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The party is bustling, slightly old but recognizable and familiar music bursting from the speakers inside.
Smoke fills her lungs, searing for a second as she breathes in, her migraine subsiding as it leaves her mouth in a puff of grey smoke. Lizzie closes her eyes, her cigarette burning in the cold evening air, before going for another hit.
This party sucks. The host and her have a bit of… tension. Bad tension. Joel and Lizzie had a nasty divorce and because they're so stubborn neither of them have come to apologise. It's been four years since that moment, and even though that scar still stings from time to time, it's healing; just slowly. Joel ran off to America with his friend and soon after adopted a kid to coparent. The same kid who she's very overly fond of. Very lovingly so. As if they're her own child.
Her ears flick back a bit, the rock music that has suddenly come on blasting a bit too loudly and suddenly. Her tail wraps around her leg after a gust of cold wind grazes her fur.
She goes for another hit.
In all seriousness, she can't see herself getting back together with him again. Yes, the wound still hurts, but she's been healing. She's been healing for a full four—almost five!—years, and she came to terms with their relationship and her feelings a few months ago. They wouldn't—and really, honestly, shouldn't—get back together as that very same couple that everyone used as an example for a healthy marriage.
Since then, she has changed. Let her hair grow out, started dyeing it various colours until she kept it pink, wore skirts and dresses and cried in happiness when they looked just right on her body. Joel knew she was trans since they started dating, encouraged her to do what she always wanted: get surgery, wear girly clothing—but she just didn't have the confidence back then.
The divorce was the first step in Lizzie finding herself and gathering up the courage to follow through with those desires. She started thinking of herself as just one whole instead of just one half.
The sound of the front doors opening and closing (very silently, she might add), she opened her eyes to see who could've gone out.
Her nephew is not who she expected seeing in the dark, crying with a hand covering his mouth, as if to stop the sobs. She immediately stands up straight, dropping her cigarette to stomp on it before following after him.
What the hell happened in there?
From what she can hear, the party is still going strong, loud hearty laughs that hurt her ears ring through the house and the music blasts loud. Surely, if someone were to see her adorable, nine-year-old nephew leave the house crying, someone would've ran after them, right?
Hermes ran somewhere straight from the front door, probably blindly, through the lush, excellently cut and trimmed trees and bushes, so it really shouldn't be hard; considering her increased sense of hearing and night vision… god, why do rich people have such large lawns?!
Somewhere against a tree, she can hear stifled sobs and the near-silent pads of little child feet. "Where the fuck did they go?!" Lizzie frantically thinks as she tears through the miniature forest, not caring for the damage to the oh-so spectacular circle bushes she can be causing. Who cares about trees when her fucking nephew is crying in the woods?
Eventually, the sound of footsteps stops somewhere to her left, and the cries were left unconcealed. Hermes was never a loud crier, not when they fell off the swings when they were six, or when they lost an entirely rigged talent show, and it didn't stop there.
His quiet tears always tore her heart apart, especially when she couldn't find him.
Soon, though, she sees a glimpse of purple fabric through the trees. Immediately, Lizzie runs towards it, coming up on a tree that looks older than her, and yet holds all the answers to the universe within the bark.
She slows down as she comes closer, eventually getting close enough to stand next to the tree and see Hermes's glowing blonde hair.
"Oh, kid," She whispers, watching as they flinch and spin frantically in her direction. In his haste, she almost misses the sight. The hand marks on his wrists.
Rationality was thrown out the window.
Lizzie leaps towards them, grabbing his two, small wrists to see if it is actually what she thinks it is. Maybe—maybe it's just a trick of the light. A shadow of some oddly sticking out leaf amongst the trees. But it isn't. And it doesn't look better with a closer look.
Someone touched her nephew.
Someone touched Hermes.
A loud cry brings her out of her rage-filled haze, making her let go of her tight grip on his hands, letting go like it was fire, "STOP! You're hurting me!" They immediately curl up, hiding their arms underneath their hoodie.
"God, shit, shitshitshitshit- Hermes, kid, I'm so fucking sorry—I just—" She forces herself to take a deep breath, shifting to sit more comfortably beside him, but not sticking to his side, "Who did this to you, kid? God…"
Hermes looks at her for a few seconds, eyes trying to get used to the dark to see her face, before relief strikes his body and he collapses against her side.
"I'm so so sorry, Auntie Liz…" They say between hiccups. Her tail wraps itself around his ankle as her hand comes to rest on his other shoulder.
"Don't apologise—this- this isn't your fault," She says firmly, "I'm sorry for touching you without asking—that- that wasn't very kind of me."
Hermes buries their face in her side, tucking himself in closer. "I know."
She presses a kiss to his messy head of hair and that was it. She listens as his breath slowly becomes stable, and his hiccups subsides. All while, Lizzie runs her mind through the guests, trying to think of who'd even think of hurting them. Or worse, touching them. She doesn't want to think about that possibility. It's a very real possibility, but she never, ever wants to think her own nephew—one that, in her mind, is her own—goes through.
She needs a cigarette.
In the silence, soon a voice speaks.
"I don't know her name…" Hermes whispers, hands gripping her shirt. Her eyes grow sharp, and all of her simmering anger bubbles to the surface. Still, she lets them speak.
"She…she told me dad was calling me. I just- I let her take my hand and she held me very tight, but I didn't think it wasn't normal…" He hides his face in her shirt and Lizzie can feel pools of tears leaking into the fabric, but she doesn't interrupt, "...Then she tells me to- to come outside with her and I- I didn't want to at first but she-" A sniffle, a calming breath, then they continue, "-she told me daddy and dad were gunna get mad at me if I didn't come- so I went with her.
"She led me to the back garden and tried to make me come with her into the forest but I- I didn't want to go in because the forest scares me at night and- and daddy knew that and I wanted to go back to the house but she wouldn't let go of my hand and- and she- and-"
"You don't have to continue, kid, it's fine-"
"No, no, no, no—she gets mad an' then pulls me with her and covers my mouth and then she pulls out a kni—" Hermes cuts himself off with a loud sob, and while he tries to continue, every word gets stopped by another cry.
Lizzie cradles their head in her hands and makes him look at her, "Baby- baby, please tell me, please- did she hurt you with that knife?" She says with urgency, heart dropping. Please tell her—his eyes fill with tears and he honest-to-god nearly screams. It tells her everything she needs to know and she—
She stills, automatically pulling him close and letting him cry into her chest.
Her mind runs through the lot of women at Joel and Sausage's party. She memorised the guest list Sausage sent her when she was being invited and it stops on one woman in particular. One who couldn't turn away from Hermes, always eyeballing them from the other side of the room or right goddamn in front of her. She asked the usual questions people asked about him—how old was he, if he's in school yet, that he looked adorable—but with a weird tone.
Her claws recede from her paw.
Lizzie's gonna kill that woman.
They sit there together for a moment, her staring off into the trees, murder in her eyes and a cover-up plan already brewing in her head, when she hears Hermes snore softly in her arms. Pulling away for a moment (and slightly grimacing at the wet spots on her shirt), she can see—yep, they're completely clocked out.
She brushes his hair away from his face before she stops midway. There's a cut above his eyebrow.
That woman is dead.