Original - “Someone Is Going To Die For This”
Title: Someone Is Going To Die For This
Prompt: A lot, from pulped_fictions
Wordcount: 3000
Genre: Humor/Angst
Rating/Warnings: High T (violence, language)
Summary: Wynnie’s baby brother has been kidnapped, and it’s starting to look like by time she finds him, her foot is going to be sore from all the asses she’s going to have to kick.
Author’s Notes: This was a Mary Sue challenge, so I decided that my challenge to myself would be to give a character as many Mary Sue qualities as possible while trying to keep her from being a Mary Sue. XD Also, I hope the bizarre blend of humor and horrible flashbacks actually works. :P
This story starts with my absolute favorite way to start things: kicking in a door. I didn’t actually need to, because it was unlocked, but I wanted to make an entrance, so you know what? Fuck that door.
“Where the fuck is my brother?” I bellowed as the room went quiet and an entire Solstice party’s worth of heads turned to stare at me. The host stepped forward, looking annoyed.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Where the fuck is my brother?”
Now, my name is not actually Where the fuck is my brother, nor is that the only thing I know how to say, but I was pissed, because how dare this asshole throw a party when a nine-year-old kid had disappeared from his house the night before? Had disappeared from his son’s Solstice party, which come to think of it, holy shit, how many parties did these people throw?
The man curled his lip, looking like he was gearing up to tell me he didn’t care and kick me out, so I decided I was done waiting for an answer and whistled for Hell.
Hell, short for Hellspawn, is proof that sometimes, good deeds are rewarded. I found him out in the snow when I was eight, a starved, shivering little gray puppy with stubby ears and a funny-shaped nose, and I sure as hell didn’t want to take care of him. It’s just that he looked so goddamn pathetic, and I hate things that whimper. Especially animals - they have this way of getting inside my head that is really goddamn annoying. I had to take him home just to make him shut up. I found him some food and a blanket, and I named him Hellspawn because I decided that something about him needed to be intimidating.
Then he grew up, and it turned out he wasn’t a dog, he was a fucking wolf.
Accordingly, when Hell walked into the party, people started screaming and clearing the fuck out, and the host finally decided to give me some answers. Not that I wasn’t bluffing - I’m not a bad person. I wouldn’t have hurt him. And neither would Hell; he’s very well-trained. But it’s hard to be patient and civil when your baby brother’s been kidnapped and nobody even seems to care.
“The police are investigating!” the man told me hastily. “They already talked to everyone in the house and searched the area!”
I knew that. I’d been at the police station all night. Why did he think I’d only just showed up here?
“So what you’re saying is that you’re totally useless,” I growled. “Thanks a lot, asshole.”
“Look, it’s not my problem,” the man snapped, and I wondered what had boosted his confidence. Probably the fact that Hell had given up on his I’m-a-scary-attack-wolf routine and put his paws up on a chair to finish a meal abandoned by one of the guests.
“Bad wolf,” I told him, and felt him happily ignore me. I turned back to the host. “I don’t care; I’m making it your problem. Tell me where he disappeared from and I’ll go check it out and leave you alone.”
“Look, there is absolutely no way I’m letting you wander around my grounds-”
“Up on the table, Hell. Eat the turkey, too.”
The host decided to let us investigate.
“Um… miss?”
Frustrated at the lack of evidence and the fact that Hell was giving me the I’m hungry look despite just having been fed, I turned and found a girl my age making her way over towards me across the snowy yard. When I didn’t immediately bite her head off, she clasped her hands together and smiled brightly.
“You’re the one looking for your little brother, right? I’m Clarissa, but you can call me Clare.” She extended a hand as though she expected me to kiss it, and I tried to shake it instead and ended up looking like an idiot. Clare didn’t seem to mind, barely even pausing for breath. “Your hair is really pretty; did you dye it?”
“Yes,” I lied, because I sure as hell wasn’t telling a stranger that I was part elf. Well, originally all elf, from way up in the North where they live in the ice, and then kidnapped in a freezer-box so I wouldn’t melt when they took me back to the human kingdom. I wish I was joking, but that’s the first thing I actually remember, so it’s pretty clear. Splicing in so many human genes fucked up the rest of my memory, so all I really remember is living with Mr. and Mrs. Scientist, whose names I know but don’t like to think. (I used to think of them as my parents, but that was before That Night.) Splicing in so many human genes fucked up a lot of stuff about me, actually - like the hair, which was supposed to go from white to white-blonde, and instead went from white to white with ugly blue streaks that made it look like I’d done a shitty home-dye job. And the fact that though I could now survive in warm weather, I’d lost some of my resistance to cold. And the fact that I was no longer mildly telepathic, except for when Hell wanted something. Overall, I was like the crappy prototype for the human-elf hybrid they wanted to create.
Jackson was the one they got right. Sometimes I think Jackson was the only thing in their entire fucking lives they got right.
Putting human genes into an elf (or fairy, or ice demon, or whichever of the names for them you like) hadn’t worked, but when I was nine, Mrs. Scientist got pregnant, and they put some of my elf genes in the baby before it was born. That was Jackson, and he was born perfect, adorable and human-looking, with white-blond hair and blue eyes and a complete resistance to cold - maybe just because his heart was so goddamn warm.
If anything bad had happened to him, I was going to kick his ass to the moon and back, and then I was going to fucking kill whoever was responsible.
“Why are you wearing goggles?” Clare asked, distracting me from my violent thoughts, then reached up and removed them without bothering to wait for a reply. “Ooh, you have such pretty eyes; how are they silver?”
“They’re not,” I said shortly. “They’re gray.” Creepy, too-light, not-human gray, but gray. “Can I help you with something?”
“What’s your name?” she asked brightly. “I’ll help you find your brother. I’ve always wanted to be swept off on an adventure by a dashing hero, and I was picturing a boy, but books always tell you to be open to unexpected possibilities. So can I come with you? Also, you didn’t tell me your name yet.”
I had the strangest feeling of wanting to tape her mouth shut but thinking I actually sort of liked her.
“My name is Wyn,” I said.
“Ooh, is that short for something?”
“No.” It was another lie, but my full name is stupid, so she didn’t need to know it. When I couldn’t remember my original one, Mr. and Mrs. Scientist decided to call me Winter, which makes sense in an uncreative way because of the elf/ice thing, but they spelled it with the elvish alphabet, because they’re fucking morons. Do you know what the elvish word for winter is? San. Perfectly suitable name. Do you know what crap is on my Census Certificate? “Wynt’r”. That’s why you don’t mix languages, dumbshits: because you end up giving your kid a name that looks like it should be pronounced by hacking up half a lung.
“We’ll make a great team!” Clare announced happily, winding her arm through mine. “The brave adventurer, the beautiful heroine, and their faithful dog!”
“Wolf,” I reminded her, as she leaned down to scratch behind Hell’s ears and dragged me with her by the elbow she still had. Hell made a happy woofing sound and I gave up.
“So where are we going?” she asked eagerly. “To look for your brother, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Also, aren’t your parents going to care if you run off with me?”
“I’ll leave them a note,” she said, waving her hand and apparently not picturing the absolute shitstorm that I was. Well, it’s not like I gave a fuck about the people who didn’t give a fuck about Jackson, so she could do whatever she wanted.
“There aren’t any hard leads on where whoever it was took him,” I said. “But…”
She turned bright, attentive eyes on me. “But?”
I swallowed, because I’d known all day where he was, known some way I didn’t understand and couldn’t find any evidence to back up, known since I found out he was missing. I didn’t know how, but I just knew. “They took him North.”
“This is r-really, really cold!” Clare wailed as we made our way through the swirling snow, trying to reach the next town on our route before the full force of the blizzard hit. She was still fighting her way through the snow determinedly, though, holding her scarf around her face. “How can you not be wearing a j-jacket, at least?”
“I’m don’t really feel it until the temperature drops below freezing,” I said, peering ahead for lights or buildings. “I’m chilly, but I’ll be fine.”
Okay, so once we’d figured out that whoever had taken Jackson had been headed past the northernmost cities and into elf territory, for which we were now bound, I’d kind of had to tell her about what we are. So what if it had only been the second night? Hell trusted her, and he’d never liked Mr. and Mrs. Scientist, so I took that as evidence that he was a good judge of character. Besides, if Clare really had run away from home to help me, she at least deserved to know who I was.
…okay, fine, so maybe I’m a fucking pushover. Who d’you think spoiled Jackson rotten? Not those assholes we lived with. They’d tried, but apparently nobody had ever taught them that you can’t buy a kid’s affection when you don’t actually love them, especially not when you’re planning to turn around and stab them in the fucking back.
“There’s the town,” I said. “C’mon, let’s get inside.”
Unfortunately, it turned out that the inn only had one room, which was a problem for reasons I didn’t want to go into but knew I would probably have to.
“It’s all right,” Clare said happily, dropping into the bed and pulling the covers up. “We can share. I trust you to be a gentleman.”
“I’m not a man,” I reminded her, climbing in the other side and giving Hell a stern glare when he thought about jumping onto the end without shaking the snow out of his coat first.
“I know,” she said cheerily. “Wait, aren’t you even going to take your gloves off? You said you don’t even feel the cold above freezing; why do you need them?”
“They’re a fashion statement,” I said.
“Do you not trust me?” Clare asked, sounding like her eyes were welling up. Shit.
So those reasons I didn’t want to go into.
“I have scars,” I told her shortly.
“Oh, it’s okay, I’m sure they’re not-”
“They’re gross.”
“Let me see.”
“No!” I said, snatching my hand away as she grabbed for one of the gloves.
“You think I’m going to reject you-”
“I’d fucking reject me-”
“Show me!”
“Fuck no!”
We both fell silent as someone in the adjoining room pounded on the wall, and Clare took the opportunity to give me a pitiful, pleading look.
“…oh, damn it, fine,” I said, stripping off my gloves.
Clare was silent a moment, but she wasn’t freaking out or making faces, so I took that as a positive. She reached out and took one of my hands in both of hers, drawing it closer to examine it and running her fingers over the bands of scar tissue at the base of each of mine, like ugly rings I couldn’t take off. There were a few around the upper joints, too.
“These look like…” she murmured thoughtfully.
“My fingers grow back when I lose them,” I told her bluntly. “It takes weeks, though. Once I lost a whole hand and it took almost six months. And it leaves scars.”
“How have you lost so many?” she asked. “There are marks around every one.” She was still stroking my hand, which was kind of nice, actually.
“It’s a long story,” I told her, even though it wasn’t. One of the genes my guardians had been trying to cross over into humans was the elves’ ability to heal and regrow tissue. At first, they needed a happy kid who loved them to show to the government people who came calling, but once they had Jackson for that, they didn’t need to worry about me anymore. I guess I could have hated him for that, but I knew it wasn’t his fault, and anyway, nobody who’s met Jackson could hate him. Being a lab rat hurt like fuck, but every time I crawled out of that basement lab and up to his room, with bandages on my hands for the weird hand disease he thought I had, he’d hug me and climb into my lap and let me hold him, and we’d have tea parties, and the world would start to feel like a place that I could stand to live in again.
“Don’t cry,” said Clare worriedly, squeezing my hand. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I’m not crying,” I scowled, wiping fiercely at my eyes. “We should go to bed; we’ve got a long way to go tomorrow and a whole fuckton of asses to kick when we catch up to the kidnappers.”
“Sure,” Clare said warmly, but hesitated a moment, then suddenly lifted my hand and kissed one of the scars. “But just so you know, I think they’re dashing.”
Then she blushed, pulled the covers over her head, and pretended to be asleep until I gave up poking her and decided to get some sleep as well.
Sleep turned out to be a bad idea.
Now that Jackson and I live by ourselves - on our guardians’ estate, thank you, because they were stupid enough to pretend they were our parents and so we inherited it when they died - things are pretty good. We’re happy. Well, Jackson was happy before, I hope, but now I’m happy, too. I don’t have many nightmares, and when I do, they’re usually the giant-slime-monster or naked-in-public kind.
But once in a while, I have that nightmare. The one about That Night. And when I do, I never want to sleep again.
It always starts out with going to find Jackson. For some reason, Mr. and Mrs. Scientist didn’t want me in the lab tonight, and I was more than happy to take the unexpected freedom. I went to his room to see if he wanted to read a story - he would read the text, and I would do the voices - but he wasn’t there, and I suddenly, absolutely knew. It wouldn’t strike me until later that the experiments with me hadn’t been going so well, and that they’d talked about needing a better specimen; at the time, I just fucking, fucking knew.
The door to the lab was locked, but the wood was old and brittle, so I took a chair and bashed it open with a strength I’d never had when trying to escape from the other side. I could hear Jackson crying and begging for help, had been able to since I’d opened the soundproof door at the top of the stairs, and when I dashed inside, so terrified and furious that I couldn’t see straight, the fact that they hadn’t started yet didn’t matter at all. They were going to. They were going to, they had him on the table and they had their tools out and they were fucking going to-
“Get out,” Mr. Scientist spat, reaching for a gun, and I grabbed one of his own fucking knives and buried it in him, which I’d never wanted to do, no matter what he’d done to me, not until I’d gone into Jackson’s room and seen it empty. Mrs. Scientist screamed and grabbed a scalpel, and she drove it into my shoulder before I slashed wildly and cut her throat almost without meaning to.
It didn’t feel vindicating.
It didn’t feel like revenge.
When I dropped down to curl up against the wall, I felt like a murderer.
“Wynnie…” Those were Jackson’s steps, and that was his soft, scared, fluttery voice. Fuck, the kid was only seven. His parents were monsters, and so was I.
“D-Don’t t-t-touch me,” I told him, tears twisting my voice into something I didn’t even recognize. “You’ll g-get it on y-you.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he said quaveringly, and climbed into my lap, blood starting to soak into his clothing as he hugged me.
And that’s when I knew it was.
The next day, we found him.
“You didn’t have to beat them up quite that much,” he told me hesitantly, as we sat waiting for Clare to get ready to go home. “They were actually very nice to me.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. “Like hell. Do you know how much time I spent freaking out? All your friends at school are probably freaking out, too.”
“Oh, crap, I missed my math test!”
I froze, then got to my feet to make my glower even scarier.
“What have I told you,” I growled, “about using that kind of language?”
“I learned it from you!” Jackson protested.
“I don’t care where you learned it; I don’t want to hear those words coming out of your mouth! You, young man, are going to take a fucking time-out!”
For some reason, Jackson was grinning.
“It’s good to see you, Wynnie,” he said, hugging me, and I scowled as I felt myself relenting and hugged him back.
“You, too, Jacks. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Prompt: A lot, from pulped_fictions
Wordcount: 3000
Genre: Humor/Angst
Rating/Warnings: High T (violence, language)
Summary: Wynnie’s baby brother has been kidnapped, and it’s starting to look like by time she finds him, her foot is going to be sore from all the asses she’s going to have to kick.
Author’s Notes: This was a Mary Sue challenge, so I decided that my challenge to myself would be to give a character as many Mary Sue qualities as possible while trying to keep her from being a Mary Sue. XD Also, I hope the bizarre blend of humor and horrible flashbacks actually works. :P
This story starts with my absolute favorite way to start things: kicking in a door. I didn’t actually need to, because it was unlocked, but I wanted to make an entrance, so you know what? Fuck that door.
“Where the fuck is my brother?” I bellowed as the room went quiet and an entire Solstice party’s worth of heads turned to stare at me. The host stepped forward, looking annoyed.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Where the fuck is my brother?”
Now, my name is not actually Where the fuck is my brother, nor is that the only thing I know how to say, but I was pissed, because how dare this asshole throw a party when a nine-year-old kid had disappeared from his house the night before? Had disappeared from his son’s Solstice party, which come to think of it, holy shit, how many parties did these people throw?
The man curled his lip, looking like he was gearing up to tell me he didn’t care and kick me out, so I decided I was done waiting for an answer and whistled for Hell.
Hell, short for Hellspawn, is proof that sometimes, good deeds are rewarded. I found him out in the snow when I was eight, a starved, shivering little gray puppy with stubby ears and a funny-shaped nose, and I sure as hell didn’t want to take care of him. It’s just that he looked so goddamn pathetic, and I hate things that whimper. Especially animals - they have this way of getting inside my head that is really goddamn annoying. I had to take him home just to make him shut up. I found him some food and a blanket, and I named him Hellspawn because I decided that something about him needed to be intimidating.
Then he grew up, and it turned out he wasn’t a dog, he was a fucking wolf.
Accordingly, when Hell walked into the party, people started screaming and clearing the fuck out, and the host finally decided to give me some answers. Not that I wasn’t bluffing - I’m not a bad person. I wouldn’t have hurt him. And neither would Hell; he’s very well-trained. But it’s hard to be patient and civil when your baby brother’s been kidnapped and nobody even seems to care.
“The police are investigating!” the man told me hastily. “They already talked to everyone in the house and searched the area!”
I knew that. I’d been at the police station all night. Why did he think I’d only just showed up here?
“So what you’re saying is that you’re totally useless,” I growled. “Thanks a lot, asshole.”
“Look, it’s not my problem,” the man snapped, and I wondered what had boosted his confidence. Probably the fact that Hell had given up on his I’m-a-scary-attack-wolf routine and put his paws up on a chair to finish a meal abandoned by one of the guests.
“Bad wolf,” I told him, and felt him happily ignore me. I turned back to the host. “I don’t care; I’m making it your problem. Tell me where he disappeared from and I’ll go check it out and leave you alone.”
“Look, there is absolutely no way I’m letting you wander around my grounds-”
“Up on the table, Hell. Eat the turkey, too.”
The host decided to let us investigate.
“Um… miss?”
Frustrated at the lack of evidence and the fact that Hell was giving me the I’m hungry look despite just having been fed, I turned and found a girl my age making her way over towards me across the snowy yard. When I didn’t immediately bite her head off, she clasped her hands together and smiled brightly.
“You’re the one looking for your little brother, right? I’m Clarissa, but you can call me Clare.” She extended a hand as though she expected me to kiss it, and I tried to shake it instead and ended up looking like an idiot. Clare didn’t seem to mind, barely even pausing for breath. “Your hair is really pretty; did you dye it?”
“Yes,” I lied, because I sure as hell wasn’t telling a stranger that I was part elf. Well, originally all elf, from way up in the North where they live in the ice, and then kidnapped in a freezer-box so I wouldn’t melt when they took me back to the human kingdom. I wish I was joking, but that’s the first thing I actually remember, so it’s pretty clear. Splicing in so many human genes fucked up the rest of my memory, so all I really remember is living with Mr. and Mrs. Scientist, whose names I know but don’t like to think. (I used to think of them as my parents, but that was before That Night.) Splicing in so many human genes fucked up a lot of stuff about me, actually - like the hair, which was supposed to go from white to white-blonde, and instead went from white to white with ugly blue streaks that made it look like I’d done a shitty home-dye job. And the fact that though I could now survive in warm weather, I’d lost some of my resistance to cold. And the fact that I was no longer mildly telepathic, except for when Hell wanted something. Overall, I was like the crappy prototype for the human-elf hybrid they wanted to create.
Jackson was the one they got right. Sometimes I think Jackson was the only thing in their entire fucking lives they got right.
Putting human genes into an elf (or fairy, or ice demon, or whichever of the names for them you like) hadn’t worked, but when I was nine, Mrs. Scientist got pregnant, and they put some of my elf genes in the baby before it was born. That was Jackson, and he was born perfect, adorable and human-looking, with white-blond hair and blue eyes and a complete resistance to cold - maybe just because his heart was so goddamn warm.
If anything bad had happened to him, I was going to kick his ass to the moon and back, and then I was going to fucking kill whoever was responsible.
“Why are you wearing goggles?” Clare asked, distracting me from my violent thoughts, then reached up and removed them without bothering to wait for a reply. “Ooh, you have such pretty eyes; how are they silver?”
“They’re not,” I said shortly. “They’re gray.” Creepy, too-light, not-human gray, but gray. “Can I help you with something?”
“What’s your name?” she asked brightly. “I’ll help you find your brother. I’ve always wanted to be swept off on an adventure by a dashing hero, and I was picturing a boy, but books always tell you to be open to unexpected possibilities. So can I come with you? Also, you didn’t tell me your name yet.”
I had the strangest feeling of wanting to tape her mouth shut but thinking I actually sort of liked her.
“My name is Wyn,” I said.
“Ooh, is that short for something?”
“No.” It was another lie, but my full name is stupid, so she didn’t need to know it. When I couldn’t remember my original one, Mr. and Mrs. Scientist decided to call me Winter, which makes sense in an uncreative way because of the elf/ice thing, but they spelled it with the elvish alphabet, because they’re fucking morons. Do you know what the elvish word for winter is? San. Perfectly suitable name. Do you know what crap is on my Census Certificate? “Wynt’r”. That’s why you don’t mix languages, dumbshits: because you end up giving your kid a name that looks like it should be pronounced by hacking up half a lung.
“We’ll make a great team!” Clare announced happily, winding her arm through mine. “The brave adventurer, the beautiful heroine, and their faithful dog!”
“Wolf,” I reminded her, as she leaned down to scratch behind Hell’s ears and dragged me with her by the elbow she still had. Hell made a happy woofing sound and I gave up.
“So where are we going?” she asked eagerly. “To look for your brother, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Also, aren’t your parents going to care if you run off with me?”
“I’ll leave them a note,” she said, waving her hand and apparently not picturing the absolute shitstorm that I was. Well, it’s not like I gave a fuck about the people who didn’t give a fuck about Jackson, so she could do whatever she wanted.
“There aren’t any hard leads on where whoever it was took him,” I said. “But…”
She turned bright, attentive eyes on me. “But?”
I swallowed, because I’d known all day where he was, known some way I didn’t understand and couldn’t find any evidence to back up, known since I found out he was missing. I didn’t know how, but I just knew. “They took him North.”
“This is r-really, really cold!” Clare wailed as we made our way through the swirling snow, trying to reach the next town on our route before the full force of the blizzard hit. She was still fighting her way through the snow determinedly, though, holding her scarf around her face. “How can you not be wearing a j-jacket, at least?”
“I’m don’t really feel it until the temperature drops below freezing,” I said, peering ahead for lights or buildings. “I’m chilly, but I’ll be fine.”
Okay, so once we’d figured out that whoever had taken Jackson had been headed past the northernmost cities and into elf territory, for which we were now bound, I’d kind of had to tell her about what we are. So what if it had only been the second night? Hell trusted her, and he’d never liked Mr. and Mrs. Scientist, so I took that as evidence that he was a good judge of character. Besides, if Clare really had run away from home to help me, she at least deserved to know who I was.
…okay, fine, so maybe I’m a fucking pushover. Who d’you think spoiled Jackson rotten? Not those assholes we lived with. They’d tried, but apparently nobody had ever taught them that you can’t buy a kid’s affection when you don’t actually love them, especially not when you’re planning to turn around and stab them in the fucking back.
“There’s the town,” I said. “C’mon, let’s get inside.”
Unfortunately, it turned out that the inn only had one room, which was a problem for reasons I didn’t want to go into but knew I would probably have to.
“It’s all right,” Clare said happily, dropping into the bed and pulling the covers up. “We can share. I trust you to be a gentleman.”
“I’m not a man,” I reminded her, climbing in the other side and giving Hell a stern glare when he thought about jumping onto the end without shaking the snow out of his coat first.
“I know,” she said cheerily. “Wait, aren’t you even going to take your gloves off? You said you don’t even feel the cold above freezing; why do you need them?”
“They’re a fashion statement,” I said.
“Do you not trust me?” Clare asked, sounding like her eyes were welling up. Shit.
So those reasons I didn’t want to go into.
“I have scars,” I told her shortly.
“Oh, it’s okay, I’m sure they’re not-”
“They’re gross.”
“Let me see.”
“No!” I said, snatching my hand away as she grabbed for one of the gloves.
“You think I’m going to reject you-”
“I’d fucking reject me-”
“Show me!”
“Fuck no!”
We both fell silent as someone in the adjoining room pounded on the wall, and Clare took the opportunity to give me a pitiful, pleading look.
“…oh, damn it, fine,” I said, stripping off my gloves.
Clare was silent a moment, but she wasn’t freaking out or making faces, so I took that as a positive. She reached out and took one of my hands in both of hers, drawing it closer to examine it and running her fingers over the bands of scar tissue at the base of each of mine, like ugly rings I couldn’t take off. There were a few around the upper joints, too.
“These look like…” she murmured thoughtfully.
“My fingers grow back when I lose them,” I told her bluntly. “It takes weeks, though. Once I lost a whole hand and it took almost six months. And it leaves scars.”
“How have you lost so many?” she asked. “There are marks around every one.” She was still stroking my hand, which was kind of nice, actually.
“It’s a long story,” I told her, even though it wasn’t. One of the genes my guardians had been trying to cross over into humans was the elves’ ability to heal and regrow tissue. At first, they needed a happy kid who loved them to show to the government people who came calling, but once they had Jackson for that, they didn’t need to worry about me anymore. I guess I could have hated him for that, but I knew it wasn’t his fault, and anyway, nobody who’s met Jackson could hate him. Being a lab rat hurt like fuck, but every time I crawled out of that basement lab and up to his room, with bandages on my hands for the weird hand disease he thought I had, he’d hug me and climb into my lap and let me hold him, and we’d have tea parties, and the world would start to feel like a place that I could stand to live in again.
“Don’t cry,” said Clare worriedly, squeezing my hand. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I’m not crying,” I scowled, wiping fiercely at my eyes. “We should go to bed; we’ve got a long way to go tomorrow and a whole fuckton of asses to kick when we catch up to the kidnappers.”
“Sure,” Clare said warmly, but hesitated a moment, then suddenly lifted my hand and kissed one of the scars. “But just so you know, I think they’re dashing.”
Then she blushed, pulled the covers over her head, and pretended to be asleep until I gave up poking her and decided to get some sleep as well.
Sleep turned out to be a bad idea.
Now that Jackson and I live by ourselves - on our guardians’ estate, thank you, because they were stupid enough to pretend they were our parents and so we inherited it when they died - things are pretty good. We’re happy. Well, Jackson was happy before, I hope, but now I’m happy, too. I don’t have many nightmares, and when I do, they’re usually the giant-slime-monster or naked-in-public kind.
But once in a while, I have that nightmare. The one about That Night. And when I do, I never want to sleep again.
It always starts out with going to find Jackson. For some reason, Mr. and Mrs. Scientist didn’t want me in the lab tonight, and I was more than happy to take the unexpected freedom. I went to his room to see if he wanted to read a story - he would read the text, and I would do the voices - but he wasn’t there, and I suddenly, absolutely knew. It wouldn’t strike me until later that the experiments with me hadn’t been going so well, and that they’d talked about needing a better specimen; at the time, I just fucking, fucking knew.
The door to the lab was locked, but the wood was old and brittle, so I took a chair and bashed it open with a strength I’d never had when trying to escape from the other side. I could hear Jackson crying and begging for help, had been able to since I’d opened the soundproof door at the top of the stairs, and when I dashed inside, so terrified and furious that I couldn’t see straight, the fact that they hadn’t started yet didn’t matter at all. They were going to. They were going to, they had him on the table and they had their tools out and they were fucking going to-
“Get out,” Mr. Scientist spat, reaching for a gun, and I grabbed one of his own fucking knives and buried it in him, which I’d never wanted to do, no matter what he’d done to me, not until I’d gone into Jackson’s room and seen it empty. Mrs. Scientist screamed and grabbed a scalpel, and she drove it into my shoulder before I slashed wildly and cut her throat almost without meaning to.
It didn’t feel vindicating.
It didn’t feel like revenge.
When I dropped down to curl up against the wall, I felt like a murderer.
“Wynnie…” Those were Jackson’s steps, and that was his soft, scared, fluttery voice. Fuck, the kid was only seven. His parents were monsters, and so was I.
“D-Don’t t-t-touch me,” I told him, tears twisting my voice into something I didn’t even recognize. “You’ll g-get it on y-you.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he said quaveringly, and climbed into my lap, blood starting to soak into his clothing as he hugged me.
And that’s when I knew it was.
The next day, we found him.
“You didn’t have to beat them up quite that much,” he told me hesitantly, as we sat waiting for Clare to get ready to go home. “They were actually very nice to me.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. “Like hell. Do you know how much time I spent freaking out? All your friends at school are probably freaking out, too.”
“Oh, crap, I missed my math test!”
I froze, then got to my feet to make my glower even scarier.
“What have I told you,” I growled, “about using that kind of language?”
“I learned it from you!” Jackson protested.
“I don’t care where you learned it; I don’t want to hear those words coming out of your mouth! You, young man, are going to take a fucking time-out!”
For some reason, Jackson was grinning.
“It’s good to see you, Wynnie,” he said, hugging me, and I scowled as I felt myself relenting and hugged him back.
“You, too, Jacks. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”