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kadavernagh · 2 days

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The Last Rabbit || Regan & Elias

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The tar pit, Farraige ba Buanachta PARTIES: Regan and Elias VERY IMPORTANT READING (many many references): The Dying Room SUMMARY: Plans of escape are thwarted when Cliodhna traps Regan, using Elias to make her granddaughter a better banshee. CONTENT: Domestic abuse, torture, parental death, some description of skinning an animal

Regan looked to Cliodhna, with the iron determination of a banshee who understood exactly what needed to be done.

It was Worm Remembrance Day. And Regan was going to get the ham child, Wynne, and Elias out of here. She would. (And–) (Maybe–)

As she’d told Wynne, the banshees would all be gathered by the worm statue to deliver eulogies for fallen worms. Not yet, though. At sunset. Hours had never crawled slower (than worms). Regan had checked the cars this morning, finding one set of keys: it was the rental she and Siobhan had taken here, with almost no gas remaining. But it would get them to the highway, to the open green hills, and wouldn’t anything feel possible out there?

For those in the car. (Which–)

The ham child was going to be the hardest to isolate and convince, with the way things had been left, and with Cliodhna hovered over her, preening and prepping her for something the child refused to hear about from the banshee who was actually attempting to help her.

Meanwhile, Cliodhna had given up on her granddaughter. Regan, she probably reasoned, knew everything she needed to, but some inherent weakness kept her from succeeding. The blood of a coward stains more than the carpet, she liked to say. Sometimes Cliodhna would deliver a directive or reminder with enough sting to match her impressive wasp's wings, and she would never stop expecting her granddaughter’s obedience, but her plan of shaping Regan into something to be proud of was dropped in pursuit of greater things, of Hamstring.

Regan was flawed. Not built correctly. Too tainted by her father. What Cliodhna thought Regan lacked, she seemed to find in Hamstring. Hamstring, who was so quickly swallowed up by the attention that the child wouldn’t listen to Regan any longer. Regan had pleaded. Pleaded. Re-broke her bones that this place had set into new, askew positions so that she could be human enough for the girl to listen. But Hamstring did not listen. And Cliodhna still thought the child was a banshee, did not realize that Hamstring was physiologically deficient in the way Regan’s heart shed metaphorical blood along with real blood. Both Hamstring and Cliodhna were betting poorly.

And somehow, Regan needed to make this work. Get the child. Throw them all in the car. Let Wynne drive away. (Could Wynne drive? Also, was Elias too tall to sit in a car?) Maybe even go with– not important. Get them out.

Regan shuffled out toward the clinic. It was where she was expected to be. She could talk to Elias, try to– okay, she really didn’t know. How could she convince others to do what she herself couldn’t do? It hadn’t worked for weeks, so why now? But the opportunity was now. Maybe he'd be frightened and furious enough to just leave. She had watched him grow timid and small during his time here. Regan would figure it out, because that was what she always did. Every cadaver, every autopsy, she figured it out. And what were humans but a collection of organs? (A lot more. She didn’t have to think on that for long before she self-corrected.)

The day was almost over when Cliodhna had requested her at Farraige na Buanachta. It had been Brenna who slammed open the clinic door and leaned in, a cat’s grin stretched across her face, not reaching her twinkling eyes, as she delivered that message to Regan (and two bleeding banshees in the waiting room): your grandmother is waiting. Doctor, she said as she left. Here, it took on the same meaning as leanbh.

This was probably something worm-related, given the holiday. The plan was still all organ systems go. Her grandmother didn’t especially like spending time with her (it reminded her of her own capacity to fail, in that she had produced such a shameful thing), and was unlikely to keep her long. But… if Regan couldn’t get away, would Wynne keep things in motion? They would, right? Regan had conveyed the urgency enough. Even if the ham child and Elias refused to move, Wynne would think of something. Regan trusted them.

She knew not to keep her grandmother waiting, though, so she dusted off the band-aid dispenser, dragged it into the waiting room for the two patients, and apologized. The crisp envelope next to her bag caught her eye. It wasn’t new. Wynne brought it, and Jade’s handwriting was impossible to ignore. But Regan did ignore it (if thinking about it twenty times a day was ignoring). So why did she stare at it now like she actually intended to keep it with her? It had been available to her for weeks, but right now, it took on a forbidden air, and even more so as Regan traced her fingers over where Jade’s pen had marked the paper.

"Break in case of emergency” and below that: “DO NOT break. OPEN.”

She wouldn’t open it. Ever, if she could help it. Either she would manage to help what remained of herself along with those here for her, or she would become part of this place, and any writing inside of the letter would fade with the centuries. Pulling her hand away was like fighting the inevitable, and wasn't that always the case between her and Jade? Regan closed her eyes, took a long breath, and ended up sliding the envelope into her jacket. It was close to her heart, fine, but hadn’t Regan decided she didn’t like metaphors?

———

Regan felt her grandmother before she could see her, like tiny knives stabbing into her pores. The north winds brought low-hanging fog rolling with them, and she had to wander closer to the tar pit before the harsh angles of her grandmother’s figure carved themselves out of the mist, her black eyes never straying from Regan. When Regan had arrived back in Saol Eile, all she had craved was for her grandmother to look at her. She had been desperate. She needed to hear she had made the right choice. Now all she craved was the opposite.

Cliodhna was not alone. Someone else was there by her feet, kneeling. But Regan only felt her grandmother. So who… it had to be a human.

Her pace and pulse quickened, and when she made out who the second person – person, not fae – was, a screech shot out of her. “Elias!” She was running now, boots slapping the ground, echoing through the fog. Elias looked grey and waxy and terrified, a clot of dried blood on his neck as if it had dribbled out of his ear earlier. If there was any ability to fight within him, he could not speak it, not through the gag. Elias– how– Regan tried to reach for her best friend, but her grandmother’s eyes seared like a slap across her cheek. They were seen. When Regan showed Elias this place, they had been seen. What had she done? Elias seemed alert enough. He could hear. She probably blasted him unconscious, and then–

Regan’s jaw refused to move. Her eyes, huge and filled with terror that matched her friend’s, were in every way the opposite of the black slits that lived on her grandmother’s face.

“I should have known when we started you on the animals,” her grandmother finally said, her grip tightening around Elias’s bound wrists. She was speaking in English. Cliodhna hated that, being accommodating for anything lesser, so there was a point to it. She intended Elias to hear this. “Your… what is it, the hypocrite oath? Do little harm. The dispenser took no such oath. The dispenser bludgeons better than you ever will.” Of course she could not fathom no harm. For the first time in many years, Regan’s grandmother swallowed an apparent lump that had formed in her pale throat. Not nerves. Never nerves. Regret, maybe. “I have gone about this the wrong way. Your shame is mine.” A concession.

In her other hand, Cliodhna brandished a dagger. Each of her blades had a purpose – banshees appreciated ritual like no others – and this knife that gleamed gold was ceremonial in nature. Regan was struck still; she could never forget this dagger. It was the one used on her dad eight years ago, the one that gave her this… this gift. No, not a gift. It was awful. It was awful. Right now, she could not pretend otherwise. Her grandmother would never use this knife on paltry animals, or in self-defense, or on any humans who crossed or inspired her. No, Cliodhna viewed this, right now, as the an chéad scread.

She intended the knife for Elias, but why? Regan was already an awakened banshee (despite–), and killing him would only turn her away from her duty, not push her into it. Pushing, always pushing. Had her grandmother recognized how lost Regan was, how she asked the impossible of her, and decided to move on to torment without necessity instead? Or… or she probably intended for Regan to be the one wielding it against Elias. Regan would never. Never. Her grandmother, who seemingly had limitless perception when it came to Regan, as she had with each and every tool she carried, hadn’t seen that? That couldn’t be right.

Regan’s jaw was still frozen, her eyes flicking between Elias and her grandmother. “What are you–” she barely managed to get half a question out.

“Yes, this is for your human. The first of them, anyway.” Cliodhna confirmed. Wynne. Did she mean– did she know? “Your face is soiled with emotion right now, leanbh.” Behind Cliodhna, the tar bubbled, starved to witness suffering when it could not exert its own. Cliodhna poked at Elias's stomach with a sharp nail. “So much unmarked flesh this human has. He is long. Oh, leanbh, your confusion is gan smaoineamh. I am going to stab him. You will look upon his anguish. You will not try to stop me and you will not scream. You will not turn away or close your eyes. You will not even blink or swallow. Your face will be still as the dead.” Now Regan understood. What this was, why her grandmother had made Elias hear it and feel such hopelessness, why Cliodhna thought she had failed Regan, too.

Cliodhna continued, her voice pleased with confidence that this, finally, would fix her granddaughter. “If you don’t remain still, I will stab him again. You will not be moved. If you are, we continue. I stop when you learn.” There it was. Regan looked only at Elias now, her eyes welling up with the water of a hundred bogs.

“So much unmarked flesh,” Cliodhna repeated, running her long fingers through Elias’s hair, scraping his scalp with her nails. “My cailín beag caillte, you do not care about your hands, your stomach, being drowned, being blinded. This is what you care about. And so, your shame is mine, for I did not see it.”

As Cliodhna’s dark eyes bore through Regan, they sent a clear message: you can stop this. His gag was yanked down.

She plunged the dagger into Elias’s shoulder.

Regan screamed with him.

———

Admittedly, Elias had closed himself off to Regan and Wynne and anyone else who tried to talk to him. He didn’t know why he’d suddenly become so angry, but he was just so tired of trying to care so deeply about something only for it to completely backfire on him. He was just so tired. He was in the clinic by himself, early, before Regan was there, when Cliodhna had arrived. Of course he knew of the woman, he knew that it was the one person that Regan needed validation from. Knew that it was because of her that Regan was even here. She was the root of all evil in Regan’s life. Elias didn’t hate people, but he hated Cliodhna.

It happened quickly. Before Elias could so much as look at the woman in front of him, she’d let out a scream that had rendered him unconscious. Upon waking up, he was kneeling on the ground by that fucking tar pit. Elias frowned, head pounding and mind swimming in confusion. In retrospect, Elias wasn’t so sure what he’d expected to happen upon showing up. He knew that Regan wasn’t going to come willingly, so why did he bother? Why was he so desperate to cling onto someone who was so willing to throw him away? Throw everyone away? Throw Jade away? Elias thought of every time he ran away from something because it became too real.

He’d run away from Regan before, moved back to California because he was so afraid of what he’d discovered. He’d run away from Marcus when he started trying to pursue him, because the idea of being in love with someone made his stomach turn. But despite the churning, he’d gone back to Wicked’s Rest, rekindled his friendship with Regan. He’d decided to try things out with Marcus. He’d fought against what his instincts told him to run. Always so afraid, he’d finally done something about it. Instead of letting Regan walk out of everyone’s life, he’d fought to get her back. He’d always fight for her. He’d always fight for everyone he considered close to. But it kept biting him in the ass every goddamn time.

Always so willing to run into the fire, but always the first one to get hurt because of it. That’s all Elias was. He was so sick and tired of being the proverbial punching bag of everyone’s story. That warden who needed answers? Stick a weapon in his face and threaten to kill him for the sake of his own answers. Regan leaves town? Let him get fucking kidnapped by a derranged banshee grandmother for the sake of his best friend. It just kept happening and he felt so out of control. He felt like someone falling from a terminal height, desperate to grab onto something but missing. He was freefalling to his own death and there was no one to grab a hold of, nothing to grab onto.

The woman was talking, but Elias barely heard it. He saw Regan running toward them, and knowing that it was a trap. His face fell in anguish as he realized that not only was he going to die here, but poor Regan was going to watch. He was going to be tortured, and Regan was meant to watch. Because Regan was weak, Elias was going to suffer. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the inevitable. The gag was yanked down and the dagger was plunged into his flesh. White hot pain burned through his shoulder as his eyes flew open and he let out a cry of agony. Regan screamed too, and it was so loud, so shattering that his ears rang. He couldn’t hear correctly. Everything hurt, the world threatened to swallow him into darkness.

All he could think of in that moment was how much of a colossal waste of space he was. How he was nothing more than a vehicle for others to get where they needed to go. Elias squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered, feeling so weak, so frail. And he didn’t want to be. He opened his eyes to look at Regan, shaking his head. He was so out of it that he spoke in a language only he understood. “Mainū marana di'ō.” He told Regan in his parent’s native tongue. Expression pleading as he translated into English. “Let me die.”

Maybe that’s all Elias’s life was supposed to be. Helping others. And if this was what it took for Regan to reach her true potential, then so be it. He took a deep breath, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder and looked to Cliodhna, staring at her in defiance. He wanted to say something, tell her off, but all he could do was look his assailant in the eyes with a hardened stare. “Do it.” He growled out, teeth clenched together as the pain pulsed in his ears. He wanted to shout lies at the woman, tell her that he didn’t matter to Regan, that nothing she did to him would matter in the grand scheme of things, because that’s what Regan had told him time and time again back in Maine. They weren’t friends, and they never would be.

But it was so plain on her face, the agony that overtook Regan. Elias didn’t want to die here. And yet he was at peace with letting it happen. Regan had screamed, and that meant someone would die. And Elias knew deep in his heart that it was meant for him. He was going to die, but he was alright with it because it wasn’t going to be Wynne or Nora. It was going to be him. He was keeping his promise to Emilio. In the only time it mattered, Elias Kahtri was going to be brave.

———

Regan had seen hundreds of people die. Some in medicine, for death was an inevitable part of being a doctor; her dad, who escaped such a fate for as long as he could; others in the morgue, as she coaxed out visions of their final moments; among the worst were the deaths she had seen in Saol Eile, the slow agony of sinking into the tar pit, the sonic explosions, the sacrificed. But even here, she had never seen this kind of torture. Cliodhna was not going to kill Elias. There had been no real scream – other than the pitiful show of poor control from Regan that Elias reeled from. Cliodhna was going to torture him, because she knew that one stab wound on him dwarfed hundreds or thousands Regan could have ever inflicted on herself.

Regan couldn’t pull her eyes away from the blood seeping into Elias’s shirt, running down his sleeve, coating his hand red. She did what she always did when she saw an injury: she assessed. Not life threatening, not right now, but the blade had gone deep. She needed to approach, to kneel, to soothe, but the second Regan set one foot in front of the other, Cliodhna brought the blade up to Elias’s shoulder again – hovering, threatening.

Her grandmother looked down at the dagger, appraising the smooth, thin layer of blood. The gold gleamed through it. Once, she had told Regan that was why she had selected it for such a lofty purpose: it made for such a beautiful sacrifice, and what was more beautiful than a banshee claiming her birthright? (Regan could think of a few things and people.) If there was any beauty here, she was blind to it. Cliodhna never looked at her like that, the way she looked at that blade. And at Hamstring.

Regan was not ensnared in any kind of bind, her grandmother had no power over her in the way fae sometimes did. But being torn between knowing she needed to help Elias and knowing she would doom him if she tried, paralyzed her more than any promise. She had broken actual binds with more ease.

Let me die.

No. No. She was not going to let her friend die in front of her. “No!” Regan screeched again, vibration skimming across the bubbling tar. Her grandmother was as unmoving as Regan was supposed to be; she had anticipated every second of how this was playing out, and Regan couldn’t think of a single way to avoid it. How was she supposed to close her heart off now? After– she– at the lake, that was when she realized it, that she never could. She had been so certain. She started inviting rather than rejecting dreams of hatched plots and packed bags, of Jade’s love and her brothers’ forgiveness, which was a victory that felt only like a failure. Part of her knew, even then, that she would never have any of that. She would fail here and never see anything else. Anyone else. She couldn't believe she would ever be leaving with Wynne, Elias, and the child.

But they had come so close. She could have left. If things had worked, maybe she could have left. So close… and then...

She failed. And then she failed.

This was not about some future stakes that her grandmother insisted, over and over again, would befall on everyone around Regan if she did not learn control. This was about Elias, right here and right now, and Regan continued to fail. No echoed through her again. She wasn’t sure if she had screeched it a second time or if it was pumping like blood through her body. There was no pretending she didn’t care for Elias. That lie might kill her and Elias both; her grandmother was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. The only thing that would be less effective than lying was begging. Regan felt the gold knife pressed against her, too.

Regan looked tearfully at Elias, who strained against the obvious pain he was in, who spoke words Regan did not understand, and who she wished had left weeks ago. He would and had moved mountains for her, and she caused him pain in return. She felt her own agony mirrored in his eyes, the weight of their shared suffering over them like a body bag. Every plea for death was like a blade in her own body. How could she witness this? How could she stand by and allow her friend to suffer at the hands of her own grandmother? He was blurry when she looked down at him, everything was. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I can’t just watch or let– I can’t.” The tears marked another failure, and they both knew it. Cliodhna was not going to let Elias die yet. She was not going to let him fall unconscious any time soon. She was not going to deprive her granddaughter of this opportunity to be righted, no matter how futile it all was.

Regan remembered being relieved to hear that, once.

“I–” Regan’s eyes were wet as they turned up to her grandmother, and there was no use trying to hide how profusely they leaked. Some banshee. “This won’t work. I’ll never– if you do this, I will never become what I need to. It won’t work. So pl–” An eyebrow lifting that might as well have been another slash of the blade. Regan tried to shore up her voice, which worked only until the next wave of tears struck. “There are other things we can try, right? There must be. I couldn’t have failed them all. I– there has to be–” Her grandmother’s eyes were so dark and deep they swallowed Regan. The dagger shined in her hand again, seeming to extract every streak of sunlight even through the fog. Her grandmother’s orange wings glowed in the minimal refracted light. Her tone was harsh and flat where Regan’s was desperate and human.

Cliodhna goaded, “This is a waste, then? Another one? If he serves no purpose to you, then we will end this now. Scoiltfidh mé a scornach agus déanfaidh mé bróga dá chraiceann. I will give him purpose.”

No. No no no. “Stop! This isn’t how I’ll learn! What about, um… what about positive–” Her grandmother cut in, now venomous, hissing in Irish, “I have seen that wretched, amaideacht thing on your finger, and you will repeat no human fantasies to me. They have filled your head with lies. You left here before we could even suture your fontanelles. Your head is soft. You were a body with not yet a single fly, one of Hamstring's white sheets before it was made beautiful. Instead these neamh-roghnaithe humans make your face flush and your knees weak. Your patella are not even fit for my collection.”

More tears prickled at the corner of Regan’s eyes, springing from glands she wished she did not have. She clutched her left hand, her ring, torn between concealing it and searching it for anything she could find. She did neither, and squeezed it.

Regan's grandmother looked at her as she looked at far lesser creatures. “Leanbh. Regan, I will strip you in the dying room. I will slice your skin, carving valleys into your dermis, until I am deep enough to pull out every festering ideal that has infected you since your birth, and you will be hung with the rabbits and the stoats until you are nothing but dry, beautiful bone, and no longer your father’s daughter.” Cliodhna turned the knife on its side, moving it closer to Elias, but still staring into Regan. She switched to English. “If there is beauty to be found in you, I have yet to see it, but we will try once more, because I will allow no child nor grandchild of mine to bleed across their pedigree.”

Cliodhna turned her head, as she often stood back and examined her delicate work, the way it opened for her and gleamed. “You never liked using the animals, more tender than even their flesh, but have you noticed? It is the last rabbit, the one who has seen its warren slaughtered in front of it, who bleeds the most, whose organs swell, who smells the sweetest, who will give the most upon its death.”

Cliodhna lowered herself to Elias, knowing she still remained above him in every way. She kept her eyes jabbed into Regan. “I have failed you, my leanbh, and I am correcting this. I am going to show you how you will give the most.” Cliodhna’s eyes somehow went even blacker, darker than the tar itself, as she turned the knife into Elias’s arm, cutting into her granddaughter too, because she knew exactly how to skin a rabbit.

———

The blood was running down his arm and pooling onto the ground beneath him, and he could hear the tar pit gurgling, yearning for sacrifice. Elias had told Regan that it’s what he wanted, and here he was. Being the key thing that would bring Regan to be the banshee her grandmother wanted to be. He was falling through the air and there was nothing to grab a hold of. He was falling, and there was no one to grab him. He was going to fall to his death and it’s because of his own complacency.

The two were talking, but Elias didn’t understand. He wasn’t sure if that was because they were conversing in Gaelic or because he was starting to become delirious from the pain. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Was he dizzy from pain or was he dizzy from blood loss? Could you pass out from this kind of stab wound, or was he just making it all up in his head? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

Regan was begging and pleading, so he opened his eyes to watch. He felt like he was out of his own body, as if he were watching this from a third person perspective instead of it actively happening to him and in front of him. Regan was desperate, she was so upset to see him like this. He didn’t need to speak Gaelic to know that Regan was pleading for him right now. He shook his head, letting his gaze fall to the ground.

He couldn’t help but think that it was foggy out. In the movies, it’s always raining and miserable when a character dies. But that wasn’t the case here. Instead, it was just fog. The world kept spinning because in the grand scheme of things, Elias was irrelevant. Funny how things worked out.

Cliodhna was speaking in English again, and he began to brace himself for another pierce of the knife, and it came straight into his arm, the blade flattened in his arm, and he felt a tearing sensation in his arm, the pain was agonizing. He felt the twist of the knife and his vision went white, he cried out, thrashing and trying to yank himself away from the knife, but it was no use. Someone had him in a vice grip he couldn’t escape.

He felt like he was going to pass out from pain, but he knew that this woman would be done with him the moment he did. So he stayed strong, though a wave of nausea washed over him as he fought against every instinct he had to stay alive. He took a deep breath through his nose, forcing himself to look up and meet Regan’s eyes. He thought of all those moments that had defined their friendship, how it had all started.

He remembered leaving the Mushroom Circle, Regan suspicious of him and questioning his motives. His vision whited out, he was being cut into again, more skin removed. Fuck, that hurt. There weren’t words to describe what he was feeling. Just white hot pain and the ringing in his ears blocked out all noise. Was that because of the shock or because Regan was screaming again? He didn’t know.

He was so out of his own body at that moment that he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. Elias wasn’t built for torture. Well, no one was built for it, but especially not him. He wanted to cry, but he refused to be weak. So he just whimpered and squeezed his eyes shut, praying that it would end soon. All he wanted was his friend back, not said friend’s grandmother to torture him.

He couldn’t help but think of Marcus, how there was so much he hadn’t said to him out of fear, how much he wasn’t going to be able to tell him now that he had his life flashing before his eyes. He was so afraid to love, to go in that deep with a person that he was more willing to turn him away then ever let him in close. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He whimpered under his breath, thinking of Marcus, thinking of Regan, thinking of Jade and Wynne and everyone he’d ever met that had made living in Wicked’s Rest worthwhile.

He was never going to tell Marcus how he felt, he was too afraid. He was always too afraid. Why was he always so afraid? Was allowing people always going to end this way? Was he going to always get hurt because he dared to love? A sob escaped his lips and Elias opened his eyes. He’d let himself love someone and this is where it got him. Sure, he didn’t love Regan in a romantic sense, but he’d loved her like a sister, like family. And his worst fear that he’d be hurt was not only coming true, but made ten times worse than he could ever imagine.

Maybe it was a way of protecting himself from this exact moment, maybe it was precognition, a sixth sense. Maybe it was just sheer, dumb fucking luck that nothing ever worked out in Elias’s stupid little life. Good at robotics, hate the field. Find someone he can say that he genuinely loves and wants to be friends with forever? Grandma tortures him. What the fuck was going to happen if he fell for Marcus? Shit, had he already fallen? He thought of his stupid smile and stupid good looks. “He had a good body,” he remembered Regan saying, not realizing at the time she was referring to an actual corpse.

Shit, he was going to die without telling a soul how he felt about them. He was going to die and he was never going to be strong enough to tell Marcus how he felt. He loved Marcus, he loved Regan, he even loved Jade. He had built a community around himself and he was losing it. He was never going back home, his parents and siblings would never know what happened to him. He was going to die in Ireland for familial love. For once in his life he allowed himself not to be afraid, and now he was paying for it. “I’m sorry, Regan.” He whimpered out, staring directly into her eyes with tears welling in his eyes from emotional and physical pain. “Please, you need to tell Marcus I’m sorry, I…” his voice faltered when the blade came close to his face, silencing him.

———

Cliodhna’s black eyes became glassy; they glazed over like she was bored. Had she expected something else? Regan was soft, weak, her heart pumping blood that was too wet. Regan anticipated a speech about all of this, reminders about the most delicate pieces of her, the ones that would need to be hardened with scarring, but she was met with only boredom. Her pleading bored her grandmother. There was no emotion to appeal to. There never would be.

Blood pulsed out of Elias’s arm, forming a puddle beneath him, staining the knees of his jeans. The apology made Regan’s heart leak more, her jaw trembling as she could do nothing but watch. Why… why was he apologizing? Her eyes froze against his and welled with fear that she was no longer supposed to know. A request came from Elias. Like he was on his deathbed. “I… I will… I’ll tell him.” The lie was nothing compared to the way her body was already tearing apart, fissures across her skin, raw pinkness inside. She was on one of her grandmother’s hooks, dangling, ripe to eviscerate. She was not leaving Saol Eile, they would never let her leave now. They would know what she had tried to do, in helping humans. The wings had been pulled from any hope she let Wynne rekindle. There would be no telling Marcus anything.

Regan tried to kneel, to get a better look, to deliver any aid at all or look her friend in the eyes while they were next to each other, to stay with him through his suffering or his death, whatever would come, because the worst way to die was alone. But at the movement, her grandmother’s knife migrated from Elias’s arm up to his throat, and Regan’s pulse trembled like that of a human she could not be – quick and desperate – or perhaps like one of the animals she had been made to lay her hands over, when they could feel the lethal way her breathing shifted and knew they were about to come apart.

Regan's voice was a squeak (a crime in its own right). “You won’t.” She had never been more uncertain. Were her lungs not churning, wind kicking up? It was the very start of a storm, when the clouds choked out the light and the wind started rattling against everything it swept over. Only a breeze, but a harbinger of stronger drafts. At her grandmother’s boredom, Regan had an opportunity to say more if her mouth allowed it. “He– he will be impossible to replace.” For both of them.

Like Regan, her grandmother never laughed, but she did open her mouth, exhaling a dry bark, as if she had never heard anything so stupid. Her grandmother spoke in English again – she wanted it to be one of the last things this human heard. “Maine is no obstacle. There are others. There is another here, though I favor them for a true, more promising an chéad scread. They have that look about them, only fit for bleeding out for others.” Wynne. So she did know. Did other banshees? Was the ham child still safe? The blade glistened. Cliodhna glistened more, the boredom shaken from her at her granddaughter’s disobedience. “I will drag every one of your humans across the sea, and have you watch as I break them in front of you, one by one, until you learn to break.” She looked down at Elias with something like disgust in her dark eyes. “They are better at breaking than you. How náireach for me to be saying that of my granddaughter. But if you refuse to be built from my blood, you will be built from theirs.”

Regan went limp as Cliodhna continued, “You are not doing the human any favors. That means you are not beholden to him, at least. You give too much to them, the humans.” She paused, considering something, perhaps how her failed welp of a granddaughter never gave quite so much to her, to Saol Eile. “Let us see if we scream.” The knife was forced into Elias’s stomach, plunging into the bowels. There was a scream joining Elias's. Not a death scream, not yet, but Regan recognized it as her own, as faraway as it seemed. Her grandmother pulled the knife out, a steady flow of blood poured from the wound. If Elias could bear the pain, he might remain conscious for a while. But he would need medical care. Fast. Her grandmother did not look toward her, only at the knife in her hand. “Hold your lungs, leanbh.” The flash of gold stabbed into Elias again, a second wound next to the first.

Cliodhna turned to Regan while the knife remained in her friend, temporarily plugging the inevitable. Regan couldn’t move now. She did not react. No scream – not yet, not yet – and did not attempt to go to him. Her thoughts came to a grinding, blinding halt as everything played out in front of her without her there. Was this what Cliodhna wanted? Her gone? Her frozen solid like she herself was in the tar? She did it. Accomplished. Right? She had to be perfect, because Elias’s breath was growing shallow, his head lolling forward. She could be nothing so he could be something. A stirring force still hammered in her lungs, the only movement she could feel inside of her now. But Cliodhna’s eyes saw everything, every imperfection Regan possessed, everything keeping her from being what she had to be. Her eyes picked apart skin and muscle and snapped bone for the marrow inside. Regan knew how to save lives and how to understand death, how to let it speak to her. She spread ribs, she cracked skulls, she held every organ in her hands with every ounce of reverence as any other banshee here. But never had she looked at the living and wished to pull them apart.

There was a bloated silence as Elias kept emptying out.

Finally it broke. “Your mouth opened,” Cliodhna said flatly, and unsheathed the knife from Elias’s skin, releasing another heavy spurt of blood. Before Regan could object, gather her jaw and seal it in place with the cement she felt in her joints and her heart, the dagger plunged again.

———

It was getting harder to stay upright, harder to stay conscious. But Cliodhna held him firmly in place as she drove the dagger into his flesh, pain searing and like fire. Of everything he’d ever done in his life, he’d never expected to die like this, so brutally and from someone who had such hatred in their heart for his very existence. All this time he’d tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, give people a chance because you never knew what was going through their mind, what they’d been through in their life. But – Elias groaned, the pain becoming too much to bear as he felt his consciousness slip. He couldn’t keep his head upright, thoughts becoming more incoherent.

The dagger was plunged into him again, and he let out a gurgle of pain, unable to keep up with it all. This was it. He was eating the words he’d once told Regan, that he’d move mountains for her. He’d done that, and this is where it got him. This is where closeness got him. He’d always been big on forgiveness. Big on seeing the positives in the darkness. But this? There was no coming back from this.

Through the midst of torture and blood loss, Elias snapped. The part of him who was, that Elias was gone. Born from the blood and pain was someone else, someone twisted and angry and full of hate. He hated the banshees. He hated that this had happened, he hated himself for being stupid enough to follow Regan to Ireland. Most of all, he wanted to hate Regan. But he couldn’t. And he hated that he couldn’t.

Through the sheer agony, Elias forced himself to look up, to meet Regan’s gaze. “I chose this.” He gurgled out, eyes hard yet unfocused. “Don’t blame yourself for this. I chose this.” It was getting harder to speak, his words threatening to slur together as his consciousness dipped. “I love you, Regan. You’re family to me, a sister. You have so much more to–” the blade stabbed into him again, cutting off his words with a cry of agony.

No. He wasn’t going to leave Ireland, this is where it ended. Where consciousness threatened to give way to eternal darkness, which Elias had always feared. He’d always feared the end, feared death. But at this moment? He was at peace. He was ready to die.

———

She couldn’t do this. Elias was bleeding to death in front of her. She couldn’t do this. Everyone knew it, and she hadn’t listened, and now Elias was suffering for her trying to become something she could never be. Regan stood, shaking, as Cliodhna pulled the dagger from her friend again, followed by a ribbon of blood dripping from him. He looked only a breath away from losing consciousness, sweat dripping from his temples and out of his pores. A man nearing a terrible death. Regan’s heart shattered – and every second more that Elias had to endure this, a new layer or valve broke off. He was ready for his death but Regan was not.

She needed to tell Elias that she couldn’t bear to lose him, that his life meant more to her than he could ever know. But the words caught in her throat, suffocated by the weight of her own despair that she needed to trap so deeply inside of her that it didn’t show itself in a single twitch of her mouth, a blink of her eyes, or even a heartbeat. She would not be his death.

Her limbs were still locked in place. It wasn’t enough. Her grandmother looked at her, assessing, not needing to scrutinize for long before finding a long list of flaws. “Your eyes narrowed. And that mouth of yours opened again. What is it you would like to say, Regan? Speak it now.” Cliodhna was going to stab him again anyway. And again. Regan’s stomach iced over because it knew the only way this was going to end but she was fighting it anyway. She’d seen enough. Too much. This was all–

Her grandmother was waiting for an answer. Regan had only one. “Stop,” she whimpered, the word barely more than a breath. Defiance came at a cost here, when it dared surface at all. She knew that Cliodhna would not take kindly to insubordination, that there would be consequences for her actions. She was willing to face any punishment, any. Her grandmother made that dry barking noise again, the knife waving in her hand. “Anything else, leanbh?”

“Please!” Regan screeched. Defeat loosened her muscles, broke the rigor that held them, and before she could stop it, words started flying from her mouth. She thought before that begging would make things worse. There was no worse from here. So she would beg. She was not too proud for it, not now. “Don’t– please don’t– I’ll do anything. I’ll stay here for as long as I have to, I’ll do whatever is asked of me, he’s my best friend, stop, please!” A sob escaped. Then another. She didn’t have the ability to pretend they were anything else. “You can watch autopsies, I will give you thousands more mice, hundreds of pressed flowers, I’ll never hesitate again, I’ll make you proud, I’ll be everything you want me to be.” Old memories bubbled up like a putrid, infected open wound, one that she had neglected rather than treated. In that time it had run its course through veins and arteries and now it was bursting like an aneurysm. “I can’t do this again. Please don’t– my dad– this isn’t a gift! Please stop. I won’t be a child. I won’t be a failure. Please.”

Her grandmother looked at her like she had just swallowed something vile. She knelt, breathing cool air in Elias’s face. This time, the knife was not aimed at his arm, or his abdomen. It lay against his throat, threatening his jugular. This was the one that would end his life. “Leanbh is too generous for you. A child does not know better. You know what you are not.” The knife pressed in more, beads of blood forming around the blade. “Look at you. Listen to yourself. I see there will be no further progress made today, if there was any at all.” Her grandmother sighed sharply, the only external indication that she was once again disappointed. That was what Regan was. Disappointment between layers and layers of bloodshed. “You feel it in your lungs, don’t you?”

She did. Elias was about to die. He was asking to die. Telling her it wasn’t her fault (but how could it not be?). That he chose this (no, he chose her). Regan’s lungs expanded to hold that dark, gathering storm that demanded to come out. The gust she had felt before was now a whirlwind, a warning that death was here to collect and there was nothing that could be done about it. Her grandmother was going to kill him. But… Regan hadn’t screamed yet. Her body hadn’t insisted on it. Death was not ready to drag Elias away. There was only a second to change the course of things before Fate locked it all in place and made it pour from Regan’s lungs.

The whole reason Elias was here, in danger, about to die, went beyond what Cliodhna was doing today. Cliodhna was the reason Regan no longer had her dad; Cliodhna was the reason she became what she was; Cliodhna was the reason she had come here and brutalized herself for years; Cliodhna was the reason she forfeited all of her loved ones; the reason she would outlive them all; Cliodhna was the reason she didn't allow herself closeness, friends, love; the reason she couldn't love Jade like she had wanted to for so long; Cliodhna was the reason she didn't know how to want, how to be a person; Cliodhna was the reason she no longer recognized most of the emotions that passed through her heart. Cliodhna pushed her. She pushed and pushed and Regan backed up each time, giving up more of the future that stretched ahead of her with every step back.

She was ready to push forward.

Regan looked to Cliodhna, with the iron determination of a banshee who understood exactly what needed to be done. And it was not only for Elias.

Her grandmother soaked up the acceptance in Regan’s eyes, seeing only what she wanted. “Good girl. You–”

Regan’s certainty became action. She surged forward, not at Elias, but at Cliodhna. Never in her 500 years had her grandmother expected something like this, and certainly not from such a useless shame like Regan. Regan rammed herself at Cliodhna, her scarred palms flat against Cliodhna’s stomach as both of them were sent hurtling. There was a jab, a bite in Regan's upper arm, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see her grandmother’s golden knife – the one that had been carving up Elias, the one that was plunged into her dad’s heart – planted in her skin like a flag. Wings beat madly. Cliodhna flailed. One or both of them screamed. Cliodhna fell back, her foot grazing the surface of the tar. Regan nearly fell on top of her, but while her wings gave her enough lift to balance herself on the edge of the pit, her grandmother was not quick enough. Cliodhna managed to straighten herself in the air but not before the tar took her other ankle, locking her in place like an unfinished statue emerging from cold marble.

It was all over now. Cliodhna’s wings beat furiously, whining, faster and faster, but she couldn’t pull her feet from the tar pit, the place that had taken so many lives. Regan fully caught herself now, scrambling away from the edge. She stared at her struggling grandmother, but all she saw was that little boy she had screamed for 8 years ago, and all of the other humans her grandmother had turned into lessons.

Her grandmother’s Gaeilge boomed out as a yowl, like an animal being stripped of its skin. It was the first time Regan had ever heard such desperation in her voice. “Child! What have you done? Come back here. You will remove me from here! Now! I have given up much to help you, don’t you see? Twice, now, I have tried. You’ve turned an honor into a pitiful waste. You have always been worth nothing. You run like your father. You can't be human, you useless–”

Regan turned away from Cliodhna, practically ignoring her. She pulled the golden blade from her arm – the wound hurting as much as the fact it put a hole through Jade’s jacket – and watched her grandmother in the knife’s reflection. Regan hoped Cliodhna questioned if she had done the right thing. That would make one of them.

Twice now. Twice Regan had tried, too.

Regan’s forehead creased at her grandmother’s words, her body coming to life again, her mind beginning to stir with familiarity. Cliodhna had peeled and carved enough of her away that Regan could see what was beneath it all now. The last four weeks became harsh acid in her stomach, climbing up her throat, spraying in her grandmother’s direction with venom. It was caustic enough to burn her, too, but right now, she did not care. She saw it all plainly, no longer filtered through the dark windows of her grandmother’s home. Regan’s voice took on every ounce of poison she had saved up for 8 years. She spoke to Cliodhna, watching her struggle only through the reflection on the knife. “...What is it, grandmother? Do you have something to say? Don’t look so glum.” Regan paused, then said the last thing she would ever say to this wretched woman, her face as stoic as could be. “I broke myself for you, didn't I? I would expect you would have a... oh, you are unfamiliar with the word. We call it a smile.”

There was silence behind her, until her grandmother said her final piece, too. “When you are back here, which you will be, you will beg Fate that I still have my mouth and nose above this tar, because you will have killed whoever gave you that ring, or your brothers. You will kill everyone you will ever–” Disgust twisted her up. “–love. Everyone you will ever smile with. And you will come here, pleading with me to help you break yourself properly, and I will point out that this is the day you have gone against Fate. I will point out that others will suffer for what you have done, they will suffer for as long as you live, my shame, my stupid leanbh.”

The following scream that roared out of Cliodhna was explosive, and Regan jumped automatically, standing over Elias, hands pressed to his bleeding ears. Covered in his blood. It came from every part of him. It covered her shirt; it mixed with hers. She needed to get him out of here, or he would die; her lungs still told her as much, even if they still weren’t demanding a scream from her. A scream. Every banshee in Saol Eile would have heard her grandmother’s scream; they would swarm here in minutes.

Elias. Elias needed medical attention immediately. She was going to protect Elias and the ones she loved, no matter the cost. She’d get them all out of here even if she could never leave, even if her plan today had been a failure, like her. He was the one who had any chance of escaping. Not her. “Stay with me,” she pleaded, “I need to move you. I’m– I’m so–” No time for struggling to apologize now. Regan might have been pathetic, useless, all of the words her grandmother had hurled at her, but she still knew how to be a doctor. “Stay with me.”

———

Things were happening, but Elias was too far gone to hear it, to experience it. He was going to die, and he was going to die bitter and angry. He couldn’t, not after everything he’d ever been through. Even after having his reality shattered from under him, even after meeting someone that changed the course of his life so rapidly. He thought of the people in his life that made it worth living. As much as he felt a tug toward an unseeing force, he allowed himself to remember his memories with the people he loved. Even people he didn’t know too well that he wanted to know better. People like Cass, Sam, Burrow, and Frankie.

Jade.

The greeting cracked her up, and her shiny eyes danced between both figures. “Don’t say that, unless you’re totally cool with that’s what she said jokes”, she wiggled her eyebrows at the cloaked figure in an ‘am I right?’ type of gesture.

Regan.

“My bag is heavy,” Regan said, offering both a truthful statement and utterly unimportant one, “Um, but I don’t – I’m not saying I need help with it. Only that I was trying to rearrange my purchases. Distribute their weight more evenly. It doesn’t matter.”

A flash of light crossed his vision.

Marcus.

“Do you think selkies are in these waters?” He asked, tilting his head from side to side, not knowing who it was standing behind him. “There’s a cryptid I would love to see.” Elias thought aloud, knowing he probably sounded like a lunatic as he said it out loud. “What do you think, you think seal people exist?”

Regan had been forced from inaction to action all because of him. Her pleading fell on deaf ears, and she… she pushed her grandmother into the pit. She pushed her in and she did it for him. Another layer to tack on to the already building trauma he was experiencing in that moment. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a gurgling noise.

As badly as his body hurt, as loud as that light screamed to him, beckoning him forward, he couldn’t. He felt Regan’s hands on him, he heard her voice. He couldn’t understand her, there had been something that rendered him deafened. Maybe it was a scream, maybe it was just all the blood loss. But Regan hadn’t left him to die, even when he told her to. She hadn’t left him to drown like he was used to people doing time and time again.

He didn’t have much strength left, but he had enough to infer what she was begging him to do. To not sleep. What was that famous Shakespeare line?

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause

Elias Kahtri wasn’t going to die here.

One foot moved in front of the other, forcing himself to stay upright, to not collapse. To not run away again, he was done running. Another foot in front of the other. It was so hard to move, but he had to keep going. Two steps felt like they were impossible, like trudging through hardened concrete, but he couldn’t let himself run away from his life again. No, I won’t die here.

He felt like he was outside of his own body, watching as Regan helped him away from the scene. Watching himself struggle to walk, letting himself be half-dragged by Regan. He opened his mouth to speak, but blood coated his tongue, poured out from his lips. “Can’t…” He gurgled out, feeling the hot stickiness of blood sticking to his face before he snapped his mouth shut again. It hurt to talk. He had to tell her. “‘M not… leavin’ you.” He slurred, forcing his eyes open long enough to look her in the eyes, tears spilling from his eyes as he knew he couldn’t hold onto consciousness a second longer. “I don’ wan’ leave you.” A sob wracked his body as he felt the call towards that light again.

He had to hold on, he had to try. He had to do it for her, for Marcus. For once in his life, he had to do it for himself. A ragged breath escaped his mouth. More blood. “I’m dying.” He finally said, a feeling of dread overtaking his body, like hands were grabbing him and pushing him under. “I don’ wan’to die.” He whispered out with the last of his effort before going limp against Regan, eyes rolling into the back of his head before he was pulled under at last.

———

Elias was pale, his breath haggard, his wounds still spilling out blood on both of them. As Regan pushed herself underneath his arm, he actually stood. He shouldn’t have been able to, and it was probably going to make his wounds worse, the shock to his system more deadly, but there was no choice. They had to rush. But Regan still took it as slow as they could reasonably could, urging him along, when he shouldn’t have been doing anything but lying in an OR. That didn’t exist here. The best she had was the clinic, and even that… they couldn’t get there in time. Regan would be found first, and if that happened now, Elias really would be dead. Why did she have to push her grandmother into a tar pit on Worm Remembrance Day? Everyone would be gathered together by now. They’d come as a horde.

She led him as far as he could tolerate. He was mumbling, could barely speak or hear or probably even see. “You’re not dying. I am an expert on when someone is dying.” That emerging scream for Elias had receded, but despite her reassurance, she knew this didn’t mean he was out of the woods yet. He was literally in the woods. Also, he could still die. Elias needed medical attention, and Regan… it couldn’t be from her, and not even because of some stupid sense of guilt (which, fine, that was there; it had bled down and been soaked up the deepest tissues inside her). Between her and her grandmother, all of the screaming wouldn’t go unnoticed. She could still hear her grandmother howling, not far away. Regan took a long, deep breath, as she tried to summon bravery she did not have.

There were things that approached dying – and bleeding out, unconscious, in the middle of the woods with limited medical care was certainly one (or four) of them. Regan helped Elias down, stunned by his tenacity that had brought him this far, both in physical steps and surviving everything that had just happened. “Easy,” she said, leading him to somewhere he could be concealed, though she wasn’t sure he could hear her now. No. She was sure he didn’t. A spike of panic shot through her when he tumbled against her, no longer able to support his own weight. He was out. Regan took his pulse. Alive. Heartbeat slow. Alive.

Regan would do the best she could in the time she had. She pulled off Elias’s shirt, trying not to graze his wounds. Surprisingly, this idea was something she hadn’t tried before – Regan stretched the shirt between her hands and found that, unlike what all of those wilderness survival books said, tearing a shirt was actually quite difficult. (Jade probably could have done it.) Okay. Plan B. She balled the shirt up and pressed it against Elias’s stomach, where it was quickly soaking up his blood. For his other wounds, she tried to blot them with her own shirt, but there was always more blood, and cotton became saturated too quickly.

Her breath left her, and it felt like giving up, even though she knew what had to be done. “I’m so sorry.” Regan sat down next to him, propping him up as much as she could. She had a moment. It was important. Had Elias been conscious, she wondered if he would have squirmed away. But he wasn’t. And one way or another, this would be the last they saw of each other. Regan pushed closer to him, and she rested her head against his shoulder for just long enough to trade a smear of his blood for a patch of her tears. “I’m sorry. I’m going to get you out of here. I promise I will get you out of here alive.” She wasn’t sure if she could tether herself to someone who was unconscious – and if she could, a failure would probably mean she’d die with him – but she didn’t care. She meant every word.

Carefully, Regan lifted his hand and placed it over the balled up shirt, seeing if he would know to apply pressure, but of course, he remained just as limp as before. She tried to sob. She would have liked to, even, away from her grandmother and the other banshees, in the presence of her best friend. But Regan was empty. “I’m sorry,” she rasped, apologizing for that, too.

She rose to her feet, though she didn’t feel as though she had much to stand for. While all of the other banshees went to investigate what happened to Cliodhna, Regan sounded a scream of her own, trying – with all that she had left – to call over one of the two people in this town who would want to help. People who should have been driving through green hills and open skies right now.

Regan couldn’t stay. They would be looking for her soon, and she wasn’t going to draw them here so they could finish what her grandmother started. With one woefully wet final look at Elias, Regan took off back toward Farraige na Buanachta to meet her fate. She always did meet it in the end.

#writing #c elias #domestic abuse tw #torture tw #Parental death tw

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