped my hand then redid the bandages on my arm and thigh from when Claire spilt her hot chocolate.
God, I thought, that couldn’t have been just three days ago.
There we sat in silence, Enoch cradling my fucked over hand in his like it was something to be protected, like I was something to be protected, and I suddenly realized what was going to happen. We were finally going to talk about the elephant in the room that we’d been ignoring for sixty years.
“Frey—” he started and I snatched my hand back.
I shook my head, clutching my broken hand to my chest as I stood up. “I-I can’t,” I said backing away until I reached the door.
TLDR if the injury talk was not for you: Freya begins to distance herself from the others because she thinks she's worthless after how the others (minus Enoch) reacted to the death-touch part of her peculiarity. They go down to the Augusta. General talk of how they confirmed the fears she had for years about not being accepted for her peculiarity and maybe it was a gift that she got nearly 70 years of them not knowing. Enoch fixes up all her injuries even tho she's been trying to avoid him. Enoch tries to get her to talk about their feelings but she panics and runs off.
