#rens ruminations | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mortemoppetere · 11 months

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TIMING: recent PARTIES: @ironheartedfae & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: ren drops by axis to walk perro and drop off an apology letter for emilio to find later, but emilio comes home early and catches her. conversations are had. CONTENT WARNINGS: alcoholism, discussions of child abuse

Two days. Sitting, festering in the pool of anger that never seemed to have a bottom. Endless. It came from somewhere didn’t it? Ren never understood it, as familiar as it was. She knew what to do with anger, or rather what she was supposed to do. “Point it where it can do the most damage, котёночек.” Darya would say, in times like that she almost seemed maternal. Giving advice in the only way she knew how. When she’d offer a gentler hand and a quieter voice. Calming the inferno inside Ren’s chest. Taming the monster so it could be taught.

It was this softer image, the glimpses of light that had Ren reeling. If it was only harsh for no reason, only the abrasive file that whittled away at the fae’s nature… maybe she could understand better. Understand Emilio’s anger despite how he had never met Darya. Never seen how kind she could be, how strong she was, how well she treated the other kids, the whole family… Maybe if he just saw that he’d–

There was everything Ren knew, and what Emilio had begun to preach. Fully at odds with each other, in a way that riled her up more than just about anything else. Defensively, she ruminated on what could possibly have made Emilio’s childhood so much better than hers. On why he thought it was okay for him to be a tool and nothing else, and not for her. He was not a warden, that left only two other options. But only one that would produce as much dust as the man always seemed to be coated in. (Unless there were some exceptionally soot covered werewolves out there, who knew?)

Would Emilio’s mother have had the kindness and nobility to take in a vampire and raise it as one of her own? Would she have let it stay with the family properly, or would she have locked it away too? For its own safety as much as everyone else's. Ren didn’t know her. Didn’t know anything about her other than she probably shared the same last name as Emilio, and she somehow gave him purpose, made him a tool to be used. And made him think that was not a good thing for someone else to be.

But sitting and being angry at something was a hell of a lot harder than trying to do something about it. At first Ren just hunted. Sought out fae creatures that were harming others. Objective evil. Something she didn’t have to think about. The magical tether that weaves between every fae made it easy. Made it far too simple to get in close, to angle the knives just right. When she thought she had a handle on her thoughts she went on to larger targets. To something that could talk– But she never really got to the killing part. Emilio’s voice kept creeping in. The way he’d been so soft, so kind. The comforting hand on her shoulder, the warm spot on his couch. Ren had never slept in the same house as someone before. Never had a companion like Perro to curl up next to her on the couch.

The nevers got a little louder every hour, every day. Ren found herself missing the old apartment in a way that only confused and irritated her more. She shouldn’t have shouted. Shouldn’t have yelled at him for not understanding her upbringing. She knew that much. The bitter pit in her stomach had more to say, more she couldn’t fully parse through. He was not a cruel man. He was not useless. He wasn’t the monster. Maybe he deserved something better than leaving his last message on read. Maybe he deserved a proper amount of appreciation for all he’d done. But it wasn’t like she could just say that. The words wouldn’t fully form in her head, and even if they did they might not make it out of her mouth without her getting upset again. Without her lashing out and making things worse.

So Ren waited. Watched. When she did not want to be found, it was next to impossible to do. She kept vigil nearby, she’d already learned the man’s routines. Perro, she supposed, was the thing she missed the most. The sweet dog had to be the reason she was here. Sitting outside waiting for the slayer to leave long enough to walk the pup and leave a note. Something that summed up what she could get through. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

—

He’d never been particularly good at coping. Even before the massacre, even before he’d become the sort of man who wasn’t particularly good at anything, Emilio had struggled to find the right way to deal with the feelings that often felt too big to fit in his chest and the thoughts that often crept into his mind without his permission. He found distractions, mostly, other places to put those feelings. When Victor died, he’d taken all the grief and all the love he’d had for his brother and transferred it over to Rhett, who showed up not long after. When he realized he wanted to leave Mexico with his daughter in tow, he’d thrown himself into the plan of it and refused to dissect the feelings it stirred up. When Etla fell and everyone he loved fell with it, he became a creature focused solely on vengeance so that he didn’t have to think about all the things he wasn’t anymore.

There were strings that tied them all together, of course, similar smaller things that lurked beneath the big ones. Alcohol had always been the main one.

Drinking to cope was something he’d started at a young age, when his uncle took him to the local hunter bar after Victor’s death and pushed a glass with an amber liquid into his hand. It had tasted foul and bitter, but it numbed him in a way he couldn’t deny. He’d gone back to it often even then, but it had taken on a new life since the massacre. He was drunk more often than he was sober these days, and he preferred it that way. A drunk man’s pain always hurt less than a sober man’s, he thought.

It was no surprise, then, that his argument with Ren drove him right back into the liquor cabinet. He couldn’t explain what it was about that particular fight that hollowed out his chest — he barely understood it himself. All he knew was that there was a kid, and he liked her. There was a kid, and she reminded him of people he’d loved and people he’d lost, made him think of people who died because he’d failed to keep them safe. There was a kid, and she’d been mistreated and hurt to the point that she thought she deserved it, somehow.

There was a kid, and she was asking him to kill her one day.

That was what he was focused on. Not the rest of it. Not the way her Darya sounded so much like his own mother that it made his mouth dry, not the way the things he’d said were unforgivable when they’d happened to her had been done to him, too. There was a difference, Emilio thought, in taking a child that didn’t belong to you and raising them up like cattle because you didn’t like the way they were born and raising your own child to fulfill a purpose that had been assigned to them since long before they came into existence. One was horrid. The other was noble. He might not have wanted to raise his daughter in the way his mother had raised him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t understand why she’d done it. That didn’t mean he thought her cruel for it. He was alive because of how his mother had raised him, and Ren was asking people to kill her because of the way hers had raised her. That was the difference. And that mattered. That had to matter.

So the fight stung. Ren’s words, her outright refusal to believe that she was worth caring for, it ached in a way Emilio couldn’t wrap his head around. He’d poured alcohol into that gaping hole in his chest, and it ached still. So he’d poured more and more and more, until all the bottles in his cabinet were emptied and he was pulling his shoes on with an angry grumble. If Nora were here, he’d have sent her to the store with his wallet to buy a few more bottles, but he couldn’t justify asking her to come in to ‘work’ on days when he was doing more drinking than he was investigating. So there was nothing left to do but go himself.

He stumbled to the ground floor, leg aching more than it usually did thanks to a few hours too many in an uncomfortable drunken position in the kitchen floor and started down the street, a strange feeling crawling up the back of his neck. He didn’t make it far before coming to the realization that his wallet was still on the kitchen floor, and he kicked the concrete in frustration before turning around. Already, he was beginning to sober up more than he’d like to. A slayer’s metabolism was only good to have until it wasn’t. Most things were like that.

He made the trek back up the elevator, not even pretending to consider the stairs the way he normally might. Then down to the end of the hall, to his apartment which —

Wasn’t empty. Emilio tensed at the sensation of another presence in his space, his hand gripping a knife carefully. Had someone found him, then? Some vampire whose friends he’d killed, or another person negatively affected by one of his investigations? Maybe it was Rivera, going back on his claim that he was somehow ‘better’ than Emilio for his refusal to kill and accepting the fact that the slayer posed a danger to his farm just by living, or someone from Zane’s clan who’d caught on to Emilio’s snooping and was here to put it to an end. His heart was stuttering in his chest, afraid to die even when it was the only thing he’d been after for years now. Hearts were funny like that. They never seemed to agree with the rest of you.

But then, he caught sight of her. The shock of red hair, the slight form hunched over Perro, who stood with his lone front paw resting on her knee. Emilio relaxed, slipping the knife back into his pocket and giving his heart a moment to slow again. “Figured this would be the last place you’d want to be,” he commented, walking by her to get to the kitchen. His bad leg, somehow aching even more now that the brief shock of adrenaline had overtaken and then left him in the span of a minute, was practically dragged behind him as he moved onto the tile, looking down at his wallet in the floor. Christ. Could he even bend over to pick the damn thing up, or was he too useless to manage even that now? He pressed his tongue against his teeth and let out a frustrated puff of air. “Did you wait until I was gone to come here?”

—

She should have heard him coming, but she didn't. Should have felt the vibrations of the elevator, the uneven steps that only ever belonged to the private investigator. The very same who brushed past her and into the kitchen. Ren was frozen to the spot. Mortified at her lack of awareness. Acidic spit pooled in the back of her mouth, giving even the air a bitter flavor as she tried her best not to move. As if it would help. As if him speaking to her wasn't enough to solidify that he'd already noticed. It was the illogical kind of fear and embarrassment, the kind that seems to pull at your mind from behind. Dragging you by your ears as if the weight of the words it spun around your heart had physical mass.

The voices in her head replayed every word. Painting them in an awful shout. One she hadn't even actually heard from Emilio in person. One he may not have even used if the argument was face to face. Didn't matter much what his intention might have been, Ren believed she needed to be yelled at. The boiling rage in her chest knew she was yelling. So as far as she was concerned, it was a screaming match through the screen.

'Figured this would be the last place you’d want to be' it was. It was. Right? Why would she want to be here? Other than visiting the dog. That… that was the only part that made sense. "Just– I am here to give back stupid jacket." Torn off, thrown on the couch. Leaving her in a too-large, too-thin button down she'd found at an abandoned camp site. "Dog still has needs" No. No no no. This wasn't right. Ren squeezed her fists so tight her palms began to protest. Heat bubbled up, reddening her ears and dusting her cheeks. It wasn't a lie, not really, so why was her stomach still churning as if it was? Why did she feel so sick, and why did it just make it even harder to speak. To say what was on her mind.

Ren stood abruptly, pointedly ignoring the second question, and fully not noticing the crumpled paper falling from the pocket of the jacket she had thrown. Without a goodbye or an explanation she began to leave. Stopping only when Perro followed her to the door. Clearly expecting her to still take him for a walk. Her heart was beating so fast and so loud it was almost hard to hear the soft whine come out of the dog. Harder to hear the man in the kitchen struggle to do a basic task. Something she should have offered to help with. Instead she tried to mouth a silent 'no.' to the pup as her hands failed to grasp the door handle.

—

She was still angry. Hell, maybe he was, too. It was hard to assign a name to the feeling in his chest most days, the burning fire that wasn’t quite rage but wasn’t quite grief, either. It had lived within him for so long now that he’d stopped trying to understand it, stopped attempting to describe it to anyone but himself. No one had ever understood it, anyway. Not Rhett, not Vida, not Javi, not any of the people he tried to use to warm his bed on nights where it felt too vast and too empty to exist within even when he wasn’t planning on sleeping. It was what it was, and what it was was shit but what else did he have? What else could he do?

“Told you I don’t want the jacket. I gave it to you because I wanted to get rid of it.” It wasn’t true, but it was also the only way he knew how to get her to accept anything at all. She’d been raised to think she only ever deserved scraps, to think she was blessed to get even that. The fire in his chest burned a little hotter, his hatred for the woman who’d brought Ren up like this growing all the more despite the fact that he’d never met her. He hoped he never did. He didn’t think he’d be able to stop himself from doing something Ren would certainly hate him for if he ever came face to face with the woman responsible for making her this terrified, angry, mess of a kid.

Emilio looked to Perro, who’d plopped down to stare up at Ren as she straightened. His head tilted to one side, then the other. The hunter couldn’t help but wonder if the dog could smell it, the tension in the air. Did he know, somehow? Or was it impossible to differentiate this new rage from the one that had lived in Emilio’s chest since the night he’d brought the mutt home? “Dog’s needs aren’t your problem anymore if you’re not taking what I’m giving you. That was the deal, right? You take care of him, I give you food and a jacket. You don’t want the jacket. You won’t take the food. You don’t have to walk the dog.” It ached a little, saying it, but he didn’t want her thinking she still owed him anything.

She stood and headed towards the door, and even if he saw it coming it still stung. Something fell from her pocket, and he limped over to scoop it up, wincing at the movement. “Dropped this,” he said, holding it out to her. If she wanted to leave, he wouldn’t stop her. God knew she’d had enough choices taken from her already; Emilio wouldn’t be the one to add more to that list, even if it meant she’d choose never to see him again.

—

Ren opened her mouth to spit some other vile thing she didn't really mean out at Emilio, but her voice stuttered. He was holding it, the rough draft of an apology she had written. Well, it was more like draft fifteen, because of course it was. She never did anything right on the first pass. Not when it involved words and feelings. Even good old number fifteen was not nearly good enough. All fragmented sentences and half thought out ideas. Footnotes still in Russian, waiting to be translated, handwriting barely legible. Worse, there were still drawings on it. Doodles. Scribblings. Art was a childish, foolish, terrible endeavor that should have stayed private. Ren never understood why anyone would look twice at the messes she drew. A few folks had expressed interest but it wasn't something that really clicked in her mind. Few things did, at least right away.

Nostrils flared along with the staggered rise and fall of Ren’s chest. She was still enough that Perro had decided her feet were a good bed. Curling around them and all but forbidding her to run the way she wanted to. Maybe it wouldn’t be obvious to just anyone, but Emilio was a detective and a damn good one at that. The way the girl’s eyes darted between the crumpled ball, to the man’s eyes, and back, it was clear. The letter was for him. But she wasn’t quite ready to release it. She didn’t know what to do. All resolve faltered, managing to twist up behind her ribs into an ever increasing heart rate. Sooner or later she’d start putting hummingbirds to shame.

—

She stood frozen, like someone had nailed her feet to the floor even before Perro climbed on top of them and settled down to rest. Emilio knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t kick the dog off his resting spot in order to run, but she wasn’t reaching out for the paper, either. She was staring at it, eyes darting between it and him as if…

Oh. She’d brought this here to leave it for him, hadn’t she? Some letter for him to find in her absence. Something tugged at his chest, a memory he tried not to think about. He’d toyed with it, when he was planning his departure from Mexico, packing his things and Flora’s little by little in a subtle enough manner that no one would notice they were disappearing. The idea of leaving a note behind for Juliana to find, an apology for her to pass along to his mother and his siblings, a message for her to deliver to Rhett… He’d deemed it too risky in the end, known he’d loved her too much not to let something slip and she’d known him too well not to catch it. If he’d gotten his chance, he would have left the people who’d loved him with nothing at all, not a word or a sign.

But Ren was better than he was. Kinder, despite having had no kindness shown to her to offer an example. Guilt clawed at his chest at the way she was looking at him, eyes wide and desperate. Carefully, he took a step closer to her and held the paper out, close enough that she could grab it if she wanted to. “I won’t look at this,” he said carefully, “unless you want me to.” No matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much his anger and curiosity and grief was begging him to. It was still Ren’s choice. It needed to be Ren’s choice. If she was ever going to trust him again after he’d snapped at her, if he was ever going to get to a position where he could really help her, he had to earn that.

—

No. She should have just said no. Grabbed the paper and shuffled the puppy off of her feet, fled out the door and never let herself be seen again. Ren wanted to run. Felt the whole of her torso go cold as blood rushed to her legs, to her ears where they pulsed out a beat that almost gave a soundtrack to this horrible horrible scene. She should have, she wanted to, but she did not.

Instead, the young nymph reached out a shaking hand and closed the paper back in his. Quickly retreating, but giving him an answer all the same. He could, if he wanted to. She wasn’t going to stop him. She was mortified by it, still sinking and shrinking into that bug under a microscope feeling once more. Ren wouldn’t look him in the eye. Only at Perro. Only at the couch. At the many, many, many places she’d found hidden knives and put them back. At the cracks in the walls, the peeling paint. At the empty bottles of whiskey, and cigarette butts that dotted the ground. Anywhere but at him. Because she knew he was looking at her. Because she knew he was seeing her too.

“Emilio Cortez

I am not good with this. I am not good with feelings. I am not good at much at all. But I should not have yelled. I should not have called you names and insulted you. You have been nothing but kind to me. You say you are not good man but time and time again you keep treating me like something that is worthy of saving. I know you do not care for her, but Darya would say “you are what you do.” And I think you are good.

Better than you allow yourself to believe.

I cannot agree with you about my upbringing. I cannot understand how it is different from your own, I do not know how it is bad of her to protect me as a youngling, to train me in the ways she would have trained her own. It was not as bad as it sounds, and maybe if you just understood this– She did not call me monster, not directly. But she taught me of all the horrid things the fae have done, and will continue to do. So I see myself for what I could be. I know I am nothing good. I see the problems I could cause if I let my guard down...

When people thanked me it felt good and this scares me deeply. I was terrified and I lashed out at you instead of listening. I do not want to hurt people, but I now understand… I hurt you. I should not have asked this of you.”

It wasn’t signed. It wasn’t ever meant to be. Who knows how much of it would have made it to the final draft, if ever Ren got there. If ever Ren felt it was sufficient to convey her apologies, and the depth of the sorrow it brought her to make him upset. This was all new territory. But she felt she had to do something, and speaking wasn’t going to be a real option. So she waited. She no longer waited for a strike, that wasn’t something Emilio would do. He wasn’t trying to punish her for her own good. He wasn’t trying to beat any bad behavior out of her. He was kind, and warm, and trying his very best to make a person out of her.

—

She closed his hand around the page in a way that meant she was granting him permission. In spite of his curiosity, he still hesitated for a moment. Long enough to give her a chance to change her mind, long enough for her to snatch the page back if she wanted to, long enough for her to leave if that was what she chose. He gave her time to make a decision and, when she didn’t move, he figured that was a decision in and of itself. Slowly, he pulled his arm back and uncrumpled the paper. Slowly, he lifted it up to read.

It took him a while. English wasn’t a language Emilio was entirely comfortable in, and it would surprise no one that literacy in any language wasn’t something his mother had found very important. If he wanted to really take something in, he had to read it slow. And he wanted to take this in, all of it. He read every word, heart pounding in ways he didn’t understand at Ren’s scribbled out confession that she didn’t understand how her childhood differed from his. He pretended he couldn’t read it where she’d scratched it out, pretended he didn’t know what it said. He wasn’t sure who he was trying to fool in the privacy of his own mind, wasn’t sure who he was afraid of, but the fear clung anyway.

He moved on, down to the next part, chest aching. If you told a child that what they were was wrong all their life, you had to know what it would do to them. There was no excuse, Emilio thought, no explanation. There was nothing Ren could say or write that would make him view Darya as anything less than the monster she was, but there was likely nothing he could say to make Ren accept it.

Shifting the page, he looked up at the margins, where the less organized thoughts lay. Doodles of Perro napping with questions about his eyes and the frequency of his snoozes, notes about other dogs and knives and Metzli. (He hadn’t realized Ren knew them; there was a foreign kind of comfort with that, a relief that shouldn’t have been there. His friendship with Metzli confused him, more than anything else. He was never sure if it was a sign he was getting better or another tally to add on the list of reasons why he should hate himself.) There were drawings of him, too, and that was strange to see. He’d never seen himself sketched out on paper before, hardly ever even looked at himself in the mirror. His throat felt tight. Was that really what he looked like through her eyes? It seemed too kind. Like he was a person instead of a thing, a man instead of a weapon. He thought maybe he ought to be ashamed of that, too.

He didn’t know how long he spent looking at it before he finally lowered the page, glancing up at her. She still wasn’t looking at him; he thought she probably wouldn’t for a while, if she could help it. “Can I keep this?” It was a quiet request, and perhaps one he thought he already knew the answer to. Emilio rarely got to keep anything. Not gifts he was given that couldn’t be used to hurt anyone, not the baby girl he’d cradled in his arms while her mother slept, not the woman who’d loved him until she maybe-hadn’t. Why would this be different? Why would Ren? She’d made it clear already that she was ready to die the second she started to act even a fraction more like what she was. Maybe letting her go now would save him some grief down the road.

But, of course, it wasn’t something Emilio knew how to do. He’d loved Juliana, who was a martyr in the making long before her death. He’d loved Flora, who was marked for death the moment she was born just as all hunters were. He’d loved Jaime and Rosa and Edgar and Victor and Rhett, loved Lucio and his mother, loved a whole town full of people who love had not saved. His mother had been right about him, he knew; he was too soft, too weak, too useless. If he were better at this, maybe they’d all still be here. If he were better at this, maybe he wouldn’t be. Ren’s note warmed his chest, but that didn’t make it true. He still wasn’t a good man. He knew that. The good ones had died in Mexico.

“I like the drawings,” he offered. “Really like the ones of Perro. Es bueno. You’re good at it.”

—

Ren had never experienced open heart surgery, but this had to be a close second to it. She just stood there. He just read it. Silently taking his time pouring over the words, looking at the drawings. All the while she was stuck rooted in position, feeling rather like lightning in a bottle. Standing still was agony. Moving away was unacceptable. So she crouched. Busied herself with Perro and his floppy ears, his bushy brows that fully covered his eyes whenever he was snuggled up tight like this. He didn’t seem to mind the alternative to a walk. The pup just yawned, stretched and rolled over until his back was against her ankles and his tummy was in scratching position.

What to expect? Her mind raced with possibilities, but never once settled on Emilio wanting to keep it. Of course he could keep it. He’d already seen it, it wasn’t like she was going to try and hide it after. It didn’t make sense. And maybe that showed on her face, puzzled and twisted up tight as her fingers carded through the dog’s fur. “Keep it.” She repeated, not daring to let her voice above a whisper. Lest she start screaming again. Ren didn’t want that. Didn’t want to make another problem where her first was just beginning to mend. If that’s what this was. If he wanted to keep it… That had to mean he’d keep the apology as well. On a more metaphorical level.

As concerned as she made herself with the state of Perro’s tangled locks, she had completely missed how tears that had begun to prickle at her eyes had overflown their reserves. Silently trickling down her cheeks and dropping to the floor with a gentle ptth. Ren didn’t feel like crying. She certainly didn’t want to. But the tears came all the same. “Pictures… come into my head sometimes. Have to get them out.” Bueno. Good. For that. For drawing. Of all things. Why did this admittance make her want to sob?

Why did it make her want to be held?

A pit began to form in her stomach, lending more than a little evidence to what Emilio had said. About how maybe the way Darya had raised her had done more damage than good. But that was only because Ren wasn’t a normal child. She was never going to be. Ren had been raised at arm’s length because of what she was, because Darya couldn’t afford to offer her anything else. She had been kind, and she had been cruel. She had been noble, and evil. The ends might have justified the means in her mind, but the inbetweens had a way of crushing down on the nymph at every turn. Making her second guess everything that wasn’t a direct, clear, and unshakable fact.

—

She said he could keep it, and Emilio was shocked even if he didn’t show it. He folded the page carefully, pulled out the wallet he’d retrieved from the kitchen floor and tucked the paper in between the folds. There wasn’t much else in there to accompany it, really. A few worn photographs of people long gone, pictures of moments he’d stolen that no one had known he’d kept. Rhett with something tangled in his hair, looking wild-eyed at the camera in a way that said he knew the man holding it was responsible. Juliana on their wedding day, her simple white dress standing stark against her skin as she rolled her eyes at the lens. Flora holding out a worm towards the camera with Jaime draped over her shoulders flashing a gap-toothed grin. And now, Ren’s handwritten note and drawings. It felt like it belonged there, with the ghosts. Somehow, that thought ached more than the rest of it. How long until she was among them?

(Was it selfish to hope that, just this once, he’d get to go first?)

He couldn’t relate to it, her need to draw. The things in Emilio’s head were rarely worth putting to paper, and doing so wouldn’t do much to get rid of them. Sketching Flora’s corpse where he’d found it in the living room floor wouldn’t evict the image from its permanent spot behind his eyes. Drawing his mother’s face from memory wouldn’t dispel the memory of how it had looked every time she’d caught sight of him, of how disappointment became a tangible thing when it was reflected in her eyes, of all the ways she’d tried to fix what was wrong with him and all the ways those repairs had failed. There were some things you couldn’t fix. Emilio was one of them. Emilio had always been one of them.

But Ren wasn’t. Ren was a kid, still. Lost and alone, but not by necessity. Maybe Darya didn’t want her to know that there was a world beyond the one she’d forcibly shoved her into, but Darya wasn’t here. Emilio was. And maybe — Maybe he could do something decent. Maybe he could do something to make up for the other people who weren’t here. For those pictures in his wallet that would never exist off the page again.

“I like them,” he said again, because it was all he knew how to do. He wasn’t good at encouragement. How could he be? He’d never been shown much of an example. “If you ever wanted to show me more, you know, I’d like to see them. Maybe keep a couple more, if you’d let me.” He looked down at Perro, still curled on top of the kid’s feet. “Between you and me, he’s cuter in your drawings than he is in pictures. Can never get him to sit still enough. Always a little blurry. Shit camera’s probably got something to do with it.” He didn’t know if talking helped. It helped him, sometimes. When his head went to places he’d rather it stay away from, when his mind did things he didn’t understand, it helped to hear someone else’s voice. Like an anchor. He wasn’t sure he was much of a lifeline, but maybe he still beat out silence.

Slowly tucking his wallet back into his pocket, he turned back towards the door. “I was about to run to the store. You can walk the dog, if you want. You can stay after, if you want. Or you can go, if you want. But it’s up to you, okay? You wanna stick around, I’ll make some food. You wanna go, you can go. But take the jacket with you if you do. I don’t like it on my couch. It, ah…” He waved a hand, unsure what phrase he was looking for or how to find it. “It doesn’t go with the room.”

—

The girl huddled in the closed doorway (only allowing herself to stay focused on the dog and nothing else) was quiet for some time. Processing, as it were. Ren had never been particularly great at digesting new information that didn’t seem to jive with what was already jammed into her brain. She didn’t know what to do with the compliments, didn’t know how to hold on to them. Instinct bid her to deflect again, to deny that the art was anything more than the effects of a troubled mind. To push back against the tidal force of kind that Emilio kept sending her way. It meant something, she knew it, that he could see something different in her. She just wasn’t sure what it was. If she believed he had a good mind and was a good detective, then she had to believe his judgment call when it came to her too. Right?

She could keep that idea in her mind, turn it this way and that, but it never seemed to fit. Not quite right. Not with everything else still swirling around in there. Crowding out the space with ideas that had not originally been her own, but had metastasized into something physical. A wall blocking Ren from seeing real good in anything that belonged to the fae. Which she always would. Through no fault of Emilio’s at all, he’d never really be able to break that one down. But he could sit there and talk with her. He could offer kind words, home cooked food, a dog to walk, a jacket to wear. Offer her a choice.

If you want.

Over and over he said it. Three simple words. If. You. Want. Most days Ren didn’t feel like a person, at best an insect, at worst an animated tool meant only to destroy anything that was similar to itself. Personhood was heavy. It might as well have been an Atlas carrying the world level task for the young nymph. It wasn’t something she could really exist with, not yet, but she could try.

Emilio moved closer, and Ren slowly stood. Still quite a bit shorter, barely coming up over his shoulder even on her tippy toes. Her eyes never seemed to leave the dog, even now. Still, her hand tentatively found its way to his. Giving a tight squeeze of appreciation, affirmation. A slow nod alongside to confirm. Words failed to come out, or maybe she just kept them in this time. Making sure she didn’t mess any of this up. Again.

#ironheartedfae #ren: time to apawlogize #wickedswriting #alcoholism tw #child abuse tw #s1 writing #season 1

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