Dr. Achara Sichantha

chaotiics​:

Brick by brick, Achara works on rebuilding her life. Her thirties are going to be different, she tells herself. Her twenties? A fucking mess. But now she has her  apartment, a fresh coat of paint, and — Caleb, her morally questionable roommate and undeniable best friend. Philia like the Greeks used to say. She crows with gratefulness when he returns with the drinks. She raises a glass to him, to her, to them.

“Fuck! Is that this week?” She exclaims when Caleb brings up the holiday. There’s an unending history of slammed doors and raised voices there for her. (Mania, if they’re still speaking Greek.) Pizza, beer, and good company sounds heavenly in comparison. ”I mean, me and my Barcelona shirt will be fighting for my life in some Chelsea pub — but it’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t you have plans to con your way into some poor, unsuspecting girl’s heart?”

She cracks a grin over the rim of her third shot (second, long gone). Brick by brick, shot by shot, Archara forgets things like Valentine’s Day and the people she used to owe such days to. 

“’Tis the season’ as they say. Or am I just quoting you?”

Her life - it’s all still a mess, just a more tolerable shade. Achara should know better though, than to assume that speaking the devil’s name is his only invocation. He appears then without her saying a damn thing.

@thetowerr​

It had been five years since Boone last spoke to his wife.

Say what you wanted about the man, but he was a true romantic at heart. Time and separation did not halt the passion he felt for her. Boone thought about her often. Kept tabs on her too. It really wasn’t hard. There weren’t very many Achara Hannigans in London after all. Come to think of it, Boone was only able to find the one. She’d gotten a new place, but still had the old one. For what reason, Boone didn’t know. The old place didn’t look lived in, however, the new one did. He knew this, because Boone was partial to dropping by every so often. Only a handful amount times throughout the years, he wasn’t stalking her. Whenever the longing felt too long, whenever he just needed a glimpse, Boone would linger outside her new flat. How long? Minutes, sometimes up to an hour. That’s all.

Though what happened between them happened, though Achara fucking lied like she did for all those years, Boone still cared about her. He still loved her too. These are truths Boone didn’t accept head on. Instead, they were manifested through action. He’d been thinking of her more lately than he had in years. The more he thought of her, the more he dropped by.  However, a few months ago, during the first drop by in a longtime, Boone saw something in her window he couldn’t have prepared himself for.

A dude. Her dude?  Her new dude.

No, he didn’t barge in the door and bash the guy’s skull in, even though he could have. Even though he wanted to.

Tonight, Boone found her because he knew where to look. Since the discovery of her dude, he couldn’t get Achara off his mind. So these drop bys stopped being  drop bys, and started being follows. He learned her routines, some new, but some weren’t. Truthfully, after that one occurrence, Boone never saw her dude again.  The man thought he was in the clear.

Until tonight.

When Boone entered the bar, when he saw her, when he saw him, her fucking dude, an insidious rage took over the man. The kind of rage that filled his chest and made a fist out of his grip. The kind of rage that just made him want to bash a motherfucker’s skull.

Boone bolted over. When he reached them, he only looked at her. “Are you kidding me, Char?” he shouted at her, just like he used to. “Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of janky ass, tough guy wanna be, downgrade is this? If you missed me so much, pick up the phone and call. You didn’t have to settle on some cheap ass, knock off.”

@calebdraper​

-

Achara knew him well, and perhaps too well but as of yet, that had not proved to be a bad thing. The two of them got on like a house on fire. In the beginning, it hadn’t taken long for Caleb to seek Achara out as if she were prey to him, but somewhere along the way, he didn’t use her quite like he did with almost everyone else in his life. The two of them soon became fast friends, bonding over shared interests - a couple of bottles of one thing or another - and good conversation. 

“I’m working on it,” as he always was, “but I can still find time for you.” His face held a cheeky grin which was always a playful one around Achara. 

He raised his drink to his lips, but as he was about to take a sip Caleb paused at the sound of an approaching voice. The grin was quickly replaced by a puzzled, yet concerned frown as he took in the sudden hostility of the approaching man. Then it quickly changed back to an amused look as he chuckles at the supposed insult. The guy had gotten the wrong idea and yet it pleased Caleb to no end to see how aggravated this guy was.

Instinctively, Achara reaches for Caleb, grabs him by the elbow and yanks him back - doesn’t care if she pulls him off his stool, as long as she puts herself between him and Boone. Achara would offer Caleb a shovel, but he’s digging his own grave just fine. Man’s about to lose a tooth or a rib, and there’s not a damn thing she can do to stop it. Shit luck though - she doesn’t get a chance to tell him. Achara shoots straight through her anger like a skipping stone and plunges into the depths of rage. Blacks the fuck out more or less. She’s on her feet in an instant, yelling right back -  

“Oh, so I can’t have friends now?! That's fucking rich!” 

Her voice gets louder. There’s the scraping of barstools, a great rise of commotion as the crowd forms.

“Pick up the phone and call who Hannigan?! Some limp dick wanna-be cowboy?! You’re such a fucking cunt! I’ve got better things to do!”

What a cacophony. What a clusterfuck. Louder still to match his tone. It’s not at all how she pictured a reunion, and sometimes, on dark nights, she does picture one. She and Boone, they were always spinning towards something weren’t they? There’s holes in the plaster of her walls because of him, dents in her doorway that Boone’s hands have put there. The part people never believe is that he’s never put a hand on her, but that’s always been the way of the two of them - their anger stays confined to the air. It changes the very atoms of the atmosphere haloing them, always makes it electric, but never touches them. Theirs is an anger that feels too much like the stratosphere, too much like home.

'Hey hey! Earth to Boone! In what world does it make sense for us to have a kid?! No, of course I wasn’t going to fucking keep it!'

Achara’s has never pretended to be a saint. Ask anyone, she’s has a greater taste for raising hell. She’s pushing a stool out of the way, about to vault over the goddamn table. She tosses her words back to Caleb, like an apple-core thrown over her shoulder. 

“Caleb, I’d like you to meet my husband. Should be ‘ex-husband,’ but someone refuses to sign the goddamn papers.” 

The stool goes clattering to the floor. Hits the table on the way down, knocks over a beer. What a fucking mess. Achara lands toe to toe with Boone, turns her chin up, strikes her voice: “You here to sign the papers, Hannigan?” She snarls, wild as any stray. “Because if you’ don’t have them, I suggest you turn around, leave, and come back when you have them or I have more fucks to give. But I’ll tell you this - I’m fresh out of fucks.”

Achara makes mistakes all the time. Bad liquor, bad drugs, bad beds, bad marriage - it’s her resiliency that’s the most admirable thing about her really. She has, over all else, the uncanny ability to get right up again from all the mistakes of her life. And so, while her trip to the morgue this evening is far from a good idea, and her decision to stay when she sees she’s not alone is maybe a mistake, it should be noted that - despite these sequences of foul choices - she is still alive. Not dead yet. Dumb-fucking-luck some might say, but she thinks that’s got to count for something. It’s a greater amount of fortune than the majority of those in this room. 

Speaking of the dead: the dead don’t care about cigarette smoke, that’s why she’s down here in the hospital’s morgue in first place. But Achara knows when she walks into a room with a dangerous creature. It’s all those years of upbringing, her proximity to such matters. And she knows now: this stranger’s got this look in his eye… latent, grim. Achara knows it would be reasonable to heel turn and pretend she’d seen none of this. Achara knows she should probably act in closer accordance to self-preservation. There’s a fire alarm along the edge of the room, dull red lever against the chrome wall – 

But fuck what she knows, you know? It’s too early in the goddamn week to turn into a bloody narc.Oh, she’s not supposed to be here?

“So what? Neither are you. Looks like we’re both little delinquents,” she speaks up with a snip to the clearly unauthorized stranger. “At least I’ve got a badge with my face on it.” Said badge gets flashed. Perhaps this situation calls for less flippancy, but Achara’s left all her fucks somewhere between the unofficial 13th and 14th hour of her shift.

She skips the ‘who are you,’ and ‘what are you doing’ and goes straight for the: “If you’re looking to nick anything off of them, you’re shit out of luck. We keep all the good shit for ourselves.”

.

Emilio has a badge too, but it definitely doesn’t have his face on it. Momentarily re-focusing on the task at hand he carefully zips the body bag back up, a wave of ginger curls having denied him the satisfaction of finding what he’s been looking for once again. At this rate he’s going to be stuck in the morgue for hours more to come, sifting through piles of corpses like some Medieval nightmare creature. It’d help if he were able to read the names and descriptions on the accompanying clipboards, but if he struggles with printed font then scribbled handwriting is a whole other problem.

“I’m not here to steal anything,” Emilio concedes eventually, gaze averted as he crosses himself. God forgive him for what he’s done and for what he’s about to do. “I’m looking for someone. You should leave.” Rare are the moments in which he extends a lifeline. Ideally she’s smart enough to take it.

“Woah woah woah, back the hell up, why are you going again? Do we get a second turn in a row if we get the ball in the table mouth?” The brunette asked in obvious confusion, only paying half attention to what they were doing, her vodka Diet Coke proving far more entertaining in her humble opinion. Her second one in half an hour. Mama didn’t raise no quitter. “I swear if god wanted me to handle a pole this long he’d have given me a better sex life, this thing is just…fucking inconvenient.” She muttered to herself as she circled the table, brandishing the long pool cue. @chaotiics

There’s the sound of the door opening and Achara’s ready to javelin-throw a pen at the person who’s dared to disturb the sanctuary she’s claimed in the break room. A wisp of smoke sits on her lips, vape pinched between her fingers, and she preemptively holds up her badge without even looking to see who it is. “I’m a doctor, I know exactly what this is doing to my body” she drawls before letting it go. The badge snaps back to her side with a small sting courtesy of her badge extender. The ‘No Smoking’ sign in the corner stares her down. 

Break time. Achara’s here for some shitty coffee, a quick nap, a little drag - but her eyes snap open at the familiar voice. She would know the sound of him, the shape of her brother anywhere. 

She spots the coffee, the smell hits her not too long after. The affair they’ve got set up in the break room is sub-par at best, just barely a fairer substitute for grease oil. It doesn’t matter how Rune got in here, Achara just makes a sound, an appreciative hum of thanks for the cup he hands to her. But almost immediately, she pauses mid sip. She peers at him over the rim of her cup with slight scrutiny.

“You look like shit.”

’More so than usual’ she wants to tease, but finds her concern congeals the words in her throat. It’s habit at this point to scan her brother for bullet holes, for stabs, for scratches, for signs of his little hobby that involves sampling the very supply he creates (’What the fuck, Rune?’ she always says.) With all the lying that happens, with all the falsehoods that the average person offers up to their medical professionals, becoming a lie detector of sorts has been crucial to saving lives - but as far as Achara can tell Rune is unscathed. Physically, at least. She’s not discounting the slight traces of exhaustion that crescent under her brother’s eyes. “What’s going on?”

Rune doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes at the abruptness of Achara’s assessment, partially because he’s used to it and partially because it’s true. The worst stretches of his insomnia and paranoia can’t be covered up with a well-tailored suit or a flashy shirt, least of all for someone who knows him as well as his sister.

“Nice to see you, too, and you’re welcome,” he says flatly instead, settling himself into the chair beside hers as soon as it seems like she’s finished glancing him over. Rune hates the habit that’s become, and the reasons he’s given her to develop it. He knows they’re his fault. He also knows he won’t stop, not unless she asks.

Rune also knows lying or avoiding her question would be the epitome of pointlessness, but that doesn’t stop him from hesitating, letting out a slow sigh of a breath as his thumbnail picks absentmindedly at the cardboard sleeve on his own coffee. He can’t even console himself with an ‘it’s better if she knows,’ because it’s just one more reason to worry her.

Malachi is missing - that shit is weird. The sort of weird that borders on the supernatural. An eerie and strange foreboding settles over Achara as the implications fly through her mind. She and Rune are technically Malachi's family, raised in the same house, weened on the same poison of money and gangs by the cold hand of the Liddells, and so their doors are some of the first doors officials will come a knocking to when words about a missing person gets out. Achara can't imagine that the Jabberwocks are allowing anyone else to control the narrative at this point though. Is Boone going ballistic? 

And then, of course, there's the obvious question: what the fuck actually happened?

Absentmindedly she chews on the tip of her vape, suddenly unable to take another hit. The first sound that leaves her is a prickly bark of laughter. 

“Y’all - ” she’s been to Kentucky once on account her former husband and has been endlessly delighted with the words since. Her Londoner’s lilt cuts around the word. “Y’all need to keep better tabs on him. Remember when Malachi was eight and he just went missing for weeks? Or remember that summer we were playing hide and seek and we couldn’t find him for hours and I suggested putting a tracker on him? Shit, sounds like the guy just wants to run away. Maybe you should take the hint and just let him run away.”

Achara thinks about doing that all the time. She’d never. Her brother is her whole world. 

And Malachi, technically her other brother - shouldn’t he be her whole world too? 

The humor feels flat on her tongue almost as soon as her words leave her. She knows that’s not what’s happening here. She sighs finally and runs a hand through her hair. 

“What does your gut say?” Achara finds all of this gang business to be a little silly, but in this moment she understands the blood of it all just enough. But let’s say someone is picking off the Liddells, she doesn’t want Rune anywhere near that shit. The mask of their birth name only means so much. And so she says as much. 

In his hands, Caleb brought back a tray of drinks from the bar and placed it on the table. A couple of shots followed by some neat whisky. “I was thinking…” Caleb starts as he takes the seat next to Achara. “We should do something next week. The champions league starts on Tuesday. We could grab some pizzas and a couple of bottles of the good stuff, or head down to the pub to watch it.” the second option was always more fun, the atmosphere often buzzing when football fans congregated to watch their favourite teams. The shared interest could often bring many people together in support of one team. However, at home, they could drink to their heart’s content and not have to worry about stumbling home or finding a cab. “Or do you have plans? I keep forgetting it’s Valentine’s day.” - Caleb should have a date by now, there were many lonely hearts around this time looking to hook up before v-day, it was the perfect opportunity for him to begin weaseling his way in.

“Fuck! Is that this week?” She exclaims when Caleb brings up the holiday. There’s an unending history of slammed doors and raised voices there for her. (Mania, if they're still speaking Greek.) Pizza, beer, and good company sounds heavenly in comparison. ”I mean, me and my Barcelona shirt will be fighting for my life in some Chelsea pub — but it’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t you have plans to con your way into some poor, unsuspecting girl’s heart?”

She cracks a grin over the rim of her third shot (second, long gone). Brick by brick, shot by shot, Archara forgets things like Valentine’s Day and the people she used to owe such days to. 

"'Tis the season' as they say. Or am I just quoting you?"

Her life - it's all still a mess, just a more tolerable shade. Achara should know better though, than to assume that speaking the devil’s name is his only invocation. He appears then without her saying a damn thing.

Emilio doesn’t make mistakes. He’d been trained too rigidly, had the fear of God instilled in him too thoroughly to allow even the possibility of screwing up on a job. Out in the field his target is the only thing that matters, distractions be damned. His father had taught him that too, with his fists and bloody knuckles more than his words. Focus is the difference between life and death, and fate isn’t something you screw around with in this branch of business. Emilio doesn’t make mistakes until he does, and they nearly cost him everything.

The first one had been impatience, thoughts of Eliza and Javier and Rune running rampant through the back of his mind until sitting still another second had become an impossibility. He’d gone in too soon, had underestimated the reaction time of the police in an upscale neighbourhood like this, had miscalculated the time strangling someone loaded on cocaine with a cord wire would take. The living room had been lit up blue and red by the time Emilio made his exit, victim on the ground but potentially still breathing.

Unable to confirm the death with his own eyes Emilio had resigned himself to following the ambulance, waiting outside the St George’s hospital for the rest of the night and the best part of following day until most of the commotion had died down and entry into the morgue was relatively easy. Presently he’s in the process of unzipping the third body bag on the row of tables, glad as ever for his gloves. Searching the morgue for his target is an unfortunate side-effect of the job but a necessity nonetheless.

The second mistake sneaks up on him there, appearing in form of someone entering the room and switching on the lights before Emilio can as much as step behind the nearest shelf. Body bag half-way unzipped he looks up at the newcomer, expression grim. He tries to avoid killing doctors, but sometimes there’s just no way around it.

Speaking of the dead: the dead don’t care about cigarette smoke, that’s why she’s down here in the hospital's morgue in first place. But Achara knows when she walks into a room with a dangerous creature. It's all those years of upbringing, her proximity to such matters. And she knows now: this stranger’s got this look in his eye… latent, grim. Achara knows it would be reasonable to heel turn and pretend she'd seen none of this. Achara knows she should probably act in closer accordance to self-preservation. There’s a fire alarm along the edge of the room, dull red lever against the chrome wall – 

But fuck what she knows, you know? It’s too early in the goddamn week to turn into a bloody narc. Oh, she’s not supposed to be here?

“So what? Neither are you. Looks like we're both little delinquents,” she speaks up with a snip to the clearly unauthorized stranger. “At least I’ve got a badge with my face on it.” Said badge gets flashed. Perhaps this situation calls for less flippancy, but Achara's left all her fucks somewhere between the unofficial 13th and 14th hour of her shift.

She skips the ‘who are you,’ and ‘what are you doing' and goes straight for the: “If you’re looking to nick anything off of them, you're shit out of luck. We keep all the good shit for ourselves.”

Their heated text exchange has already diffused. She doesn’t actually expect him to be behind the Nando’s as she’s goaded, but there his is. She shimmies a cigarette out of its pack. “What did I say? Talk shit get hit.” She offers one up. The ‘piss off’ earns a sharp grin around the cigarette slipped between her lips. “Come on,“ she coos. “Have a smoke with me before we beat the shit out of each other.”

.

First drag comes and goes - Achara tilts her head back and exhales so the smoke doesn’t unfurl right in Thomas’ face. Real polite like.

“Our 'special relationship?'” She snickers. "Do you have a hard time with the word friendship?” Not that she blames him. Achara knows she’s a little too loose with the word herself. A little too giving. Neutrality doesn’t bother her, she knows most don’t have that benefit. “A bit sexist to think my brother’s my keeper isn’t it? How’s Isabella feel about you getting into fights?” Her hand digs into her back pocket to bring out her phone, cracked screen catching the light. “Get in here - don’t blink.”

The lively bustle of the hospital always felt like home to Rune. Their father’s private clinic had never been quite so chaotic as the emergency ward could be, naturally, but there was still a very specific brand of urgency that felt familiar. Finding comfort in the smell of antiseptic was hardly common, he knew, but the Sichanthas aren’t a common family.

Rune nods amiably to one of the nurses behind the station desk and receives little more than a glower in return. They don’t love the way he wanders through like he owns the place, but after years, they’ve learned there isn’t much they can do about it. The amount of money Rune tends to drop in regular charitable donations probably helps dissuade any attempts to tell him ‘no.’

With one of his siblings to the proverbial wind, he’s decided he needs to have eyes on the other immediately. Yesterday, even. The Sichanthas never go that long without seeing each other anyway, and it isn’t as if he hasn’t been peppering her with texts, but Rune knows the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach won’t so much as ease unless he can see her. Talk to her. With two sturdy paper cups of coffee in hand from the needlessly expensive café around the corner, Rune follows direction and finds Achara in the eye of the storm; one of the emergency wing’s break rooms.

“Hey,” he offers as casually as possible, but despite best efforts, the relief he feels to see her crawls its way into the tone. Setting the cup of coffee on the table between them, he doesn’t sit yet, cocking his head and half-smiling.

Break time. Achara's here for some shitty coffee, a quick nap, a little drag - but her eyes snap open at the familiar voice. She would know the sound of him, the shape of her brother anywhere. 

She spots the coffee, the smell hits her not too long after. The affair they’ve got set up in the break room is sub-par at best, just barely a fairer substitute for grease oil. It doesn't matter how Rune got in here, Achara just makes a sound, an appreciative hum of thanks for the cup he hands to her. But almost immediately, she pauses mid sip. She peers at him over the rim of her cup with slight scrutiny.

“You look like shit.”