Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

kai drew, age 15, has always lived like this.

she’s always been here, half-floating in the black and white.

theres nothing special about it, anymore. the sniggles are repetitive and her papas only know so much.

they only have so much.

and for now, she thinks, thats okay.

for now, she’s safe. she’s safe, tucked away in her little corner of the black, curled in her papas arms.

..and tentacles. but thats unimportant, isn’t it?

she’s getting bigger, now. her papas want her to start exploring. theres another part to the black and white she’s never seen before, theres a new attraction at watcherworld for her.

i still get a little scared of something new,

but they still have the same amount of time for her. they don’t suddenly get more now that shes older. now that shes exploring, more.

the ride is cool, its not the best one papa’d ever made, but it was good enough. the new part of the black and white is fine. nothing special, really. its.. well, its black. sure, its cool to look for things, but when theres nothing to be found, the thrill of the hunt fades.

and fade it did.

she lost interest quick. there wasn’t anything cool in the black and white anymore. no new sniggles to meet, no new areas to search.

it aches. it aches, not knowing what to do. not having anything new to do. the sniggles just listened when she told them what to do, when she told them how to do something, they do it perfectly.

theres no challenge. gods, theres no challenge. theres never been any challenge in anything she’s ever done. which is nice, sure, shes great at anything she does, but it kinda sucks, too.

she doesn’t have anything to do anymore.

she just has her papas to bother. and they may love her, but she gets annoying. even she knows that. but thats okay.

she can resign herself to being annoying. if it gives her something to do, it’s good enough for her.

but i feel a little safer when i’m with you.

but.. she hasn’t explored everywhere. papa blinky’s got a room shes not allowed in.

..its huge. the ceiling is higher than she could even comprehend, and the walls are lines with flashing screens for as far as she can see. they flash with things that look like her. they don’t look like sniggles, or like any of her papas. they have skin, like her, in varying shades of brown and peach and tan. they have hair, like her, in colors she’d never seen in her own. orange and light yellow and deep brown.

..they’re human.

they’re like her.

kai bites her lip, closes the door, and forces herself to walk away. to find one of her papas. they don’t need to know where she’s been.

it feels a little better, knowing that they don’t know.

Chapter Text

it wasn’t that she didn’t love them. it would never be that she didn’t love them. or even, that she didn’t like them. 

but theres a divide, between what they are, and what she is. theres a gap, between them and her. a hole, that they’ll never fall down.

a her-shaped hole. one much too small for them to ever fit down.

so, she dropped. she screwed her eyes shut and fell down the hole.

and she ended up in hatchetfield.

i can run,

in hatchetfield, without her papas. alone.

its terrifying, for a few days. but nothing is too much for kai drew.

she orders anything caramel, extra, from a barista with a beautiful voice. a barista, who turns out to be much, much more important than just that.

she follows a man in a suit to a bunker, and follows the directions they both give her without issue. they remind her a lot of her papas. she can appreciate that.

she’s not going to be dragged back out of the hole she jumped down. they don’t get to take away her mom and dad, and drag her back to the place she’d left.

thats not their choice.

and she doesn’t let him. she doesn’t let him take her dad from her, and she certainly doesn’t let him touch her. if her papa wants to take her, he can do it himself. with no vessel.

but i can’t hide,

“..hey, kai?” she nearly jumps out of her skin.

“whats up?” she has to swallow down calling him dad.

“..you did a good job today. i’m proud of you.”

she nods slowly. “..thanks, paul.” no. no, no thats not right. she can’t go back on this, now. “thanks, dad. i appreciate that.”

paul doesn’t speak. she hears him sniffle, then his arm slides around her shoulders. emma, somewhere, is still asleep. she’s been exhausted, recently, as her leg heals. but they’re here. and her papa can’t touch them, now. he doesn’t get to. she left.

from my family line.

she has her mom and dad, now.

Chapter Text

kai stopped responding to him days ago. he figured none of his brothers were worried. she must be talking to them. they must have seen her, recently.

but the sniggles hadn’t. not his, not wigglys, not pokeys.

at a point, he figures he’s allowed to get worried for her.

at a point, he figures she’s hiding from them. that they made her angry. that this was a punishment, and the sniggles had been sworn to secrecy.

but sniggles can’t lie when demanded the truth. they can’t lie when the result is a slow, painful death.

and the sniggles don’t know where she is, either.

so he assumes she’s really angry. he’s not sure what happened, but their girl has always been a bit finicky. it comes with the territory of raising a human girl.

until he forces his way into her room, searching desperately for some sign of her. looking, desperately, at anything that could tell him where she is.

you’ve got the skills of an idiot,

theres nothing helpful.

well, nothing that makes him any more hopeful.

her room is nearly gone. posters nothing more than dust on the ground. her blankets, burnt. the room reeks of loss. of death.

she’s noticeably absent.

blinky doesn’t come in here very often. he doesn’t find a reason to. he knows that pokey quite likes it in here– so does nibbly. but he never did. he much preferred bringing her to him. taking her to watcherworld, or taking her to watch some sniggles do something funny.

but he knows its not supposed to look like this. its not supposed to feel like this. he shouldn’t feel sick just being here.

he keeps it to himself for three days. he keeps it to himself until hes sure she’s gone. until the floor starts to drop out from under him. until the ashes of her things are slipping away from him like water.

he’s not sure exactly what he says to them to get them to follow him. he’s not sure what he says to preempt what her room looks like. he’s not even sure what they say to him.

he’s not even sure if he said anything at all, or if they looked into his hundreds of eyes, looked at his feathers, and knew.

…pokotho doesn’t cry. none of his brothers cry. he doesn’t cry, as far as they know.

he’s quite used to crying, now. he finds himself tearing up whenever he looks, and cannot find. he’s cried onto this barely-there floor for hours at a time.

but pokotho? pokey doesn’t cry. his fiery, short-tempered big brother has never cried before. nothing had ever mattered enough to make pokey cry.

who got too much praise.

..theres a first for everything.

theres a first for tears. for all of them. theres a first for tinky keeping his mouth shut. theres a first for him not seeing something. not seeing something was wrong. not seeing that she was gone before it got this bad.

but they don’t need to hear about that. they don’t need to know that he didn’t see it.

they can believe, at least for now, that he was hopeful. that he wanted to protect them from this.

they don’t need to know that he’s the one who failed. he can keep that to himself, for now.

they’ll know when they can stomach talking about this. about her. when the wound has scarred over.

Chapter Text

humans are fragile. they’ve always been fragile. no human lives forever in the black. no human lives long at all, in the black. his girl was supposed to be an exception to that rule.

she wasn’t. she never would’ve been. nobody gets to be an exception to the rules of the black.

my baby..

it almost doesn’t feel real. for a moment, nothing feels quite real. he almost feels like he’s going dormant. like his eyes are closed and his worship lines left unattended. ignored. but neither are true.

only this is true. only the sounds of tears that had never existed– never would exist– hitting a ground only there for her comfort. he drags himself along the ground, tugging his brother towards him. his brother is silent save for the tears.

blinky goes willingly. he’s nearly limp as he’s pulled into a mound of fur. pokotho can only keep his mouth shut, and curl around his brother.

my baby.

his brother, who found her missing. his brother, who kept it to himself for days. sure, not days as she would perceive them, but days nonetheless. his brother, with his thousand eyes, having missed seeing something so crucial to him.

something thin and vaguely wet curls around them. his brothers are pressed against him, hooves and fingers and tentacles pressing against his fur and digging in like moles to dirt. he keeps his mouth shut.

she would’ve loved him to sing. she’d beg him for it, just for a minute, just to calm everyone down. the notes die in his head. without someone so flawed to hear, they’d never truly set. there is no perfection without flaw. not really.

you’re my baby..

someone is talking. he’s not sure who. it could be him, it could be a sniggle for all he knows.

he’d never cried before. she’d tried to explain it, once.

“its like.. you aren’t really sure what else to do. you’re just so upset, so angry or sad or somethin’, that you can’t really do much else. it makes it better.”

it’s not making anything better. in fact, it nearly makes it worse. this isn’t something he’s supposed to be able to do. this is something that should’ve been restricted to her. not them. humans cry. humans like her. not them. tears make it real.

but.. its not, is it?

if.. if they get out of the black. if they try to find her themselves. maybe she’s in some back corner of watcherworld, or hidden away in a theater. if they try to fix this themselves, then it won’t be real.

say it to me.

he doesn’t realize he’s speaking until a feather is shoved against his mouth, soaked through in an instant with blue. his brother is staring at him, eyes still wet. silent. he doesn’t need to speak. none of them do, really.

its foolish, to think she can be found. its human. its a want he should never have been able to feel. he’s attached. he always had been. being attached means being human.

..but she was human. could it really be so bad?

could something that brought such joy be so terrible..?

Chapter Text

he didn’t get attached to things. sure, he got possessive, but thats an entirely different feeling.

his brothers aren’t allowed to touch his toys, because they’re his. they’ll hurt them, or play with them wrong. and they’ll come back to him wrong.

but he has no qualms throwing away a defective toy. his anger turns to the destroyer, for seconds. theres no weight to what’s been done.

but theres weight behind her. theres weight behind this loss. he’s not going to drop this anger. he can’t. even if he tries, he can’t.

and theres no one to point it to. this can’t be her fault. but he’s not sure how it could be his, or any of his brothers, either. the sniggles are just as distraught as they are. theres no where for him to look, now.

when i am dead i won’t join their ranks,

blinkys out of the question, immediately. he’s been sluggish since before he even brought it up, and has been sluggish since. he barely speaks, he barely looks at them. watcherworld shuts down.

pokey, as well, is undeserving of his wrath. he’s been silent since. it makes his stomach twist to get nothing more than a nod, or a slow blink. silence has never been a word in pokey’s vocabulary.

nibbly could never deserve to be punished. his littlest brother is taking the hit the hardest, it seems. but he’s also taking it the angriest. he’s not sure he wants to get in the way of nibblys grief.

which leaves wiggly, as it often seems to. wiggly hasn’t spoken to them since they discovered she was gone. he hadn’t come out of hiding much, either.

..actually, he hadn’t seen wiggly much at all. he.. hadn’t been able to find his older brother in days. which.. probably meant he didn’t deserve to be fought with, either.

which really leaves nobody. nobody for him to be angry at but himself.

because somehow, this must be his fault. he must’ve been too mean with her, or too rough. he must’ve scared her.

..one of them must’ve scared her. with something they did. maybe not him– maybe not only him– but them. somehow, them.

‘cause they are both holy and free.

but if he hurts them, they’ll take eons to forgive him. they’re already suffering. they don’t need him to make it worse, now. they won’t find this fun.

so he stays quiet. he keeps his head down, and wallows in his feelings as quietly as he can. he keeps to himself, until one of them approaches him. until nibbly slinks up to him, and pushes a basket of grains and various grasses. the handle is covered in bite marks.

its a peace offering. nibbly must be feeling better, now. clearly he went out of his way to find the things he knew would be appreciated.

..as much as he’d like to say it doesn’t work, it does. the anger fizzles out in seconds.  

it gives way to grief.

to.. tears, as much as he loathes to admit it. it gives way to curling up in a field with his brother, letting him nudge food towards his jaws and force him to swallow it.

it helps, if only a little.

Chapter Text

human death didn’t faze him, anymore. there was no reason for it to. he’d been working the honey festival for years. longer than she’d ever understood.

..more than she ever got to understand.

she wasn’t dead. not.. realistically. there was no reason for her to have died now. the black didn’t work like that. it would’ve killed cross by now, if it did.

no, not dead. if she was dead, he would know. they all would.

…they would.

even if they thought she was dead, he knew better. he knew better than to accept blinkys word now. he knew better than to trust the emptiness of the black, the loss of the flooring made just for her.

am i going crazy?

nothing in the black is ever really trustworthy. he knew that. he’d lived his whole life knowing that.

..only one thing had ever been trustworthy.

and even that– even her– gone.

so nothing in the black is trustworthy.

and nothing but the black has ever been remotely safe. it had never been remotely deserving of his kindness.

and now, there was no reason to avoid re-entering the black looking presentable to his girl.

..his girl. his little girl, his little ball of energy. gone.

would i even know?

it only makes his teeth bare more, makes his mouth water a bit more around the moose in his maw.

if she’s gone, then everything else needs to be, too.

he doesn’t remember being so angry, before. he’d seen his brothers get angry, sure, but he’d never felt it. the primal urge to hurt. to kill and destroy. its a new feeling, for sure.

its not unwelcome. it feels good, to hurt something. the animals aren’t responsible for her being gone. he doesn’t care. they deserve it anyway, for not trying to look for her.

..everything deserved it, for not looking for her. the forest was quieter than he’d ever heard it before. he couldn’t find it in him to care, even if he tried.

he didn’t.

they didn’t deserve an ounce of his effort. clearly, they didn’t think she deserved to be found, so they didn’t deserve anything.

am i right back where i started fourteen years ago?

they really didn’t even deserve a death so kind as this. this is merciful, he reasons, for such a crime, this is nothing.

anything he could provide them is too merciful. he could never find a punishment suitable for this. there was no punishment terrible enough from this crime.

..he just wants his girl back. he just wants to sit with her, baking or cooking as she sings under her breath. something silly, about her day or something the sniggles did. he just wants her back, and safe in his arms.

she won’t be back. he’s nearly sure of it by the time he drags tinky out into the fresh air to eat.

thats okay. he can keep punishing the ungrateful things around him until he can find her

Chapter Text

she was gone. she had been, for weeks. for months. he wasn’t sure, either way. she could’ve been gone centuries, and he never would’ve noticed.

..suicide doesn’t exist for them. they can’t die. not that easily. there is no way, truly , for them to commit suicide.

soldier on achilles,

but he can get close. he can get so close, in fact, that his sniggles begin to die without his care. that his brothers lose contact with him. that he can’t move his limbs, anymore.

he can get so close that his near-human body begins to rot with him inside of it.

its not death. its too good for him, now. without her, anything is too good for him.

if he’d left her alone, to live and develop as a human child, they wouldn’t be here. they wouldn’t be grieving for a human child.

in a way, it means that its his fault. his fault, for losing her. his fault, for bringing her here in the first time. his fault, for not keeping an eye on her. his fault, for losing her.

fault isn’t often an issue for him. for any of them, really. anything can be swept under the rug when you have another million years to forgive. but can you really forgive the life cycle of a child, in such little time?

..when did he start considering that a short amount of time?

how long would he need, to forgive this? how long would his brothers need? how long would she have needed? how long are they supposed to need?

achilles come down,

he’s not sure. he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to forgive this. whether his brothers do or don’t, is their business.

blinky will continue to run watcherworld.

nibbly will continue with his honey festival.

pokey will keep the sniggles alive and singing.

tinky will continue to bother the spankoffski line until it dies out.

won’t you get up off,

but he’ll never need to continue another thing. not now, alone in the black. not now, when the black has already lost its human accessibility. not now, that he has nothing to live for. not really.

sure, his brothers. but they’re grown. they know what not to do, now, to keep the world stable. they know how to take care for themselves.

he has nothing left, now.

get up off the roof?

he was supposed to have her for years. and yet? when does he ever truly win?

not this time.

Chapter Text

kai, his kai– his baby girl, his little performer, gone.

thats what she wanted. she left them. on purpose.

she left them, for him. for her. for a plain, entirely uninteresting office worker and a mean barista.

a regular man, who doesn’t even like musicals. a man, who has no way to get her what she wants. a man, who despite being so close to death, despite having so little time, was still a coward about his feelings. a man, who despite being so close to death, was still fighting for her.

still fighting against him. against assimilation, against life. for her.

for the family that, a week ago, he didn’t have. for the family that paul matthews did not deserve.

what paul matthews did deserve? a slow, painful, embarrassing death.

what if i told you a story,

but his baby girl would never allow something that was hers to be injured. to be harmed. to be taken.

she learned that from her papas, of course. no better teacher for possession than the originators of it.

..shes angry at him. he can feel it, deep, somewhere in his soul. shes pissed. at him.

still, he has a show for her. whether she likes the words coming out of his puppets mouths or not. if he can’t put on any other show for her, he’ll give her this.

and she will like it.

she does not like it. in fact, she quite hates it.

he’s puppeting her dad. gods, why couldn’t have been her? she’s done this. she can fight it. dad can’t do that.

..he doesn’t even know whats going on. he’s probably scared.

that settles all the dust?

all she can do is claw her way into the theater, dragging too-long nails along flesh of long-gone friends, digging her teeth into anything she can reach to pull herself forward. she makes note of how quickly each chunk of flesh moves, how each one has to get around.

not-charlottes weak point is her intestines. if she were to dig her nails into not-charlottes abdomen, the woman would drop, even if its temporary.

not-teds weak point is his throat. he’s one of the loudest voices– ted was always loud, its a spankoffski gene– and if she can take that out, then not-ted is no longer a threat.

not-bill, too, is simple. a girl’s body follows close to him, with long brown braids and tear-stained cheeks. alice, her mind tells her. thats not-alice. the poor girl had been dead before she’d had even seen her. before they’d gotten to her. she wonders, briefly, what the girl would’ve been like in life.

it doesn’t matter. a not-cop is coming towards her, and she has her priorities straight.

get to paul, and get.. not-paul out of here.

get pokotho out of here.

he’s smiling at her. he’s smiling at her through ever vessel he has. theres something resigned, in the way he puppets her dad. something that tells her he knows the ending of his story.

she does, too. she always has.

she digs her teeth into another not-human– a lanky boy that looks a bit like ted, if ted were 16 and a nerd– and forces herself not to wince at the taste of slime. not blood. not anymore.

not-paul meets her eyes with a steadiness that only pokotho could have created. paul is too nervous, for that. she bares her teeth, and demands her legs to move.

he doesn’t flinch. in fact, he doesn’t move at all. she can’t make it to him. paul had genades, on him. around his chest. not-paul does too. pokotho has no qualms with killing his vessels.

..but he should has qualms killing her.

and so, she screams.

i’m still the man you trust.

not for paul, no. that will make him move quicker. no. she screams for her papa. she pitches her voice up, just enough, and forces tears.

he can’t hear what she really wants to say to him. he never will, she hopes. dad will, later. when they’re safe, and out of hatchetfield.

she screams and sobs for a father she no longer wants. he doesn’t know that. she doesn’t, either. he.. he is still her papa. that didn’t disappear when she left.

but taking her dad? taking all of his friends, too? hurting him?

unacceptable. absolutely unacceptable.

papa tinky had taught her, once, that other people don’t get to touch your toys. they don’t just get to take things away from you without a punishment.

this? this is pokothos punishment.

watching his daughter cry out for him, surrounded by things ordered to kill her. watching her cry out for help, for him to save her. watching her cry out in fear.

whether he knows its acting or not doesn’t bother her. a parents’ instinct doesn’t care if the child is really in danger or not.

and he falters. his puppets begin to drop, one by one, with loud spats. she can hear guns hit the ground, glasses shatter. he makes no move to hurt her as she climbs towards him. as she burrows herself into not-pauls arms, chanting papa, papa, papa. he doesn’t seem to register her tensing as he pulls not-pauls arms around her, pressing not-pauls face into her hair.

he doesn’t notice her dropping the act. digging her nails into not-pauls back with one hand, and slipping a grenade out of the holder with the other.

the blast will kill her, paul and emma. for good. emma’s probably barely conscious outside, now. she may not even notice the blast. she may not even have made it this long.

the blast wont hurt pokotho. he may not even feel it.

its inevitable,

but losing her? she can only hope it will.

but he won’t be able to come for her parents, now. he can’t come for dead people. not if she kills them.

and she will.

grenades are loud. kai knew grenades were loud. realistically, they had to be. and they had to hurt.

she underestimated how badly they hurt. how loud they were.

pokotho could never have heard her whispering i love you, dad. i’m sorry.

for us.

Chapter Text

he’s leaving. he’s going to leave her with kai, take the grenades, and destroy the meteor. it was like ted said, take out the head, take out the body. and thats what paul planned to do.

for once in her life, emma was speechless. he was leaving. he was going to sacrifice himself.

kai is silent, but trembling. emma bites her tongue around the pain in her leg, and yanks paul towards her by his tie. he stumbles, and ends up on his knees, bent in half, face in her neck. where he belongs, in emmas opinion.

she cards her hand into his hair, twisting her fingers into the deep brown strands. he hums against her shoulder, pressing a hand to the back of her neck and forcing her face into his neck, too.

say that they’re always

it does not make tears well up in her eyes. even if it did, nobody else would know.

he stays there until she pushes him away. towards the theater. away from what could’ve been something.

it doesn’t matter now, though. he presses their foreheads together, then runs.

and he’s gone. more gone than emma would really register, yet.

but it doesn’t matter. nothing matters, in a ghost town.

and thats all hatchetfield is. a ghost town, that used to have a rivalry with clivesdale.

kai curls up beside her, and begins to hum.

its quiet– not enough to draw something in like hidgens had done. but its there. its solid, and warm.

until its not, anymore. the sun begins to set with no sign of paul, and no blast. she can only force her eyes open, and pray he made it, she supposes. theres no real way for her to check.

gonna stay together.

but kai will. she wants to. she shouldn’t.

but she will. she’ll go off and drag paul back here if it kills her, emmas sure of it.

i love you, mom.

i love you too, kai. come back to me.

she doesn’t think that’ll do anything. somehow, it makes her more worried.

but she has to stay.

but ones

she’s already hurt,

if.. if that blue shit gets into her bloodstream..

who knows what it would do.

she doesn’t know,

and she doesn’t want to find out.

never going

rule number one of lab safety,

don’t use yourself as your test subject.

it winds up poorly, no matter what.

so she won’t. 

to let go

the two healthy people left 

will destroy the meteor

and they’ll come back for her,

and carry her to safety.

and she’ll make it out.

they all will.

of

paul,

and kai,

and maybe even pauls friends.

they’ll all make it out.

together.

that

safely.

in..

in some town

past clivesdale.

not clivesdale.

wire.

Chapter Text

paul never liked musicals. anything with that pop-y, animated sound grit on his brain like he was dragging his palms across concrete. its borderline painful, and incredibly annoying.

so, being trapped in a musical with animated, pop-style music is a double whammy.

it becomes a triple whammy when he discovers the hiveminds plan to kill emma. to take kai. it makes him all the more nauseous to think about like that.

his girls, with targets on their backs. the hivemind scolds him for thinking about them like– for thinking they’re his– but they are, and losing his autonomy won’t change that so easily.

even thinking like that gets him scolded. he’s not moving fast enough, his back won’t bend far enough, he’s too attached to them.

too attached to a family he doesn’t deserve, it tells him. a family he didn’t even have a week ago. how could he be so attached to a family he’s only known a few days?

but he is. he’s attached. he’s so goddamn attached to them.

..he’s at the front of the line. the other hive members are staring at him expectantly. his mouth moves for a command without his permission. he tells them to lift the meteor. they’re going to move it to a better location, and it’ll be turned into a throne.

a throne fit for a king.

take all the courage you have left,

it makes his gut flutter, a little. hes the king they’re talking about. its thrilling.

but the thrill is shattered when he realizes that they’re not all going to move the meteor. some of them are going to the door. they’re going to get emma and kai. they’re going to hurt emma and kai.

it forces him into action. he drags his nails against the imaginary blue walls around him. he forces himself to scream. he pulls at his clothes and digs at his skin until the thing in his head loosens his leash.

he drops to his knees, ignoring the jolt of pain it sends through him, and begins clawing at his mouth. it won’t let him vomit. it’s not that kind.

give up, it tells him. you can’t save them, and you certainly can’t save yourself anymore.  

but he can. he can save himself, and he can save them too. he has to. he’s.. he’s a father. he’s her dad, now. she told him so. he can’t just.. not try to save his daughter.

she’s not your daughter, the thing tells him. its voice is harsh in his mind. she will never be your daughter. you’ll never know her.

but he will. if he can make it to her, and get her and emma out of here, he will know her. he’ll know her favorite color, and how she takes her coffee and the exact amount of cheese she likes in her grilled cheese. he’ll know her favorite fruit, and how she falls asleep best.

you won’t. you’ll die. i will kill you. you don’t get to escape me, this time. i won’t let you. 

and waste it on fixing all the problems

but it doesn’t let paul do anything. it doesn’t allow him or disallow him to do jack shit. paul, even here in this terrible place, has his free will.

no, you don’t. you don’t have anything anymore, paul matthews. you don’t have anything, or anyone. you’re alone without me, paul. let me help you.

you won’t help me do shit. he’s not sure if he’s speaking aloud or not. he thinks he might be. you’re going to hurt them.

no, paul, i’m not. i’m going to save them. emma will die if you don’t help her soon. i can do that. they’ll be safe, with you. forever. 

but that isn’t true, is it? they’re not safe if they have to live like this. trapped in their mind, where they’ll rot away without control of their body. thats alive, maybe, but its not safe.

kai is here. she’s here dragging herself towards him, biting and kicking and clawing at the rest of his hive on her way.

the rest of the hive. not his.

then she starts screaming. not for him. never for him.

shes screaming for the thing inside his head.

for a moment, he has to wonder if she ever meant calling him dad.

that you made in your own head

then, he notices the tears on her cheeks. he notices how tense her shoulders are, and how tightly drawn her eyebrows are. she’s not moving towards them frantically. shes moving towards them for a reason. she’s moving towards him. not the thing in his head.

he forces that thought directly out of his mind, and lets the thing take the wheel.

it wraps his arms around her, tugging her into his arms like it had done so millions of times before. carding his hand into her hair, scratching over her scalp and using his voice to tell her its okay. that its there now. that she’s safe.

paul has to strain to hear her call him dad before the blast.

Chapter Text

the first thing emma thinks is kai. she’s not sure where she is- hell, shes not sure when she is, either- but it doesn’t matter. somewhere, there’s kai, and that somewhere isn’t in her line of sight. its.. terrifying.

she’s not sure when she started worrying about kai like that. 

but, she is. she’s not sure anyone else had scared her quite like this. jane worried her, sometimes, and tim does now in her place. but worry is different than fear. what she feels for kai is fear.

so i’ll use my voice,

what she feels for kai is care. love, even. they hadn’t known each other long. she’s not sure it even could be called love, at this point. she loved jane. she loves tim, and tom if she’s pressed for it. could she really love kai by now? 

she might be screaming. it hurts, to move. it hurts to scream. she thinks she’s doing it anyway. she needs kai- she needs to know kai is alive. that shes safe. that.. that she came back with paul, and they’re together, healing. safe. alive.

alive.

i’ll be so fucking rude,

hands grab her from all angles. above, below, left, right, in her. there are hands everywhere. she thinks she may have screamed. fought, maybe. all she knows is that they’re touching her, and kai’s gone. kai’s dead and-

so’s paul. paul and kai are dead. she doesn’t remember the blast, but someone says something about it. she was hit by shrapnel, the voice-with-hands says loudly. 

she figures its fake, then decides that it probably doesn’t matter. 

words,

she’s already dead, whether truly or nearly.

the- the hivemind will get her. they’ll kill her.

change her.

..the hands-with-voices drugged her.

they always win,

she can feel whatever they gave her setting in. 

she can feel it in her bones.

they..

they drugged her.

they put her to sleep.

no better..

but i know i’ll always lose.

than the hive.

Chapter Text

this time, emma wakes slowly. this time, her first thought isn’t kai. it’s paul.

paul, who would’ve died first. who probably died worse. who might never have even had a chance to destroy the hivemind. the meteor.

take out the head, and the body dies with it. one of pauls coworkers said something like that. in her professors house. before everything went to total shit.

i love you,

then its kai. kai, who’s bent over the side of emmas hospital bed, snoring quietly. briefly, emma wonders if she’s died and gone to heaven.

then she figures thats the drugs in her system. she can feel the iv in her hand.

kai shifts towards her with a tiny grunt, then settles fully against the bed. the room is sterile looking and achingly empty.

when you’re singing that song, and,

she reaches her non-iv’d hand toward kai, and settles it in kais hair. it’s messily pulled back by a headband and a thin, plastic-looking hair tie. it’s barely hanging on around the mass of teal. she’s never figured kai would be the type to pull her hair back. must have been the medical staff, if there are any.

sleep comes easily. easier than it had in months.

..maybe its the meds.

paul comes to for the sixth time to kai’s voice, talking loudly to.. a boy? he can’t make out the other shape. his vision swims violently enough to make him mildly sick.

he must make a sound, because both kids are at his sides in seconds, saying his name in various levels of volume and panic. he can’t even see kai’s face clearly. something must be wrong with his eyes.

i’ve got a lump in my throat, ‘cause,

the boy, he’s never seen before. he’s much- much taller than kai, and much broader. he thinks the boy might be her age. he hopes so. if nothing else, she deserves a friend.

kai drops her head onto his chest with what he thinks might be a sob. if he could’ve moved faster to hold her, he would’ve. as it stands, he can only barely get his arms around her.

the boy chuckles, and runs his hands through kais hair. paul can’t make out his face, either. he doesn’t have much time to question what exactly the explosion did to him before he’s falling into darkness.

you’re gonna sing the words wrong.

it’s quiet. music-less and calm. it’s good sleep.

Chapter Text

its christmas.

kai hasn’t really.. celebrated christmas before. her papas used to take her to watcherworld, or out on a walk, and give her extra things, but she never really.. called it christmas.

paul and emma both grew up with christmas. this is normal for them. they have no idea how terrifying this is, for her.

and they won’t, if kai can help it.

but if she could, comfortably, she would tell them. she’d beg them to be gentle, to let her go slow through the holiday.

its true.

she doesn’t tell anyone. she doesn’t want to, doesn’t need to. she’ll just go with it.

even if it makes her very soul ache in a way she didn’t know was possible.

even if every turn down the streets of hatchetfield make her breath catch and her heart skip at the sight of green and blue and pink. 

but she doesn’t need to tell paul and emma. she won’t.

she doesn’t need to, because they’ll find out themselves. she’s not a fan of how observative paul and emma are. especially after the years in the hospital.

kai, they say, whats wrong? where are you going? you know you can talk to us.

she can’t.

look at the stars,

..she could’ve told her papas. her papas would’ve helped her. they would’ve slowed everything down for her in a heartbeat. paul and emma.. they can’t do that. theres no way for them to do that.

they’re human. her papas weren’t. aren’t. they still aren’t. they never were. paul and emma always have been.

but humans have a unique way of showing love. they have a wonderful way of picking up on when the other humans around them need help. need anything at all.

and paul and emma have always been painfully human.

“alright, kai, come on. spit it out.”

look how they shine for you,

spit it out? “whatd’ya mean?”

emma huffs, shaking her hands out. “somethings wrong. you’re more on edge now than you ever have been.” she glances at paul, then, “we want to help you, kid.”

kai blinks slowly. “..i’ve never celebrated christmas before.”

pauls jaw drops. “never?” she shakes her head.

“nope. its a little overwhelming.”

understatement. she’s more overstimulated than she ever has been before. and honestly, it doesn’t help to see her papas dolls online.

emmas face softens. “i didn’t think about that. should we.. slow down for a couple days? would that.. help?”

god, would it. her papas would’ve slowed it down for her. she nods past the tightness in her throat. emma smiles at her, and guides her into the living room.

and all the things that you do.

into their living room. paul puts on a movie, and pulls another one of his hundreds of crochet projects. his hands still shake as they move through the motions, as they run along the yarn. but they’re steadier, now. they're not nearly as shaky as teds are, anymore.

emma wraps her arm around kais shoulders, and the weight nearly makes her forget about her papas.

nearly.

Chapter Text

she doesn’t know the boy in the bed across from her. she’s here to keep the act up, after all, she has time to study him. 

his file name is max jägerman. he’s sixteen, born july 17th. he’s a tank of a guy, broad enough to nearly slip off the sides of the bed. he’s the hatchetfield high quarterback. that one she overheard from a nurse.

it was said cruelly, and followed by if it wasn’t my goddamn job, i might let the kid die.

..a chemist, kai guessed. paul- mom and dad don’t like the chemists. town rivalries. she wouldn’t have let them kill the boy.

i want a key to your house,

she’s watched too much death. too much harm. he’ll make a full recovery, she thinks. loss of muscle mass, maybe, but not much worse. he ingested it

..he’s not charlotte. he's not ted. he isn’t paul. he wont have to get food from a tube forever, he wont have to relearn everything he knows, he..

he’s not paul. he didn’t have to get stitched back together like a torn-

i wanna pick up your clothes,

a ripped up plushie. he wasn’t near the blast. not as close as paul was.

she’s still not allowed to see paul.

but this boy- max, she tells herself- he’s safe. he’s going to be okay. weak, of course, as everyone will be, but okay. 

theres something in knowing somebody will be okay. somebody in this godforsaken town will survive. even if charlotte or ted or bill or alice or that nerdy mini-ted dies, someone will live besides her.

i wanna clean up your mess,

thats a comfort, at least. watching max’s heart monitor beep away is a comfort, of sorts.

she reads to him. speaks to him like he can hear her. talks about what she wants to do with paul, with emma, in hatchetfield. what she thinks she’d drag him along to do, forcing him into friendship.

and max wakes up. he blinks for a while, unmoving, before looking at her and smiling. 

i wanna know where you hide your things,

hey, kai. he’d said, like he’d been with her the whole time. and, in a way, he had. he admitted to hearing her talk, wishing he could talk back.

the next week is wonderful. max slowly sits up, she learns about him. his mother died six years ago, his father..

wanna be in your pictures,

unsaveable.

his favorite color is dark green. his favorite food is kraft mac and cheese (spiral only). his favorite music genre is folk. he’s scared to get older.

hes perfect for her in every conceivable way. they click, in ways shes never clicked with anyone. somehow, they know they’re meant to be here. meant to be together. to move into the worst months of their lives together, hand in hand.

the closest friend she’ll ever have.

the closest he ever gets, too.

wanna share your address.

they’re perfect.

safe.

alive.

Chapter Text

hannah foster, age 14. a little thing, with too-white eyes and a more than odd demeanor. 

hannah foster, the only little girl in hatchetfield who has any idea what goes on behind the curtain of the world. the only little girl in hatchetfield that could look at kai and see her.

the only girl in hatchetfield who is truly scared of kai drew.

grace doesn’t fear kai. she dislikes her, sure, but its never been fear. even max’s friends have never feared her. nobody feared her.

her eyes look sharp and steady

hannah does. hannah dashes away when they make eye contact, flinches when kai runs towards her. 

kai almost wishes she could be angry about this. that she could hate the girl, and cast her aside emotionally.

but kai has never been able to do that. she smiles hesitantly and lets her disappointment flood her face as hannah runs yet again. tom is.. somewhere. toyzone, maybe. she doesn't know. doesn’t care, really. toms not important.

what is important is not hannah, and not tom. what’s really important is that something is wrong. someone is dead- really dead- and more people will die if she doesn't do something.

into the empty parts of me,

so she does something. she follows hannah and the red haired woman (becky. she’s a nurse, kai thinks) as they get taken by men, and keeps quietly hidden while linda monroe talks.

she stays in her spot as more people arrive. as things get bloody. she can’t move. she physically can’t move.

she fiddles absently with the thin gold ring on her finger. she’s not scared. but she can’t make her feet move, even as people start to drop. their blood isn’t red enough. their eyes are wrong.

she can hear them breathing. over the sounds of the fighting, she can still hear every breath they all take. some are wet, some soft, some uneven and ragged. she shouldn’t be able to hear them right now.

she doesn’t remember when she could start walking. or why she even did start walking. but somehow, she’s pressed against tom, who before right now hadn’t  even acknowledged her, watching becky barnes shoot somebody.

but still my heart is empty.

another body on the floor. this one isn’t breathing.

of course she isn’t, kai. she got shot in the head.

somethings happening. something… familiar. dark.

loud. mean.

green.

and then everything goes black. hannah foster has her hand wrapped around kai as they fall.

Chapter Text

kai blinks at the lights in the mall. hannah foster is standing in front of her, tears streaming down her face. ethan green is standing a few feet away, gesturing wildly in confusion.

“that wasn’t supposed to happen,” hannah whisper-shouts. kai shakes her head frantically. “we should’ve died.” kai nods just as frantically.

ethan jogs over, brows furrowed. “hannah! wh- you know this kid?” kai rolls her eyes, but doesn’t bother to correct him. he limps as he moves. hannah nods, and wipes her face.

all the words i've swallowed,

“kai.” she says nothing further. ethan shrugs.

“she can come with us, we’re gonna.. i dunno. do somethin’ so lex trusts me with ya again.”

hannah keeps her hand on kai as they walk. ethan takes them to the cineplex, where hannah freaks out, and drags kai away. ethan doesn’t seem to notice.

“we’re gonna die,” hannah tells her flatly. hannah, at eleven years old, somehow knows they’re supposed to die. kai nods helplessly.

“we should stop that,” she croaks. paul and emma are still at toms house. tom and tim wouldn’t die together, at this rate. hannah nods fiercely.

all the sharp things i've kept in my mouth,

they walk shoulder to shoulder away from the cineplex. if theres anything i learned , hannah tells her, movies are bad. kai figured that must be trustworthy, and didn’t question it. movies are bad. why, she didn’t know. it didn’t matter. linda’s going to get a doll off of becky, who will get it off of ethan this time around. and when she got it, hannah would be ready to fix everything.

or so she says. kai is there as she shouts at people. kai is there as she crying for lex and ethan to come back her up. when lex and ethan don’t move. she’s at hannahs side when lex and ethan aren’t, holding up one of her crutches to pull more eyes to them. she’s at hannahs side when she gets her hands on a doll and a lighter, and lights the mall on fire before it’s even been a half hour. the malls been open for 28 minutes and 13 seconds. 

i am always burning up.

and she’s at hannahs side as they watch the mall burn. she’s not sure why they got to do this. why they got to try again. why they were allowed to succeed.

she figures it doesn’t matter. if they didn’t succeed, they did better. that has to count for something, right?

Chapter Text

she’d always… known about the girl. she’d seen her, in passing. 

but something about watching her make contact with hannah- with lex-

it’s a different kind of knowing. it’s stronger. harder to deny.

her brothers– her cruel, crass, overly aggressive brothers– really adopted a child. the child, at that. little brown haired kai dean, taken from her family- her life- and put into the black. into darkness that she would never have understood in her life, and never can understand in the life they’ve forced her into.

do you wanna see a magic trick?

hannah doesn’t like her much. she supposes it’s normal, for them to dislike each other, to be afraid of one another. they have every reason to be.

bright and dull, loud and calm, green and grey, black and white. kai will forever hold the prints of her fathers, just the same as hannah will always hold hers. 

kai is a bright girl, she can admit that. both in intelligence and spirit, she lights up the room as she speaks.

‘cause you don’t know

but she lights it up in color, and it hurts, a little. had she been faster, meaner, even, kai would’ve grown up knowing unconditional trust. unconditional love. she doesn’t remember a time she didn’t love hannah, a time she didn’t trust lex.

the way her brother stares down at kai- at his daughter- for the second time tells her that he doesn’t trust her, whether he loves her or not.

linda monroes eyes are bright. brighter than they should be. they’re green. they should be hazel.

what you don’t know,

wiggly looks down on the- the cult he’s built with pride in his very soul. pride for the things he’s done, not for her. it’s cruel. crueler than she thought he could be, after kai. she can’t tell if he’s angry she’s here, or sad. if he’s grateful for the reset, or upset by it. she has to wonder if she cares, as she watches her girl burn the mall. she’s not sure it matters. her brother meets her eye, and she smiles mildly.

you know, we could’ve avoided your loss had you not even tried.

he seems unimpressed by her wit.

we could’ve avoided this if you hadn’t picked that stupid little girl, he tells her.

i’d like to think hannahs quite smart. isn’t your kai down there as well?

but i know.

he doesn’t respond verbally. no, he lashes a tentacle into her webs, and slips away to leave her in the destruction. of them, of their girls, of the world, of the black.

she’s not sure what to do aside from start to fix things.

Chapter Text

knowing she’ll be there and seeing her there are very different feelings.

knowing she’ll be there tells him to avoid her. it tells him that linda is not allowed to touch her. knowing she’s there is enough to bring them to a better plan, a smoother plan.

seeing her there is like.. she would call it a shot to the heart- a hit to the weakest part of herself. he thinks that must be the best way to describe it.

not every sunday is a picnic

she fails the first time. she’s scared. she doesn’t know what’s going on. he makes silent contact with his sister, and agrees to a do-over. if kai dies, everything he’s done til now has been pointless. so she wont, and for that, neither will hannah foster.

the second time, somehow, hurts more. they don’t know it’s his fault– not really. hannah knows it’s one of them, kai knows it’s something larger than her, but they don’t know his name. kai doesn’t know the dolls are anything more than coincidentally similar to him.

or, maybe she does. maybe she’s noticed, and it’s making her hate him more than she must have already. 

but either way, he has a job to do, a child to cast aside, and a prophet to guide. linda doesn’t know what she’s doing, and wiley barely knows she exists at this point.

he needs to ignore kai. ignore hannah foster, their plan, their faces, their souls. he just has to push past their existence and their role in today and finish his work.

finish the day. get into the town. win.

he doesn’t win. neither child seems to know it for sure, but he does. he feels it before it happens. he can feel his grip on the dolls, on linda, on victory , slip away by the second.

he watches them leave the mall, pressed shoulder to shoulder and arm-in-arm. they don't know they’ve won. 

‘cause the sky ain’t always blue.

they don’t know that their one little change catapulted into two less nukes being dropped on the world, and millions less people dead.

kai and hannah are smart, but they aren’t smart enough to understand the impact they’ve just made. no humans ever could, really. stupid creatures.

Chapter Text

the girl doesn’t look like anything special when she walks in. her hair is a bright blue-ish teal that makes his heart jump, but her clothes are loose and pastel colors, and her arms are covered in bracelets and stickers. she has crutches in her hands, leaning most of her weight on them whenever she stops walking. 

but alice woodward calls to her by kai, and it’s hard to ignore when she answers immediately.

it’s hard to ignore when kai drew looks his eyes in- well, in the eye- and nothing but recognition crosses her soul. he can feel her remembering this place. he can feel the memories flooding through her as she walks around.

she’s six years old, papa blinky by her side, walking with her as she bounces from ride to ride, attraction to attraction. papa laughs as she bounds ahead, grinning and laughing to herself absently. 

she’s eleven, now. papa tinky took her this time, and took her on the big rollercoaster. he held her the whole time, and she never noticed how bad he was shaking. she never would’ve. she remembers it now, but she hadn’t noticed. she was too small to ride that ride. she still is.

shes fourteen, its seven months before she leaves. they made their day at watcherworld a party. they didn’t know she’d be leaving. none of them ever could’ve. even tinky hadn’t. it hadn’t been a possibility. 

she’s fifteen. she’s gone. her room is falling apart, her clothes have disintegrated, and tinky is walking around in a form he hadn’t used in millenia. wiggly is missing. everything is wrong. everything is bad. she’s gone.

he remembers that day. it makes his heart ache. 

she walks out before he can even begin to try to target her anymore than the park already does.

Chapter Text

kai, technically, isn’t allowed to leave the black. it’s been a rule since.. well, forever. she doesn’t remember a time when she was. not alone, anyway.

but she’s out of the black now. alone. mama nibbly was on his yearly outside walks, had been for a few hours now, but none of her papas were anywhere she could find them.

so the only logical thing to do is walk away, and find papa nibbly. it might not be the brightest idea shes ever had, but she can’t think of anything better to do.

the walk through the human town isn’t very exciting at first. a bit too bright, a bit too dark, a bit too loud, a bit to quiet. nothing she does makes it comfortable, but nothing she does makes it scary, either.

is this the place we used to love?

then she sees it. well, hears it, first, and follows the noise to a heavily crowded street with music and games, bathed in pink and red and honey-yellow lights. people grin at her and help push her through the crowd, talking animatedly about how they’d never seen her before , and this must be your first honey festival!

she doesn’t know what that means, and she figures she doesn’t want to. theres a woman onstage, taking pictures with people and writing on things they bring her. she’s dressed pretty- a sparkly green dress and bright pink cheeks that look- they look fake. she looks fake.

she looks beautiful. a man smiles down at her, a young boy in his arms and a woman pressed to his sides. she smiles back at the man, and focuses her attention back on the woman on stage.

she’s taken away just five minutes later, to the awe and cheers of the audience. kai bites her lip, and follows the crowd as they tail the car.

until it goes into the woods, and the group disperses.

why would the car go into the woods? papa tinky always told her to be careful in the woods. they weren’t nice to creatures like her. that woman was a creature like her. the woods wouldn’t be nice to that woman.

is this the place i’ve been dreaming of?

so of course she broke her papas second biggest rule and followed the woman into the forest.

into the forest, further into the dark, where pigs squeal and humans laugh.

where a- woman? she thinks its a woman, anyway- looks around, grins, and races off into the trees. kai slams herself onto the ground, and covers her mouth with her hand.

she needs to leave here and get home before her mama. 

now.

Chapter Text

kai might be his favorite person in the world, if hes honest with himself. the way she bounces around despite the damage across her body, despite the way her bones ache at the end of the day, it warms his heart in a way nobody ever has. she’s incredible. she’s his, in a way.

she introduced him to the concept of aromanticism a few weeks ago. where you don't feel romantic love, or attraction. he nodded along, and ordered a string bracelet from etsy that night. she (gently) tackled him the first day he wore it, grinning. he didn’t tell her it was his favorite way to see her. grinning.

and i know how it was because,

he introduced her to jason and kyle before their senior year started. she curtseyed exaggeratedly and kyle dropped to one knee to greet her like a knight greeting a princess. max had made eye contact with jason over their heads, both grinning. its another one of his favorite memories. he doesn’t remember much before they were a group. 

they discovered a love for flash horror games together. neither one of them were very good with them, but together, somehow, their fear cancelled out. they sat and played for hours, digging for games that survived the death of flash only to run their gameplay dry the same night.

her birthday. they’d just had her party a week ago. the big, family one. mr. houston had hosted it. him, jason and kyle were the only kids their age to be invited. she turned 21.

he was like me,

its weird, for a second, to remember they’re not kids anymore. he doesn’t remember either of their eighteenth birthdays, covered by hospital gowns and surgical scars. none of their class remembers turning eighteen. some of them never got to. she’s 21. they met at fifteen. it’s been six years. they were fifteen, when the world almost ended.

a man,

he doesn’t remember it. she calls everybody not- them when she talks about that time. not-paul. not-emma. not-max. they never met, when he was like that. not-max is hypothetical to her. he knows not-max existed. he can still feel the remnants of the thing inside of him, just the same as steph and alice. they were so gone- so heavily infected- that thing will never be gone. not really. paul says he feels it too, sometimes. stronger. he has an urge to sing sometimes. max thinks he should be grateful he’s not paul. grateful he’s not emma, with a missing leg. not kai, with.. everything, really. not alice, who can’t speak. not miss charlotte, on a feeding tube for the rest of her life.

he thinks he should be grateful this is the life he got to live, after that day. he’s really not all that harmed- a little weaker than he used to be, sure, but everybody is. even if they weren’t in the thick of it, the detox meds wreck havoc on your system.

in love with a woman.

he doesn’t remember much before kai. he doesn’t remember much but kai.

the last thing he thinks of is kai. bright teal hair and the widest grin he’s ever seen. that’s his favorite way to think of her.

grinning.

Chapter Text

kai has no real reason to be scared. she is anyway.

max- her max- the boy she roomed with in the hospital, the boy she helped relearn to walk-  is a ghost coming back to fucking kill them. to kill the nerdy prudes that got him there in the first place. its weird, seeing him angry at her. he hadn’t been in so long.

he wouldn’t hurt her. not the max she knew, anyway. that max would never have hurt her.

but that max is dead. he’s buried under the waylon place, where his body has rotted for weeks.

..she’s always been fascinated by human remains. the blood still dripping from.. not-max is no different.

god, it hurts to think of someone like that again.

not- max. its not. she knows it. but the last time she had to think of someone like that, it landed hundreds of people in the hospital for years to properly recover.

..but society moved on. the world forgot about the hatchetfield apocalypse, and hatchetfield learned to live with the consequences of it. and whatever the consequences of this are, hatchetfield will learn to live with those, too. whatever happens tonight, they’ll make it through.

she will. the town will. maybe she’ll be able to get max through it, too.

but for now, she’s sitting, still chanting, feeling all too familiar feathers and tentacles and hooves. theres something wet on her back. she ignores it.

she ignores it, until they go silent, and the ritual finishes.

until she sees them.

seeing her in front of him is odd. 

well, not odd. heartbreaking, perhaps. he’s not exactly sure he even remembers how to breathe anymore- he forgets for a moment he even has to. 

her hair is just as bright and wild as it was when she left, if not a little more blue than before. there are clips in her bangs and stickers littering her arms and face. there are bracelets on her wrists with charms that jingle as she speaks. as she whips around, panicked, and looks them in the eyes.

he doesn’t hear any of his brothers do anything. he’s not sure they’re even there. kai’s body shakes as she moves, as she stands. she’s covered head to toe in scars and braces and burn marks, and he know, somehow, that every single one is there because he failed.

he failed to bring her home that day. he failed to kill him, and destroy the town, and save her from them. save her from the fate they’d tried so hard to keep her away from entirely. 

but he didn’t. he didn’t save her, didn’t keep her away from the town, didn’t keep her safe. didn’t get to keep her wrapped in his hold until she was ready. until she could be safe, be good . until she could come home to them after her.. adventure.

she wasn’t ready, and she didn’t come home.

he remembers the first day he brought her home. she was so small. so strong, for a human baby.

she rarely cried, as a baby. he has to wonder if its something to do with what her life should’ve been. what it was originally. if somehow, her soul remembers what she should be feeling, what she was going to be. if her soul was grateful to feel love, instead.

she rarely cried as a child, either. maybe if they went too far, too long away from her, but only barely.

she’s not crying now. of course she isn’t. she has people to protect, just as he does. the girl in front of him isn’t his daughter. not anymore. he can’t think of her like that and keep this up. he can’t look at her and think of his baby and be able to make this deal.

so he doesn’t. kai drew is half standing, half leaning in front of him, as nothing but a hatchetfield teen with an open hand for him to place a coin into. heads, and she wins. tails.. not so much.

he begins to speak.

as upsetting as it is to see her again, he can’t find it in him to show it. he can’t look at her and feel a fraction of the grief his brothers do.

he knows he could’ve gotten her back from those people. he remembers her stepping into watcherworld with bill and alice woodward, and he hadn’t tried to keep her there. he could’ve.

he could’ve known it was her, known to attack her harder, to pull her to him and back into the black. he could’ve kept her away from seeing such terrible things, away from losing anybody.

but he didn’t. he’d stared in shock the whole time she was in watcherworld, and hadn’t done anything to keep her safe.

really, that makes all of this his fault, doesn’t it?

maybe it doesn’t matter. she might not even know he’d seen her.

he focuses his energy onto his brothers, and tugs a barely-human tinky away from the eyes of the children. if they want to make a deal, they’ll have to look away from him for a while.

and thats all they are for kai now. deal makers.

he could’ve done something to stop this. he was the reason she’d known how to leave the black. he was the reason things turned out like this.

somewhere along the line, he could’ve spoken out and none of this would’ve happened. they would’ve patched whatever hole they’d left open for her to find, and she never would’ve been able to get away. she would’ve stayed with them, safe.

he barely even thinks as he looks at her. theres nothing he can think. he finds his mind going blank, and his heart stopping as his brother begins to make his demands. he can’t even hear what they’re saying.

not over the wave of guilt playing in his head, anyway.

its like a bullet to the heart. none of his brothers seem to notice it. not like he does. his baby girl, standing– well, maybe thats generous. she barely seems stable with the crutches in her grasp, and even with them, she clings to the other humans around her. they keep her upright, where she cannot.

she’s covered in scars. he can see through her sweater, straight to her skin. marred with marks he knows she didn’t have before. her arms look like they’d been mauled, her torso, near burnt.

it hits him, then, that pokotho looks guilty. more guilty than he’d seen his brother in millenia. he bites his tongue around the frustrated scream that builds in his chest.

and despite his better judgement, he looks.

and he sees.

he sees the past six years, riddled with pain from an explosion that she may have set off, but did not cause. from an explosion that nearly killed her, if not for the gift in her blood. 

it makes him irrationally angry. if he could, he would turn the anger upon his brothers.

but they have a deal to make, don’t they?

..no, they don’t. they’re arguing. his brothers are shouting at their daughter. and he can’t bring himself to move.

theres a spankoffski in front of him, even, and he can’t move. he can’t manage a smart remark, or a small flourish to make them scared of him.

..he’s crying, he thinks. he’s done a lot of that, in the last decade. more than he ever had before. it’s such a human thing to do.

arms-  human arms- wrap around him from the side, and he barely manages to catch himself on the weak-ass legs he’s been so graciously gifted by the children in front of him. 

only kai can see them. wiggly talks, shouts, really, as blinky pulls him away and forces his eyes elsewhere. he zones out to the sounds of his brothers voices, and pretends everything is normal.

she feels him looking before she properly registers they’re all there. before wiggly ever starts talking. he talks for fifteen minutes before anyone else pipes up. steph makes their demands, and the room goes silent.

and what will we get in return?

pete whimpers.

grace gasps.

steph falls silent.

and kai?

she runs, and she doesn’t look back. familiar, isn’t it?

~

“i can’t keep watching y’all do this.”

all of her parents turn to her. emma’s eyes barely manage to focus on her. kai huffs. “you’re gonna kill someone with this. enough of this town has died because of you guys.” one of her papas flinches. paul tilts his head at her. “we’re going to custody court.”

emma laughs quietly, nods, and drops onto the couch. “i like the way you think, kiddo. can we do it tomorrow? or three days from now? so i can nap.” kai giggles quietly and crawls onto the couch next to her.

“sure, mom. we can wait. but if there are any fights,” she settles her gaze onto wiggly, “the instigator gets no custody.”

gary goldstein, hatchetfields richest lawyer (despite being one of seventeen), has never had a case like this.

kai drew, age 21, is asking for his help dividing her custody between seven people. 

seven?

he reluctantly settles on a split between emma perkins and paul matthews, and the other five, who seem to not have their own address. he shakes off the mild concern, and hands ms. drew the papers. 

“they’ll have even access to parental rights, and even access to visitation when needed. custodial rights are up to you, seeing as you’re over the age of eighteen, but i would split it 55/45 in ms. perkins’ and mr. matthews’ favor.”

kai nods firmly, pays, shakes his hand, and leaves. easiest 4k he’s ever made.

but what goes from here?

that’s not up to me. or kai, anymore. that’s for you to decide.

or- maybe it’s gary’s choice. we’ll go with that.