she’s improving. making the whole ordeal cleaner. it helps that she can use her old apartment as a lair now. she was told her technique could use precision, practice. that’s what she spends her free time on now. as though practicing a sport. she’s not like aster ; she experiments with method, with nature, but her goal has always been speed. her newest task is finding how long it takes to kill by blood loss. once she had the answer ( trial and patience ), she starts her efforts to improve on the natural order of things. the call of her name distracts her, pulls her hands from blood stained pages. ( she makes notes, stashes them at her own house, in hopes to literally compare them one day. ) “ hi, dad. ” she offers him a smile, cheshire and characteristic of this face as she keeps her pen in hand. “ give me a second. ” she holds up one finger before she turns her head to her newest victim, uses the end of her pen to tip his chin up. he’s no longer conscious, blood staining the floor, and she calls it by the clock on the wall. ( three minutes and just under his neck, she used a bread knife. convenient. ) she makes the last notes, calm and collected, perfectly organised. her gaze drifts to the clock again as she scrawls everything down in the columns she’s made, “ i have to call it while they’re still warm. otherwise, i have to repeat the procedure. ” she sets the pen down finally, smiles wide over at him. she knows she should be more alarmed than she is, wonder what he’ll think of her. ( but she isn’t. she’s his daughter. blood is thicker than water to most. ) “ when did you get back in town? ”
his search for aidy is short. he doesn’t take his sweet time to cautiously step through the apartment, he won’t even slowly brace himself for impact. baird doesn’t want to expect the worst, and he’s not a doctor for that matter-- but THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD. fairies weren’t as fragile as humans but that didn’t mean they could survive this much. his heart is heavily thumpering against his chest; what is he going to do? howis he going to tell aster? how can he pick up the phone after so long and tell daphne that their little girl is gone? baird regrets-- he has since the moment he left, he has since aidy showed up at his doorstep and he realized that what he did had been pointless. he hadn’t been a bad influence, him being gone didn’t change anything and what he tried to avoid from happening, happened anyway. he’d been trying to fix things, and they seemed to be doing JUST FINE. but he’d wasted so much time now. time he now wouldn’t be able to make up for. in a sucession of flashes, he remembers the bedtime stories, and the songs he’d write about her. the ones that never got turned into songs but that reminded him of the child he left. her laugh rings in his ear as a child, and later on as young woman. ( including the new face she wore. ) her smile was wider and it showed the happiness she felt, except as he turned and finally FOUND HER. that same smile was directed in his direction. there is such a things as being relieved and disgusted at the same time. IT’S NOT AIDY. SHE’S FINE. SHE’S FINE. except...... IT WAS AIDY. his stomach churns and he looks away for a moment, he might be sick. how do you react when you think your daughter could be dead, only to find out she actually caused someone else’s death? he visibly gags for a second as he covers his mouh, and feels his knees grow weak. ( this is probably worse than when he killed aster’s boyfriend. ) he contains the feeling in his stomach, but he can’t help himself from stumbling backwards, knocking over something in the process and sliding against the wall down to the floor. “procedure.” he mouths rather dumbly. aidy did this, she’s fine with it. “uh,” he runs a hand down his face, as if he’s trying to remember. get it together, silvermist. “i don’t-- i don’t know. three days ago?” or more, he honestly doesn’t know. especially not this moment. “how-- who-- wh” he doesn’t even know WHERE to start, so he just says what makes sense in the moment. “we’ll clean this up. we, yeah. it’s fine.” he nods to himself as if he’s assuring her, when to be fair she doesn’t need it as much as he does. “this is fine.”